Of all Jewish holiday traditions, the most popular remains the Passover seder\u201d\u201dthe festive ritual meal, celebrated next week, at which family and friends gather to recount the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt and deliverance from bondage to freedom. It’s so popular, in fact, that these days more and more of those seated at seder tables are non-Jews. Not only that: An increasing number of churches now offer their own versions of the Passover seder.<\/p>\n
The Passover seder’s embrace by Christians seems an unlikely phenomenon. The Passover haggadah\u201d\u201dthe book that guides the seder service as prescribed by Jewish tradition\u201d\u201dis designed to fulfill the Torah’s commandment that Jews remember and retell the journey from slavery to freedom every year. The haggadah’s reminder is explicit: “If the most holy, blessed be He, had not brought forth our ancestors from Egypt, we, and our children, and children’s children, had still continued in bondage to the Pharaohs in Egypt.” Jews are taught to celebrate each Passover as if they themselves were embarking on that journey from Egypt.<\/p>\n
What makes Christians’ embrace of Passover all the more unusual is that for centuries\u201d\u201deven into the 20th\u201d\u201dthe holiday’s proximity to Good Friday and Easter routinely sparked violent anti-Jewish riots and pogroms, especially in Europe.<\/p>\n