Patrick Comerford
Passover begins this evening (22 April 2024), and continues until Tuesday next week (30 April 2024). This eight-day holiday celebrates the Exodus, the flight from Egypt, the liberation of Jewish people, delivered from slavery in Egypt to freedom and liberty.
I am in Chania Airport this evening, wating for my own flight out of Crete back to England, but conscious of the many celebrations of Passover in Crete tonight, especially with the people I know and love at Etz Hayyim synagogue in Chania.
Indeed, many resorts and hotels in Crete have organised special programmes for Passover, beginning this evening, with organised Seder meals and special entertainment. On the flight from Luton to Chania last Wednesday, a Jewish family from Finchley told me of their plans to spend Passover in Crete this year.
The holiday of Passover is celebrated in the early spring, from the 15th until the 22nd of the Hebrew month of Nissan. Passover or Pesach is marked by avoiding leaven, but the highlight is the Seder meal this evening, retelling the story of the Exodus, with four cups of wine and eating matzah and bitter herbs.
In Hebrew, Passover is known as Pesach, which means ‘to pass over,’ because God passed over the Jewish homes as the Egyptian firstborn were killed on the eve of the very first Passover.
The Hebrew slaves were forced into back-breaking salve-labour and unbearable horrors when God saw the people’s distress and sent Moses to Pharaoh with a message: ‘Let my people go.’ When the despotic Pharaoh refused and did not listen, ten devastating plagues afflicted the people of Egypt, destroying everything from livestock to crops.
In the last of the ten plagues, all the firstborn Egyptians were killed. Pharaoh’s resistance was broken, and he virtually chased his former slaves out of the land. The former slaves left in such a hurry that the bread they baked for the exodus did not have time to rise. That night, 600,000 adult males, plus many more women and children, left Egypt and began the trek to Mount Sinai.
The highlight of Passover is the Seder, observed on each of the first two nights of the holiday. The Seder is a family-oriented tradition and ritual-packed feast. The Haggadah is a domestic liturgy that describes in detail the story of the Exodus. It fulfils the Biblical obligation to recount to children the story of the Exodus on the night of Passover, and begins with a child asking the traditional ‘Four Questions’: ‘What makes this night different from all other nights?’
On this night remembering the Exodus and the flight from Egypt, I am in Chania Airport, waiting to catch a flight back to Luton, leaving Greece after a five-day extended weekend in Crete. On the flight to Crete, I was sitting beside a Jewish family from Finchley who are spending the Pesach holiday in Crete.
Indeed, advertising in the Jewish Chronicle and on social media shows how many Jewish families are spending this holiday in Crete: kosher food is being provided, Seder meals have been organised, the programmes include traditional music and traditional entertainment and guided tours, and rabbis from a variety of traditions are on hand in many hotels and resorts.
The Exodus narrative is spread over four of the first five books of the Bible or Pentateuch – Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The Hebrew name is יציאת מצרים (Yəṣīʾat Mīṣrayīm, ‘Departure from Egypt’). It is the founding story in the Israelite, Hebrew or Jewish story, and for many theologians the Exodus is the paradigmatic Biblical narrative of liberation and salvation.
The etymology of the word Exodus shows it comes from the Latin Exodus, but this in turn comes from the Ancient Greek ἔξοδος (éxodos), which comes from the Greek words ἐξ (ex, ‘out of’) and ὁδός (hodós, ‘way’ or ‘road’).
So, the word Exodus is not Hebrew but Greek in origin, and the Greek word Exodos literally means ‘the road out.’ Other related words in English derived from the Greek ὁδός (hodós) include episode, method, period and odometer or odograph. Several scientific words also can be traced back to hodos, such as anode and cathode, the positive and negative electrodes of a diode, and hodoscope, an instrument that traces the paths of ionising particles.
But the word Exodus only comes into the English language in the 17th century with the translations of the Bible. In Hebrew, the title of the book is שְׁמוֹת (shemōt, ‘Names’), from the beginning words of the text: ‘These are the names of the sons of Israel’ (Hebrew: וְאֵלֶּה שְׁמֹות בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל).
Chag Pesach Sameach, חג פסח שמח
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