Seder Supper

Tonight is the start of Passover, so we did the Seder Supper. (We're not having a Spring Break, so we didn't do a full blown supper.)

We had gone to a Seder Supper a couple weeks ago (Rabbit and I, that is) with our Keeper's of the Home group, so I kind of knew what I was going to do. A Messianic Jewish family hosted it. They did an abbreviated version. It was neat, because they would say the words in Hebrew and then in English. The Hebrew sounded like singing. It was also neat to get a Jewish person's perspective on the traditions and meanings in the Seder Supper.

Tonight, we had a regular dinner first. The Seder isn't suppose to start until sundown, but that would have been pushing it for my kids. Plus, there is a bunch of ceremony to get through before you get to the meal. So, we read through the ceremony. The kids tried some of the things - like the parsley in salt water, but were afraid to try the horseradish. They loved the Matzo bread. I bought a Matzo Ball & Soup mix from the grocery store, and made that to eat during the "meal" part. Rabbit and I and Dad ate the soup, the boys just munched on Matzo bread.

I did hard boil an egg for the plate, and then the kids made a "lamb bone" from a paper towel tube wrapped in masking tape. So, we tried to have all the symbols, even if they weren't exact. (I find it interesting that the egg was the "peace" offering, and then Easter coming up with candy-filled eggs...)

We skipped a lot of the alternating leader/family parts of the ceremony, and it still took us over an hour to do. So, if you do all of it, be prepared for it to take a while

I made the Charoseth by the book. Then for horseradish I just bought some horseradish root and peeled it and cubed it and ran it through the food processor. The interesting thing about horseradish is it has some bite, but it doesn't linger like chili or other spicy foods do. Making the Matzo sandwich with the charoseth and horseradish together also helped keep the bite down.

The symbolism of the broken bread and Christ's body broken for us, the symbolism of the lamb for the Israelites and Jesus as our sacrificial lamb, the message of God's love and grace to us through-out history is just precious. This is a festival worth doing, at least part of it.