Passover Meal Research Articles

There are no winners in the repetition of trauma

Israel is in trouble again. Its extreme response to the ships seeking to bring humanitarian aid to Gaza has aroused wrath and international protest. The pictures of the Israeli soldiers boarding the boats and the accounts of terror, mayhem and fear have awakened a world that seemed to be dozing through the everyday plight of those living in Gaza. Although we await an investigation, Israel appears the aggressor and the incorrigible tyrant, yet again. For me, Jewish by birth but a non-religious member of the so called Diaspora, it conjures forth my late childhood - incompletely formed and simplistic adolescent paradigms and memories. I grew up in the hothouse environment of Melbourne Holocaust Survivors. Many of those who visited my parents’ Elwood home had been in the camps, hidden, or had lost family in the Holocaust. As my therapist would later explain to me. “They were all holocausted.” Now I work as a therapist to those who have suffered trauma. The thunderous stentorian thrilling voice of Charlton Heston, in the epic film, The Ten Commandments, would brook no dissent. “Let my people go!” The screen images of the parting of the seas, the plagues, pestilence and the infant Moses set adrift on the River Nile, suffused my images of the Passover story with its promise of salvation and freedom for an enslaved people. Passover, the memorial to this emancipation, was the celebration at which the stranger at your door was welcomed and invited to dine and join the celebration of freedom from oppression. The youngest child was to question the elders regarding the meaning of the Passover meal. Now we are all driven to question yet again the meaning of gaining the so-called promised land. The two most important “religious” experiences in my Jewish childhood were the Passover celebration and the shadow of the Holocaust. Passover brought expressions of joy and hope surrounded by relatives who had survived the dark shadow of the Holocaust. These two themes were in constant juxtaposition - on the one hand survival and on the other annihilation. Freud postulated that traumatized people are driven to repeat their experiences of victimization (van der Volk, 1989, para. 29). He thought that the aim of repetition was to gain mastery, but clinical experience has shown that this rarely happens: instead, repetition causes further suffering for the victims or for people in their surroundings. In my practice I encounter this repetition phenomenon time and time again. Abused and neglected children revisit and re-enact abusive and depriving situations in their adult lives. Another response may be that the victim becomes the abuser, thereby exchanging the powerless position of the helpless sufferer for the mastery and potency of the perpetrator. Controversially therapist Bruno Bettleheim, himself a nazi camp inmate, observed the phenomenon he termed “identification with the aggressor” amongst the prisoners (Grotjahn, 1945, para 2). These prisoners adopted the stance and mannerisms of the more powerful prison guards. It was a survival strategy. The ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine could be seen as one that repeats the traumatic holocaust experience of the Jewish people in Israel as both perpetrator and victim. The situation for the people in Gaza casts a shadow as long as the Nazi Holocaust. In

Where Jewish Scholars on Jesus Go Awry: Last Supper, Sanhedrin, Blasphemy, Barabbas

Is there a propensity by Jewish scholars to misconstrue as actual history Gospel "facts" that are purely fictional? Jewish studies on the historical Jesus need to give due regard to the operation of "gospel dynamics": those skillful techniques by which early Christians reconceptualized Jesus' image to resolve theological and political challenges not from Jesus' ministry but instead from the Evangelists' later day. Four "favorite" topics of Jewish scholars serve as apt prisms for revealing such underlying dynamics: Jesus' Last Supper as a Passover meal, his Sanhedrin trial, his "blasphemy" verdict, and his pairing with Barabbas.

Passover and the First Day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread in the Priestly Festival Calendar

The uncertainties in the Old Testament festival calendars regarding the exact relationship between passover and the festival of unleavened bread mirror the historical processes in which the two were merged, distinguished and subsequently merged again. The regulations preserved in Deut. xvi 1-8 stipulate a seven day festival starting with a passover meal consumed with unleavened bread in the evening of the first day. In Ez. xlv 18-25 and the priestly festival calendar (Ex. xii 1-13; Lev. xxiii 5-8) passover was separated from the seven day festival of unleavened bread and celebrated with a nocturnal meal on the previous day. The subsequent adoption of the Babylonian custom to reckon the day from sunset to sunset entailed that the nocturnal passover meal again overlapped with the start of the following festival and unleavened bread returned on the menu of the passover meal (Ex. xii 8).

The Hebrew Novel in Czarist Russia, A Portrait of Jewish Life in the Nineteenth Century (review)

Hebrew Studies 44 (2003) 284 Reviews Synoptic picture to the influence of James, who was concerned that the law confining the Passover meal to the circumcised (Exod 12:43~9) should be maintained. The implication is that those who held the eucharist outside the Passover meal, and celebrated it in the context of a simple agape, were truer to its origins. But the claim that any of the Synoptic Gospels, except perhaps Matthew, was written under such strong Jewish-Christian influence is hard to accept, and, if Acts is right, it was not James himself, but certain wayward associates of his, that insisted on circumcision. The author favors the adventurous hypothesis that Epiphany goes back to the second or first century (p. 105), though as a festival of the nativity, it cannot really be traced before the fourth; but he does not seem to commit himself on the question of the origin of Easter, beyond throwing doubt on Eusebius's statement that Quartodecimanism was more or less confined to the province of Asia (p. 82). He seems to believe that Quartodecimanism goes back to the Jewish-Christian practice of James, but since he holds that this was a distortion, one wonders what origin he assigns to the Easter observed in the rest of Christendom? Was it a derivative of Quartodecimanism, as many have maintained, or did it have a separate origin? And if the latter, did it arise in New Testament times, or later, when evidence for it first appears? The reviewer has discussed these questions himself, but in a book which the author does not mention, Calendar alld Chronology, lewish and Christian (Brill, 1996). It is also a pity that he did not have access to Sacha Stern's Calendar and Community (Oxford, 200 I), but that perhaps appeared too late for his purposes. The reviewer has noticed a few slips. Leviticus does not prohibit the marriage of cousins (p. 76). The Jewish weekly fasts were on Monday and Thursday, not Tuesday and Thursday (p. 104). It was not the Julian calendar but the old Roman calendar that had its new year in the spring (p. 106). Roger T. Beckwith Liturgy Lecturer at Tyndale Hall, Bristol and Wycliffe Hall, Oxford Oxford, OX2 TNR England THE HEBREW NOVEL IN CZARIST RUSSIA, A PORTRAIT OF JEWISH LIFE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. By David Patterson. Pp xiv + 319. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999. Cloth, $55.00. Paper, $21.95. The first printing of The Hebrew Novel ill Czarist Russia was published in 1964 as number thirteen in the Language and Literature series of Edinburgh University Press. Shortly after its publication, one half of the edition was destroyed in a warehouse fire, and thus the volume was out of print for Hebrew Studies 44 (2003) 285 Reviews almost three decades. The new printing (with the new subtitle: "A Portrait of Jewish Life in the Nineteenth Century") includes a selected bibliography of books dealing with the Haskalah that were published since the first publication of this work. David Patterson examines in this book the Hebrew novel in the two decades following the death in 1867 of the first Hebrew novelist, Abraham Mapu (to whom Patterson had already devoted a monograph). The twenty years covered by this study roughly correspond with the final stage of the Hebrew movement of Enlightenment known as Haskalah. Yet, the eighteen novels discussed in this study (almost the total number of novels published at this period) reflect not only the last period of the Haskalah, but also demonstrate the goals of the movement from its inception, its successes and failures. Ten of the novels are by major writers, known to anyone who studied the literature of the Haskalah, such as P. Smolenskin, R. A. Braudes, S. 1. Abramowitz, and A. S. Rabinowitz, while the other eight are by minor authors, some of them completely forgotten, such as J. Leinwand, B. 1 Zobeizensky, and I. J. Sirkis. One of these minor figures is a female writer, Sarah Faige Meinkin. Unfortunately, Patterson was not able to locate even the most elementary biographical information, beyond the fact that she was born in Riga and spent a number of years in Dvinsk during her...

Passover and Last Supper

The Synoptic Gospels present the Last Supper as a Passover meal. Whether this coincided with the actual Passover or, as some suggest, was held a day early, it was viewed by the participants as a Passover meal, and the words and actions of Jesus, including the institution of the Lord’s Supper, would have been understood within that context. In order to better appreciate the significance of what happened at the Last Supper, this article looks at the form that the Passover celebration is likely to have taken at the time of Jesus, and notes links with the meal Jesus shared with his disciples.

Il pasto del Signore, alla mensa del Signore

In this essay I have investigate again the most important traditions on “the Last Supper” (or the Eucharist) in the New Testament (Jn 6,51c-58; 1Cor 11,17-34; Mk 14,22-25; Lk 22,14-20; Acts 2,42-47 and 20,7-11). The purpose is to answer some open questions, especially (a) the relationship between the Eucharist and communal meal, and (b) between the Eucharist and Passover meal; further, (c) the Eucharist and pardon of sins, (d) conditions of participation. Concerning the first two questions, I show that there is a clear distinction between what we call the Eucharist and the “conditions” of its institution, i.e., the Last Supper, which was a real meal (1Cor 11,25) or a Passover meal (Mk 14,12 and Lk 22,15). Concerning the third question, I suggest that pardon of sins is implied in the celebration of the Eucharist that is the memorial of the death of Christ, the Lord (1Cor 11,26), who died for our sins (1Cor 15,3c). Concerning the fourth question, the most sensitive one, I try to show that, even if the Eucharist is for the forgiveness of sins, public sinners are excluded by implication (cf. 1Cor 5,9-13).

Deuteronomy's Unification of Passover and Massot: A Response to Bernard M. Levinson

Deuteronomy's distinctive treatment of ancient Israelite institutions of Passover and feast of Unleavened Bread, or Mass6t, is well established.' In common with sacrifices and offerings in general, Passover and great pilgrimage feasts are located at central sanctuary, the place that LORD will choose as a dwelling for his name (16:8 NRSV). In case of Passover, this requirement is particularly striking. It comes with a prohibition of local celebration of feast (16:5) that is in stark contrast with location of it in homes of Israel in prescriptions in book of Exodus (Exod 12:7, 22, 46), even though it is there a perpetual ordinance for and your children (Exod 12:24). Other Deuteronomic departures from requirements found in Exodus include permission to take Passover sacrifice from the flock and herd (16:2), instead of only from flock (Exod 12:3, 21), and instruction to boil it (16:7) rather than roast it (Exod 12:9). Furthermore, Deuteronomy forges Passover and Ma6*ot into a single entity in a way that is not clearly case in older provisions, giving rise to widely held view that Deuteronomy combines two originally separate celebrations for first time. Fundamental to this understanding is absence of Passover from earliest code, Exod 23:14-19, where v. 18 is presumed to contain general restrictions of sacrificial and festal practice rather than an allusion to Passover, and Exod 34:25 is thought to revise older code in conformity with Deuteronomy.2 The centralization and amalgamation of feasts are typically placed in context of Deuteronomic promotion of King Josiah's centralization of cult in Jerusalem. Bernard M. Levinson accepts above reconstruction in broad outline and has given it new force with a thesis that characterizes Deuteronomic law as deliberate and radical innovation, both transforming and aiming to replace previous legislation. The present paper is a response to Levinson, who has criticized earlier work of my own on topic.3 While I agree with many points of his analysis, I think thesis as a whole has serious problems, and I wish to propose an alternative way of handling data. Levinson contributes to interpretation of Deut 16:1-17 in two distinct ways. The first is hermeneutical, in accordance with declared aim of his thesis. Much previous scholarly analysis of text has discovered separate literary strands united in Deut 16:1-8, deriving from sources relating to Passover and Ma$@ot respectively.4 Levinson, in contrast, proposes a deliberate, creative composition, in which previous laws are exploited for their deposit of words, phrases, and concepts, but only so as to produce a novum, which entirely supersedes those laws.5 The interpreter of Deuteronomic law, therefore, cannot be content just to observe which elements of discourse derive from each source, but must understand why they are arranged as they are. For example, lemmata formerly applied to Mascot are now applied to Passover.6 The command in v. 1 opens with Observe month of Abib, taking verbal form from command concerning Mascot in Exod 23:15, but continues with by keeping passover for LORD your God (NRSV). Similarly, allusion to exodus from Egypt is attached to Ma.@ot in Exod 23:15 and 13:4, but is here applied to Passover (Deut 16:1). The phrases you must not eat with it anything unleavened. For seven days shall eat unleavened bread with it (r'w) (16:3a) turn around Exod 23:18: you shall not offer blood of my sacrifice with (5.) anything leavened, forcing a connection between eating unleavened bread and Passover meal. And command not to leave the fat of my festival till morning (Exod 23:18) is explained so that what must not remain overnight is the meat that slaughter on evening of first day (16:4). …

Passover

To those who reenact the drama, the Passover narrative and ritual mediate the experience of both oppression and liberation. The Passover ritual provides an “order” by which the reality of suffering may be confronted and the earnest of hope celebrated. The sacred time of the Passover meal provides a rich spiritual heritage that nurtures not only Jews but also Christians.

Bread and Wine

The Christian practice of meeting for worship and receiving token pieces of bread and token sips of wine seems unlikely to have had Jewish precedents. You don't eat in a synagogue; you eat at home. To be sure, specific acts of eating bread and drinking wine are given religious significance in the setting of the Passover meal, but that is not quite the same, although perhaps we might suppose the Christian practice to have evolved from the Jewish meal.

Ordeal Procedures in the Psalms and the Passover Meal

Ordeal Procedures in the Psalms and the Passover Meal

The Bitter Herbs of Seder: More on Horseradish Horrors

<h3>To the Editor.</h3> —In a recent letter, Dr Spitzer¹described syncope after the ingestion of a large amount of wasabe (a Japanese horseradish preparation commonly served with sushi). We report a similar episode at a Jewish Passover Seder. The Seder is a traditional Passover meal involving a series of ceremonial rituals, among them eating "bitter herbs" to commemorate the bitterness of Jewish slavery in ancient Egypt. Raw horseradish is commonly used for this purpose. <h3>Report of a Case.</h3> —A 55-year-old hypertensive man, who was being treated with a thiazide diuretic, conducted his family's Passover Seder. One of the bitter herbs was ground horseradish that had been prepared in an electric food processor earlier in the day and placed in an airtight container. The family had neglected to follow its custom of uncovering the horseradish before the Seder. In the usual Orthodox fashion, the man consumed the bitter herb after

A survey of celiac-sprue patients: effect of dietary restrictions on religious practices.

Celiac-Sprue Disease, also referred to as Non-Tropical Sprue, is a dietary disease. Celiac-Sprue patients were asked to complete a questionnaire regarding the effect of dietary restrictions on participation in the Passover meal and reception of Communion. A pilot study suggested that subjects made changes in their religious practices because of dietary restrictions. A second, more detailed survey, was performed in which 58 subjects participated and 14 religions were represented. The results indicated that many subjects made changes in their religious practices (p less than .01), made changes on their own initiative (p less than .01), or violated diet prescribed for the disease under the religious setting versus other settings (p less than .05).

Ordeal Procedures in the Psalms and the Passover Meal

One of the most interesting aspects of ancient Near Eastern jurisdiction is probably the ordeal. In the latter practice two spheres of action intersect, the realm of the sacred taking over where secular means fall short. Many a case of litigation was above the competence of the human judges and had therefore to be referred to the heavenly court for a final verdict. In ancient Israel, too, resort was sometimes had to trial by ordeal. Yet although the Old Testament contains unambiguous references to various ordeal procedures,1 their historical distribution and the concrete shape that they took remain uncertain. In the present article I shall seek to dissipate some of these uncertainties. In so doing I have a special interest in the cultic setting of the ordeal. That is why the so-called Psalms of the Accused will be the starting-point of my investigation. Once their historical Sitz im Leben has been determined, I believe that it can be convincingly argued that the conceptual framework of the ordeal has left its imprint on analogous religious rites as well.

The Eucharistic Words of Jesus

Dr Jeremias argues that the historical truth can be detected beneath the traditions preserved in the New Testament about the Last Supper. It was a climax of a series of Messianic meals, this time a passover meal. Jesus himself abstained, in anticipation of the new Exodus, to be initiated by the breaking of his body and the outpouring of his blood, but at it the disciples received a share in the atoning power of their Lord's sufferings.

The Time of the Passover Meal

The Time of the Passover Meal