연락처 : AJ 이메일 : damian.sladen@hotmail.co.uk

In the Hebrew month of Nissan, Jews around the world are busy ridding themselves of bread. They search pantries, sweep out crannies, scrub plates that once held a sandwich. What they find, they burn or give away; what they may have missed, they pray forgiveness for. It's all in preparation for the matzo days of Passover which begins on the 15th of Nissan (based on the Jewish calendar; it falls sometime in March or April based on the Gregorian calendar) when the observant avoid any and all leavened grains, among several other groups of foods. And like almost any Jewish holiday, it's also weighted with food - in this case, food with very specific significance, eaten in the course of a particularly long, theatrical and educational meal: the Passover Seder. The story retold during the Seder is a classic one: slavery and freedom, heroes and villains, unheeded warnings and horrific wrath.

Most people know about the wrath - the 10 plagues said to have turned ancient Egypt into a living nightmare. Those plagues, along with the myriad other miracles that supposedly led to freedom for hundreds of thousands of Jews, inform the holiday's rituals. Either way, like so much of the Hebrew bible, the story behind Passover is a dramatic one, to say the least. To cut their numbers, Pharaoh orders the killing of every newborn Jewish male in the land. He becomes a shepherd, and he lives quietly until the day he murders an Egyptian man he finds abusing a Jewish slave. Suddenly a fugitive, despondent, he turns to God. God, hearing his call, reveals himself to Moses in a burning bush. When Pharaoh refuses, Moses warns him of what will come. 1. The Nile River, Egypt's prime water supply, turns to blood. 2. Frogs rain down from the sky. 3. Dust turns into lice, infesting every Egyptian and animal in Pharaoh's kingdom.