Our Passover Seder

We decided to celebrate the beginning of Passover this year with a real Passover Seder. The girls had noticed on the calendar that it was the beginning of Passover and they asked me what that meant, so as memories of Mrs. Weinstock bringing a seder plate to my third-grade class flooded my brain I decided I'd try to do one myself. With a lot of help from Google I think we managed pretty well for our first time!

To start with you are supposed to set your table with your best china. I left all my china, good and bad, in the states so we didn't have that option. Instead I let the girls pick out their favorite placemats and napkins and we used our "special" glasses. (They aren't really that special, they just aren't the ones we normally use). A seder is a Jewish tradition that is "both a retelling and a reliving of their ancestors exodus from slavery in Egypt more than 3,000 years ago." (from eHow) A key part of the Passover Seder is the Seder Plate. Here's ours:
The plate contains Charoset - a mixture of apples, nuts, wine and spices. That is in the big bowl and is actually quite yummy. It is symbolic of the mortar the Jewish slaves made for the Egyptians. There is also supposed to be Zeroa on the plate (a shankbone) but I couldn't find one that morning at our local grocery store so we just talked about how it symbolized the mighty arm of God in delivering the Jews from slavery. The Baytzah is a hard-boiled egg to represent mourning for the loss of the two temples. The Karpas is the potato that you dip into salt water to remind you of the tears shed by the Jews in slavery. The Maror is meant to be a bitter herb, we used horseradish, to represent the bitter life of the Israelites during their enslavement. The Chazeret is a bitter vegetable (we used lettuce, it's a stretch but the best I could do). The crackers in the bowl represent Matzah as our store didn't have that either.
I used the instructions on EHow to lead us through the evening's ceremony. In reality a seder is meant to take hours and be shared with friends, but we rushed ours a bit and basically just got the general idea. We did read the Scripture accounts but there are also supposed to be lots of blessings and since I hadn't researched enough to know exactly what they were we just said some of our own. We were also all meant to drink four glasses of wine throughout the meal. Dugald and I found that rather daunting so we opted for three half-glasses and still felt a bit over our limit. The girls drank all four of their kiddie-wine glasses (grape juice).
We finished the evening with psalms and blessings and decided that we'd try it again next year - maybe with friends and a little more research!!