The Hebrew word seder (סֵדֶר) literally means “order” or “arrangement.“ During Passover, it refers to the ritual dinner and service held on the first or second night of the holiday. Jews in Israel observe the seder on one night; Jews outside Israel observe it on two nights. The name highlights that the evening follows a very specific structured sequence of 15 ceremonial steps—including storytelling, symbolic foods, and songs—as laid out in the book called Haggadah (the “telling”). Unlike a typical festive meal, the seder is an orchestrated ceremony that recalls the slavery of the Israelites in Egypt and their journey from slavery to freedom.

The first Passover seder, celebrated in Egypt just before the exodus and described in Exodus 12:1-11, was radically different from the seder observed afterward.

Exodus 12, which describes the Egyptian ceremony, raises many questions. (1) Why does the Torah command that “this month,” the month of the exodus, should be “the first month of the year,” and what connection does this calendar requirement have to Passover? (2) Why did the celebration start on the tenth day of this month, rather than the fourteenth, when the meal was eaten? (3) Why was a lamb of the sheep or goat taken and not an ox? (4) Why did the Torah require that the lamb be consumed at home and not at a holy place or a community area? (5) Why, if the family was too small to eat the entire lamb, does the Torah say that the family should invite neighbors; why not anyone who wants to come? (6) Why does the Torah require that the lamb, which was not a sacrifice to God but a meal for humans, be “without blemish, a male of the first year”? (7) Why roast and not boil the lamb? (8) Why did the people have to kill the lamb on the fourteenth of the month at dusk? (9) Why did the Israelites need to put blood “on the two side-posts and on the lintel, upon the houses”? (10) Why did the people have to eat unleavened bread – the command was given long before the fourteenth, and the people had enough time to bake bread with leaven? (11) Why must they eat maror, “bitter herbs”? (12) Why were they prohibited from leaving any part of the food until morning? (13) Why dress up for the eating “with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand”?

What was the purpose of this meal?

There is one basic question underlying all these thirteen queries. Why eat this meal? Once the purpose of the meal is identified, everything else falls into place.

Exodus 12 follows the narrative of Exodus 11, in which the Israelites are assured that they will soon leave Egyptian servitude. Exodus 12 describes how the Israelites should celebrate this forthcoming freedom. It is not, as most commentators assume, a commemorative event as the post-exodus Passovers came to be, but an anticipatory celebration of what will soon occur. The festivity discussed in Exodus 12 was unique to this year and was not repeated, as it was appropriate only then, not subsequently.

The event must be remembered.

Before describing the festive meal, the Israelites were told that their impending deliverance would be so important and so meaningful that (1) they should recollect it yearly........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)