Pesach (Passover) started off as two very different holidays in ancient times, one called Pesach was a spring pastoral holiday celebrated by semi-nomadic Jews who subsisted on livestock. They slaughtered their youngest lambs (during lambing season) to ward off evil, and then held a feast.
The other spring holiday was celebrated by village farmers up north whose first harvest was barley and the bread from that yield was unleavened. Their previous supply of bread was used up, hunger would have taken hold by the end of winter, and so even the unleavened bread (which even the superior bread of their time made from wheat flour and ancient baking techniques was flat at the time), was a major cause for merriment.
Their holiday was called Chag Hamatzot.
It was only under the United Monarchy (Kings Saul, David, and Solomon) period that the spring festivals merged into one holiday, given a faith-based meaning to include our origination stories, and moved from the home to the Temple in Jerusalem. The first day of the pilgrimage include sacrificing lambs (I was on Mt. Azazel back in September 2023 and saw where the sacrificial goat was chosen each year) at the Temple and the second day would be ordered to eat unleavened bread for the remainder of the week. Passover became a national holiday.
During the Babylonian Exile (586 BC), the upper echelon sector of Jews from Judea was moved to Babylon. It was there that the Book of Exodus was written (makes sense) and the story of Exodus added to the holiday. Upon return of Jews to Jerusalem in 516 BC, Pesach resumed.
The holiday underwent further changes in later years, including allowing Jews to celebrate outside the Temple, so long as in Jerusalem, to accommodate all the Jews coming in from across the Roman Empire back home for the festivities.
Historians say that our ancestors would not recognize modern seders.
Pesach is a powerful holiday. There were times when portions of Judean society were in exile forcibly, times when some Jews (not all) were slaves (some Jews were taken from Israel to Egypt as slaves after military defeat, some Jews were slaves in Italy after the Roman conquest both in 70 AD and 136 AD, and some Jews were slaves much later on in Morocco under Islamic rulers, centuries after Arabs conquered the Maghreb).
It reminds Jews to not have a slave mentality, to not accept bondage under occupiers, and especially now, since the Jewish genocide, to keep our remaining hostages in Gaza top of mind, while also not accepting constraints from outsiders of how to handle terrorists.
Five real life ‘Moses’ we ought to celebrate:
- King Cyrus the Great who freed all the slaves in Persia in 539 BC, including Jews (Babylonia was part of Persia).
- Saladin I – He was an Ayyubid Caliph who conquered the antisemitic Crusaders and thanks to him, Jews were invited back to live in Jerusalem.
- The Maccabees – They saved Jews from assimilating into Greek culture, even at the expense of launching civil wars against Hellenized Jews. In actuality, that was their greatest accomplishment, aside from the greatest Zionist victory of ancient times, against the Syrian-Greek Seleucids (the real story of Chanukkah).
- Ze’ev Jabotinsky – The founder of Betar, which provided resources and strength to Jewish youth while Israel was under occupation (when it was called Palestine). He also fought the British occupiers and inspired the creation of Etzel. It was Etzel (the Irgun)’s actions along with the even more militant Lehi factions which actually drove out the British in 1948, after 20 years of fighting the occupiers.
- The Mizrahi Jews who first formed the Mossad. Israel needed Mizrahi Jews to do the most dangerous job during the 1948 war for survival (Independence War is a misnomer as Israel already won independence from the British occupiers and was immediately attacked by Arabs (all the Arab armies were trained by British Generals; some even led by British Generals). Mizrahi Jews were sent deep into enemy territory to save numerous lives in Israel.
