This is the Forward’s coverage of the Jewish holiday of Passover, also called Pesach.
Passover
The Latest
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Food The Oldest Matzo Maker in France
wikicommons (JTA) — For most Jews, matzah season comes once a year. But for Jean-Claude Neymann, matzah, or “pain azyme” in French, is a defining family tradition. Neymann runs the oldest matzah bakery in France, located in the town of Wasselonne near the German border. The family company, Etablissements Rene Neymann, traces its matzah-making tradition…
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Life Pesach Prep Is a Marathon for Hasidic Women
Thinkstock It’s that time of year — the time I expect the smell of Murphy’s Oil Soap and chlorine to waft through the windows of every home. It’s my favorite time of the year, too, from my earliest memories. No, I’m not referring to spring and the anticipation of warm weather, but to Pesach —…
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Opinion Finding My Family’s Kabbalistic Roots in India
“What are you doing?” I asked my grandmother. Sitting across the table from her at last year’s family Passover Seder, I had been watching with rapt attention as she peeled an egg — a commonly featured food on the Seder plate. She was handling it with a degree of carefulness that bordered on the neurotic,…
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Opinion Queer Passover Seder Helped Me Reclaim Judaism
An alternative Seder plate holds a coconut, representing closeted LGBTQ youth. / JQ International At the time, it didn’t occur to me to be offended or concerned that I was being circled by the cheerleaders and other popular girls who held hands, bowed their heads and prayed for my soul. They were part of “Christian…
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Opinion The Irony of Celebrating Passover in Egypt
An Egyptian policeman in front of the Shaar Hashamayim Synagogue in Cairo, Egypt. / Haaretz In early April 2012, two friends and I visited the Shaar Hashamayim Synagogue in downtown Cairo to observe the first night of Passover in Egypt. The irony was too obvious to point out, and so we didn’t. When we arrived,…
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Fast Forward Western Wall Is Cleaned of Notes Before Passover Starts
The Western Wall was cleared of notes in advance of Passover. Workers used sticks Sunday to remove the hundreds of thousands of prayers and requests written on slips of paper that worshippers stuff into the cracks between the wall’s stones. The papers will be buried out of respect for their contents. The Western Wall also…
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News Passover-Minded Synagogue Prepares To Sweep All Hametz From Its Inboxes
It happens every year, around this time. Jews start to wage war against hametz, or leavened food, by scouring cupboards and countertops, turning pockets inside out, dusting off books one page at a time — anything to rid the house of the offending particles before Passover. Now, a New York synagogue has taken this cleansing…
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Culture The Most Beautiful Haggadah in the Room
Tens of thousands of copies of “The Szyk Haggadah” have been read at Passover Seders around the world; but the original pages of the book, hand-lettered and hand-painted in the 1930s, have not been shown in public for 60 years. Now all 48 watercolors and gouaches created by a brilliant Polish-born illustrator can be seen…
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