The speaker for the event was a man named Daniel Rona, who is a Jewish convert to Mormonism. His parents were Jews who fled to Israel from the Holocaust. Both of his paternal grandparents were killed at Auschwitz. When Daniel was 5, his parents divorced and he moved to New York with his father. While there, he went to a former synagogue that had become a LDS chapel and was impressed by the message of living prophets. He was converted and moved to Salt Lake and was involved in broadcasting before eventually moving with his family to Israel. He was not provided the usual financial assistance given to new Jewish immigrants and became a painter to provide for his family. Eventually, he was granted citizenship.
While living as a painter, he noticed that many Mormons came to the Holy Land, but were disappointed by the tours, as most of the guides are not at all religious. To meet this need, Daniel became the only licensed LDS tour guide for the Holy Land. His son has also become licensed now, which has given Daniel and his wife the opportunity to become missionaries working with the Church History Department now. Our Bishop's mom is Liz Lemon Swindle, and he met Daniel through her. Their connection allowed him to arrange for this Passover feast for our ward.
I've heard of various groups celebrating Passover in college and such before, but have never had the opportunity to go myself, though I've always been interested in it. Our experience wasn't super authentic in a lot of ways to what the Jews actually do, considering even the simple fact that the Passover is apparently a 6 hour affair, but it was still very enlightening. Elder Rona basically treated it as an educational presentation, taking time to make observations and explanations of different elements of the tradition that wouldn't have been required for Jews, of course. I won't recount everything, but will instead focus on elements that I found particularly interesting.
The Jews use a lunar calendar, and Passover falls on the first full moon after the first day of Spring.A lot of preparation goes into the Passover for Jews. There are steps like cleaning out all the leavened items in the household that take place ritually in the days leading up to the feast. For the Passover, many make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where they are housed for the feast free of charge by the locals. The visitors will then give the gift of the skin of the animal they offer as a sacrifice to their host, who then will use the skin to make scriptures.
He explained the significance of the seating arrangement to us. The arrangement places the youngest son of the family on the right hand of the master of the feast, which is typically the eldest male of the house. Part of the ceremony has the youngest son open the door to permit Elijah to return for the feast. Elijah's chair is situated directly opposite where the master and youngest son sit, a reminder of his mission to return to turn the heart's of the fathers and children to each other. Elder Rona also talked about how Elijah did actually return on the Passover, but he returned to give the keys to Joseph Smith at Kirtland. The table at the Passover is meant to represent the altar upon which the family is to place their offering their sacrifice to God. The Seder represents a feast at the altar of the Lord.
The early parts of the Passover feast refer to Joseph of Egypt, the bondage, and first Passover in Egypt. One of the points Elder Rona brought up was that in the Torah, there are only about 9,000 separate Hebrew words, so many words do at least double-duty. One such word is "obed", which means both slave and servant. Elder Rona made the observation that the main difference between slavery and serving is mental attitude. In keeping God's commandments, we can either choose to think of doing His will as a sort of miserable slavery or a faithful service. Our attitude will determine our ultimate success or failure in the end.
During the Seder, parts of the accounts of Moses are read, and various actions are associated with the account. For instance, matza(unleavened bread) is eaten with the bitter herb in reminder of the bitterness of captivity. We had horseradish for our bitter herb, and that truly was quite disgusting! As the account of the plagues was read, we would dip our finger in our "wine" (grape juice) after each plague in token of the refreshment and protection that the Children of Israel received from the scourges.
When the account of the final plague is read, the lamb and egg (representing death and life) are removed from the table in token of the sacrifice of the Lamb that was made. A full cup of wine is drunk, which Elder Rona related to Christ drinking the dregs of the bitter cup. The lamb is then brought back and the family feasts on the lamb, matza, etc. together. During the eating, the elders of the family traditionally tell stories of their own family. I thought it interesting how cultural heritage and family heritage are connected in this celebration.
The last part we covered was the exodus. According to Elder Rona, there were about 2 million Israelites who left Egypt. That really is a pretty impressive amount of people. It makes you wonder how the Egyptians were able to prevent a major uprising from such a large group! To commemorate the exodus, we were supposed to eat a piece of matza dipped in fruit, representing the sweetness of freedom and deliverance. Our fruit was a kind of cobblery mixture. They had set it up such that there three people sharing the traditional food and then they gave us all our own chicken soup and salad for the feasting. Well, during the "feast" which was rather lacking overall for getting full on, the guy I was sitting next to had evidently eaten everything left from the Seder, so we had no fruit left to dip into. The people on the other side of me had fortunately not already eaten everything, so I got some fruit from them.
There were a few other points of interest that were mentioned. Elder Rona discussed that Christ cleansed the temple of the moneychangers on the day that the Jews traditionally clean the temple in preparation for the Passover. He also talked about the fact that we know Christ was born on the Passover from Joseph's statement naming His birth date as April 6 which was also the Jewish Passover in 1830 when Joseph made the statement.
The last point Elder Rona concluded with was that Christ was most likely crucified on Thurs to give three days in the tomb. The next day was Passover, which was a special Sabbath and the next day was the regular Sabbath. Jews were forbidden to mourn on the Sabbath, so on Sun, the first day Christ's disciples were actually permitted to mourn for Him, through His tender mercy, they no longer had to. Elder Rona put it more powerfully than I have done, and it was pretty affecting for all of us. The Spirit was quite palpable.
I really enjoyed the whole experience. It was two hours very well spent gaining appreciation for others as well as a renewed appreciation for our own knowledge of truth. I felt an increased gratitude for the Savior's divine mission and eternal love. I would highly recommend attending such an event for anyone!
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