THE PASSOVER.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 216, 15 June 1877, Page 9

THE PASSOVER.

Easter-tide is preceded by a still older celebration, the .Feast of Passover. To-day ia the 15th of the month Nisan and the first day of the Passover. Last night was the night of the Paschal supper, and by many Jews the ceremony of eating that meal with prayer and blessing will be gone through again to-night. Coming thus on the eve of Good Friday, the service would precisely coincide, in its relation to the days of the week, with the Last Supper. The word " Paschal" is an adaptation of the Hebrew word " Pesach" (" He spared"), used in Exodus, and still employed by the modern Jews to denote this festival and its characteristic sacrifice of the Paschal lamb. The Paschal lamb is so integral a part of the institution that, although sacrifices in the Jewish Church have long since been abolished, the roasted shank-bone of the shoulder o? lamb is still placed upon every table where they celebrate the Pasa« over, to commemorate the slaying of the lamb which the children of Israel in Egypt ate roast with fire, with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs, and in haste, having sprinkled the blood with a bunch of hyssop upon the lintel and side-posts of the door, so that the Lord might pass over or spare them when he smote the firstborn of the Egyptians in the night before the journey to Succotb, The first-born children fast on the day before Passover in memory of their special preservation. Bitter herbs are still eaten, but the austerity of the ritual has been mitigated by its being permitted to disguise the flavour of the worst of these herbs in an agreeable mixture of cinnamon, almonds, apple, &c., which has much per* plexed some of the book-learned commentators, and is commonly supposed to represent the bricks and mortar wherewith the souls of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt were vexed. The modern Passovet evenings are times of family reunion, when the meanest Hebre-w servant sits at table with his employers. The prayers and the recital of the history of the festival are followed by feasting and jollity. The children receive each a little piece of unleavened cake to save till next Passover, when their abstinence is rewarded by a. small gratuity on the deposit being produced. A cup of wine is set apart for Elijah the Prophet. The evening concludes with joyous hymns and psalms, and with the ejaculation, not always quite sincere, " May we celebrate the Passover next year in Jerusalem !" Unleavened bread is eaten during the week which follows, and the first day and the last are solemn festivals. An extia day is added by many to each of these. The Passover is not merely a. national festival to commemorate the exodus ; it is also an agricultural feast marking the gathering of the first of the fruits of the earth. The daily offering of a sheaf, or Omer, began in Passover, and continued for 50 days till Pentecost was reached. It was a busy period for an agricultural community, and the modern Jews, though till recent times they have been in most countries forbidden to hold land and engage in rural pursuits, still preserve the memory of the great preoccupations of the season by contracting no marriages during those 50 days of the Omer, except on one day (the 33rd) interposed as a holyday. Passover is also a festival of the full moon. It comes in the middle of the month Nisan, when the orb of the moon has attained its largest, and not yet begun to wane, for the Hebrew months really coincide with the changes of the moon. "The Easter full moon," Dean Stanley observes, " which has so long regulated the calendars of the Christian world, is, one may say, the lineal successor of the bright moonlight which shed its rays over the palm-groves of Egypt on the 15th night of the month Kisan."— Home Paper.