Passover Marked in Varied Ways

Passover, the holiday of spring and of Jewish liberation, is one of the most beautiful and one of the most joyful of holidays for Jews in all parts of the world.

The performance of the seder ceremony, the most picturesque element in the whole holiday, is accompanied by curious customs among the various Jews of the world.

The Sephardic Jews, descendents of those who once were expelled from Spain, have a seder that is especially splendid. The women wear their most beautiful clothes. The afikoimen is not hidden under the pillow, as in the more familiar ceremony, but is wrapped in a silk cloth worn by the women over their shoulders while the haggadah is being said.

PREPARATIONS START EARLY

In general, the Sephardim make elaborate preparations for the Passover. Four weeks before Passover, the day after Purim, they begin to bake matzohs. The Gabbalists have special additional details to observe and special prayers to say over each piece of matzoh.

Some Sephardim bake, before Passover, a special kind of “rich matzoh” made with oil and wine. This is served to friends who call during the intermediary week-days of the holiday.

Among the Sephardim it is customary for several families to have a common Seder at which the story of the flight out of Egypt is dramatized. While those who remain seated at the table discuss the liberation, a visitor arrives “fresh from Egypt” and begins to narrate the whole story. This visitor carries a sack over his shoulder and has a staff in his hand, quite as though he had just come a long distance. After he is asked a number of questions about how the Jews left Egypt, he joins those at the table and says the haggadah with them.

THE QUESTIONS IN ARABIC

The Jews from Baghdad and Yemen perform the Seder and recite the haggadah in a manner all their own. Even their way of blessing the wine is different.

The four questions are asked in the following manner:

A little boy holds the bone which is a traditional part of the ceremony in one hand, and an egg in the other. He asks the first question. Why do we eat matzos? Then he gives the complete answer himself. He goes through the same procedure with each of the other three questions, asking each in its turn and answering it.

In many Yemenite homes the haggadah is paraphrased in Arabic. This is largely because most of the Yemenite Jewish women do not understand Hebrew.

This is not anything unusual. The Jewish scholar Rashi tells us in his “Hapardes” that it was once the custom in France to tell the story of the haggadah in French, since that was the language the women knew.

Even more patriarchal and ceremonious is the seder ceremony of the Bokharan Jews. The room where the seder is to be held is filled with roses and fragrant grasses. On the table there are two flasks, and in each ### a twig of myrtle. ### highly perfumed flowers are always used by the Bokharan Jews to decorate their Sabbath and holiday tables.

Everyone sits on a low sofa piled high with pillows to lean on. The oldest male sits at the head of the table, and next comes the second oldest. The sequence is progressively downward according to age, with the women at the foot.

As soon as the recitation of the haggadah is begun, the head of ### house rises and grasps a staff. ### wife hands him a package containing a few matzohs, which he throws over his shoulder, and then proceeds to run back and forth across the house until he stops in a corner.

The smaller children approach him and say:

“Whence do you come?”

“From Egypt,” he replies.

“And where are you going?”

“To Jerusalem,” he says.

After this conversation he sits down at his place again and the youngest person of the house asks the four questions.

The Jews from Morocco get the seder over with in great haste, with almost no ceremony. They are the poorest Jews in Jerusalem. All of them live in dark little rooms without air or light. But for the Passover everything is in apple-pie order, everyone is clean and dressed up. By the light of small gas lamps they sit, decked out in their patched garments, and have their seder.

Many are the times that I have spent the beautiful spring Passover holiday in Palestine. But only once have I been in Jerusalem on the eve of the holiday. I shall never forget this experience, for it brings up the most beautiful picture one can imagine.

Several days before Passover the streets of Jerusalem are crowded with countless Jewish visitors, tourists from all over the world, who have come to spend the Passover in the land of Israel. The streets are lively and in the specifically Jewish streets, like the Street of a Hundred Gates, and in the Old City, the bustle of the approaching holiday is great indeed.

By the time the afternoon of the day before Passover arrives, the city has acquired quite a different appearance. All the Jews go to the Wailing Wall, and as they pass one sees a most varied collection of types. There are the pious Jerusalem Jews, wearing their flat fur-edged caps and their parti-colored cloaks. There are the Sephardic Jews, with their rabbis and judges, wearing turbans on their heads. And there are the Bokharan Jews, wearing their purple cloaks; the Caucasian Jews, looking half as though they were Cossacks, with Cossack headgear and wide breeches; Yemenite Jews, dressed modestly but neatly; various European Jewish types, some of them just arrived from the Emek or perhaps from faraway Galilee. They are dressed in clean white blouses. And then of course, there are the various types of women, all in their characteristic garb.

One finds here Jews from Shanghai and from Honolulu, from distant Canada and from New Zealand, from India and from some colony in distant Africa and of course, from all the European and American lands.

SONG AND DANCE IN TEL AVIV

Much joy and the true spirit {SPAN}o#{/SPAN} liberation characterize the seder ceremonies in the colonies and in Tel Aviv, where the masses {SPAN}o#{/SPAN} tourists from various countries who have come to Palestine for Passover, stream through the streets.

It is the “night of observance,” the first Passover night. Doors and windows are open, and through all the lighted streets of Tel Aviv one hears the melody of the haggadah in all its variations. From all the houses one hears the final words:

“Next year in Jerusalem the rebuilt!”

The chalutzim particularly make a great to-do about the seder. At the workers in Tel Aviv assemble in the Eden Hall in Tel Aviv where they gather around heavily laden tables and recite the haggadah. Then everyone’s feet life and the dancing of the hora and the singing of chalutzim songs begins. The dance is carried ou# into the streets of Tel Aviv, which are filled with Jewish rejoicing.

This Passover night, to the Chalutzim, not only commemo# rates the liberation from Egypt but also mark the birth of a new life, a life which foretells the liberation of all the Jews and of the Jewish renaissance.

Many Jews go to Nablus for Passover, to see how the holiday in celebrated by the Samaritans, wh### to this day bring the Passover sacrifice to Mo###.