The feast of Pesach (Passover) is the first of seven biblical feasts in the Jewish religious calendar. It is actually one feast consisting out of three: Pesach, Feast of the Unleavened Bread and Day of the First Fruits. The whole feast takes eight days and begins in the evening of the 14th Nisan with the Seder celebration. The seven following days (always beginning on the eve) are the Feast of the Unleavened Bread. During these days, one day after Shabbat, is the Day of the First Fruits. Click on this picture and read more about the Seder celebration! You'll find complete explanations on each Seder element by clicking on them, This day, Sunday, is the Christian Resurrection Day. "On the first day hold a sacred assembly (this is the Seder celebration) and do no regular work" (Leviticus, 23:7), and "on the seventh day hold a sacred assembly and do no regular work" (verse 8). This is why in Israel the first and last day of Pesach are public holidays. On the last day, there are special prayers given in memory of deceased family members. Together with Shavuot and Sukkot, it is one of the three major festivals where the believers back then pilgrimaged to Jerusalem in order to sacrifice their Pesach lambs in the Temple on Mount Zion. Pesach is the celebration of the redemption from slavery in Egypt, which for Messianic and Christian believers has been fulfilled in Jesus, Yeshua. More and more Christians are joining in the celebrating and have Seder in their churches. Afterwards, they often proceed to a special prayer night, which according to Matthew 26:36-46, is the night in which Yeshua went to the garden praying because of his upcoming crucifixion. The word "Seder" means order and is a carefully choreographed meal that takes place in the home, together with family and often guests. The Seder follows the steps laid out in a book called the Haggadah, which is the narration of the events as described in the book of Exodus. Here you'll find a beautiful complete Haggadah in pdf-form. The celebration consists of three parts: The first one is about the historical happenings in Egypt. The second part is the time for a festive dinner. And the third part is about the future, hope and the ultimate redemption. Like this, the whole celebration can easily take up to three to four hours. It is a feast in which hope, salvation and faith is being restored. According the Haggadah, all participants take small bits of symbolic foods and four glasses of red wine, each of them referring to special Torah readings - Exodus and others, also from the New Testament if it is a Messianic/Christian Seder celebration. Between each reading portion, there is time for prayer and praise & worship songs. Pesach means "pass over", this is why in English this feast is also called Passover. The Seder celebration reminds believers of how, before the people left Egpyt, the Angel of Death spared the firstborn of the Israelites: he passed over the houses of those who had marked their door posts with the blood of a sacrificial lamb, as to Gods instructions. This blood was the sign that saved the Israelites. And this is why an immaculate shank bone of a lamb is used on this special Seder plate. A sacrificial lamb had to be immaculate. And so, at the same time, this immaculate shank bone indicates to Yeshua, the Lamb of God, whom no bone was broken on the cross, as it was habitual in those days: the legs of those crucified were broken to make sure they'd die fast. Yet Yeshua was already dead... Psalm 34:20 says it prophetically, "he (God) protects all his bones, not one of them will be broken." And HIS blood saves for all eternity! According to tradition, the youngest at the table, usually the youngest child of the family who is already understanding, puts four questions that lead to telling the story of the events of the Exodus in an understandable manner, why we are commemorating all of this and what we are hoping for: Jews for their Messiah and Messianic believers for the return of Yeshua Messiah. The plagues that Pharao and Egypt had to endure because they did not listen to God, indicate to the plagues mentioned in the book of Revelation that people will have to endure in the great tribulation of the last days and this is why Messianic believers read corresponding portions of the book of Revelation (chapters 16,19,20). The symbolic foods: Green herbs (karpas, for example parsely) represent the fruits of the earth which God causes to grow each year for us to live. Bitter herbs (maror, for example grated horseradish) remind us of the bitter years, the Isarelits had to endure in Egypt and later also in exile. The salt water (mej melach) stand for the tears the people cried. The shank bone (z'roa) symbolizes the sacrificial lamb. Charoset (deriving from the Hebrew word cheres, meaning clay), which because of its brown-greyish color represents the clay the Israelites had to work into bricks for Pharao's buildings. It is a sweet pebbly mixture consisting of grated apples, nuts, sweet red wine, cinnamon and honey. And ultimatly the egg (beitzah) refers to the circle of life and the sacrifices in the Temple. Three matzot (matzah is the singular form for this unleavened bread) reminds of the fast Exodus: there was no time for the Israelites to let the dough rise. The three pieces lay next to the Seder plate, wrapped in a special linnen cloth, symbolizing Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. According to the Haggadah, four glasses of wine accompany the meal. They are called the "cups of joy" and stand for the promises of God, for He said, "'I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people," Exodus 6:6-7a. The apples used in Charoset remind of the apple trees under which Jewish women bore their children secretly in order to protect them from the Egyptians. The red wine in the mixture symbolizes the blood of the circumcision, the blood of the Pesach sacrifice and finally the blood of the children killed by Pharao. So in general, Charoset symbolizes the fact that life is inseperably bound to death, the same as hope is bound to despair. Nothing sweet is sweet without end. The same goes for each bitterness, symbolized by all other special foods on the Pesach plate: the assurance of a future sweetness - which Charoset is marking at Pesach (as found in the German version of Wikipedia). The Seder celebration ends with the mutual call, "Next year in Jerusalem!" Already before the Pesach celebration, all houses are being cleansed from all that is leavened. This is what God had instructed the Israelites in Exodus 12:15, "For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove the yeast from your houses". Leavened dough is a sourdough, which also symbolizes sin, whose effect causes us to become prideful - sour. And so Paul explains to the Corinthians, "Your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed," 1. Corinthians 5:6-7. This why the celebration is often preceded by a big house cleaning! Matzah is a crispy flatbread made only by white plain flour and water. This is the same bread that Yeshua broke at the Seder celebration, during which He introduced the Lord's Supper and the New Covenant. In Mark 14:12 we read, "On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when it was customary to sacrifice the Passover lamb, Jesus' disciples asked him, Where do you want us to go and make preparations for you to eat the Passover?" We can clearly see from that question that the Seder celebration was a normal thing to do for Yeshua. In the following verses until vers 26, we see part of how He and His disciples celebrated. In its course we learn that Yeshua knew perfectly well that He will be betrayed and how He introduced the Lord's Supper. In Luke 22:14-16, a wonderful statement of Yeshua is recorded, "When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. And he said to them, I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfilment in the kingdom of God." This tells me clearly that the celebration of Pesach did not stop, but will be continued symbolically and also that it will continue throughout the Messianic Age, the Millenium, after Yeshua has returend. With His death, He fulfilled the Pesach celebration, for HE as the Lamb of God bore our sins for once and forever (Isaiah 53; John 1:29.35.36)! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Until the First Council of Constantinople (the Council of Nicaea) in 325, both Pesach and Yeshuas's death and resurrection were celebrated together. Yet in that council they were both seperated by Emperor Constantine in order to seperate from the Jews. Everything which came close to whatever Jewish, was prohibited. Like this, the three feasts became "Easter", which has a mythological reference to spring goddess Ostara. She is being associated with the Teutonic/ Germanc/Anglo-Saxon godhead "Ēastre". Whether this is really so or not, remains to be seen. Yet it is a fact that Yeshua's resurrection was taken out of context. We have to get aware of it and also look closely at the other traditional Christian feasts under this aspect.