This is the Forward’s coverage of the Jewish holiday of Passover, also called Pesach.
Passover
The Latest
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Opinion A Statement on Your Seder Plate
Passover always feels both repetitious and fresh. Every year we are asked to tell the story of enslavement and redemption anew, asked to go through the same motions, dip our fingers in the wine again the same number of times. But there is another imperative — not just to remember our own historic moment of…
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Food Fair Trade Chocolate You CAN Eat on Passover
SHEHECHIYANU! We can finally eat chocolate on Passover that’s been certified to not have been made with trafficked child labor! Fair Trade Judaica received word from Rabbi Aaron Alexander, Associate Dean, Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the American Jewish University, that “Equal Exchange pareve chocolates (the 3.5 oz. or 100 g line and dark…
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Opinion An Orange on Plate for Women — And Spit Out Seeds of Hate
Passover was high drama in my childhood. Preparations began weeks in advance, with meticulous scrubbing, shopping and organizing. Strong emotions came out in the days before the holiday, when every crumb of hametz had to be removed, and we had to tread very carefully. One mistake could bring calamity. When we finally sat down for…
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News Welcoming Elijah in the Age of Guns and Newtown
For many years — centuries —Passover was the scariest time of the year for Jews because it more or less coincides with Easter. “That’s the time when people would do their Passion plays,” writer and rabbi Abby Sosland said. Those gruesome re-enactments of the Crucifixion did not exactly enhance Christian-Jewish relations, and Sosland said, “There…
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The Schmooze 7 Actors for ‘Ten Commandments’ Remake
At Passover-time, only one thing is as constant as the dry taste of matzo: the inevitable reruns of “The Ten Commandments.” While I have tremendous respect for the immovable classic, and Charlton Heston (or Old Stoneface, as he’s affectionately known in my family), 56 years is a good long run. It’s time for a change….
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News Passover Is Time for Gluten-Free Gluttony
Drawing on her last reserves of energy, Merilyn Papernick, a terminal cancer patient, reached out to some local Hasidic Jews in her hometown of Toronto to place a special Passover order: Could they get her gluten-free oat matzo for the upcoming holiday? Papernick, who was 65, suffered from celiac disease, a digestive illness that prevented…
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Food A South African Seder, Inspired by Lithuanian Roots
In the 1920s, when Esther Perkel was a young girl living in South Africa, she and her family traveled by tram and rickshaw to the Newtown Market in Johannesburg to buy bushels of fresh grapes grown in the vineyards around the Cape of Good Hope. Her family carted the grapes home shortly after Purim, where…
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Opinion Welcome, Kitniyot
A few weeks before the first Seder, the Orthodox Union announced a new symbol of authorization for Passover products: OU Kitniyot. This has more than culinary significance. It can be seen as a welcome step in diminishing the divisions within the Jewish people. Kitniyot are one of the main dividing lines. Sephardic Jews will consume…
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Fast Forward Father and son suspects in Bondi Beach Hanukkah attack identified as Sajid and Naveed Akram by law enforcement
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