Passover is a Jewish holiday celebrating the exodus of Jewish slaves from Egypt. The Seder meal includes four symbolic questions, including eating unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Jews lean back while eating to symbolize freedom. The fourth question used to refer to sacrificing an animal for Passover.
Passover, Pesach in Hebrew, is the holiday that focuses on the exodus of Jewish slaves from Egypt around 1313 BC or 2448 in the morning on the Jewish calendar. The story of this exodus is covered in the first chapters of Exodus in the Old Testament of the Bible or Torah. Passover is a seven to eight day holiday that is generally considered to be the most celebrated holiday among Jews.
In celebrating Easter, the number four has symbolic meaning. It’s the number of glasses of wine one should drink at the Seder, the ritual meal held on the first and second nights of Passover, it’s the number of different personality types in the story of the Four Sons, and it’s the number of questions asked aloud the youngest child, usually the youngest child. The four Passover questions, known as Mah Nishtanah in Hebrew, are actually sub-questions of a general question: Why is this night different from all other nights?
The Book of Passover, or Haggadah in Hebrew, emphasizes the importance of the Seder and defines it as a performance that should arouse the interest of children so as to encourage them to ask questions and learn about their story. For this reason, the four Passover questions are asked each Passover at the Seder table.
The first of the four Easter questions is: why do we eat bread or unleavened bread on all other nights, but this night we eat only unleavened bread?
Matzoh is essentially unleavened bread. Jews eat matzoh on Passover as a reminder that when the Jews who were enslaved by Pharaoh were leaving Egypt, they did not have time to properly bake bread for their journey. Rather, they took raw pasta during their exodus and placed it under the hot desert sun. The resulting product was an unleavened bread known as matzoh. We eat for symbolic reasons, because it removes excess, such as pride, from the soul.
The second of the four Easter questions is why on all other nights we eat all kinds of herbs, but on this night we eat only bitter herbs?
Bitter herbs, maror in Hebrew, are eaten at Passover not because it is what fleeing Jews ate, but because of its symbolism. Typically, horseradish and romaine lettuce, endive or dandelion serve as maror. The bitterness of the herbs symbolizes the bitter and cruel way in which the pharaoh treated the enslaved Jews.
The third of the four Easter questions is: why on all other nights we do not dip our herbs, but on this night dip them twice?
At Easter, celebrants dip parsley or green vegetables in salted water and maror in charoset, a blend of fruit, nuts, and wine, typically apples, walnuts, sweet red wine, and cinnamon or ginger. These two combinations are the two dives. It is not that each object is immersed twice in succession, but that two different things are immersed. In the first dip, the salt water is symbolic of the tears of the Jewish slaves. The second dip symbolizes the sweetening (the charoset) the weight of the bitterness (the maror). Charoset, due to its brown, pebbly appearance, is said to resemble the clay that Jewish slaves used to build the buildings of the pharaoh.
The fourth of the four Easter questions is: why do we eat sitting down all other evenings, but this evening we eat lying down?
At Passover, Jews usually lean back on a pillow while eating. The wealthy and free were usually the only ones who could eat while lying down, and doing so at the Seder table was meant to symbolize the freedom and comfort of the modern Jew.
The fourth matter of Passover is said to have changed around AD 70 when the Second Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans. Before that, the fourth Easter question referred to the practice of sacrificing an animal, typically a lamb, for Passover. The sacrificial practice was abandoned around the time of the destruction of the Second Temple and the current fourth question relating to reclining replaced it.
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