Are you planning Passover?
Passover is a celebration that requires significant planning whether you are celebrating in your own home with your family or with a group. In Temple times, people would “register” for a lamb in groups of about fifty people.
Since sacrificial animals all turn a year older on Elul 1 Rosh Hodesh Elul, the new moon festival of the month of Elul marks the opening of the time window when one-year-old lambs qualified for the Pesach will be born. Elul 1 is ma’aser behema, or the counting of domesticated animals. During the time of the Temple, this day was the new year to determine the start date of animal tithes. The lambs would therefore be a year old even though technically aged about six months or less.
Since only a kazayit (the size of an olive) of the lamb had to be eaten to meet the requirement of sharing the Pesach, one lamb sufficed for many people. They simply needed to share in its suffering, not make the main meal from it. The celebratory meal of the chag (joyous festival) was the main course to fill the belly. During Second Temple times, if you did not register ahead of time to share in a lamb, then you were not permitted to eat from it! Yikes.
Such delay in planning one’s worship was considered a severe spiritual lapse. We might compare this to someone who has many opportunities to accept Yeshua as savior, yet refuses or delays repeatedly. When the Day comes, it is too late. Practically speaking, a person could make a last-minute purchase and bring his own lamb by procuring one himself, but that’s a lot of meat for one person to eat before midnight!
Passover is a type and shadow of salvation, but it is also predictive of how we acquire an identity with the holy community of Israel. From smaller family and friends gatherings, we grow together and eventually stand as one people at Shavuot and the fall feasts of Yom Teruah and Yom HaKippurim.
A chag is a “memorial,” so while you’re planning, why not plan to make it memorable? Since an essential element of Pesach is teaching children, the part of the seder that is telling the story of the Exodus can ALWAYS be made memorable to children. For instance, one year, I dressed up in Egyptian costume as “The Plague Lady.” It required a few months of planning! I don't have any photos from that seder because I was too busy plaguing people, but I looked pretty scary.
Here's what I did:
1. Water turning to blood: I purchased small (dead) baitfish and a whole big fish from the market and submersed the big fish in a pitcher of red Kool-Aid. When the leader announced the plague, I came in and offered to serve the kids’ table drinks from the pitcher. Yes, they screamed. I then threw some of the dried fish onto their table. Be careful with that one. One of the kids tried to eat one.
2. Frogs: Over a month before the seder, I purchased a frog pinata and three packages of catfish stinkbait. I opened the stinkbait, inserted it into the pinata, then wrapped the frog in a big Hefty bag and left it in the garage until Passover. I unwrapped it just after the dead fish Kool-Aid, unplugged the pinata, and then I walked through the room swinging the pinata around. Yes, it was horrible. I also bought some frog legs from the market and threw some onto the kids’ table. I don’t think anyone tried to eat those. We were all nauseated from the stinkbait frog. It smelled so bad you could taste it.
3. Lice: Easy-peasy. Lice-rice, baby, but go easy. Clean-up is a mess.
4. Flies: Cheap party favors, a dollar a bag. Pass them out to parents ahead of time so they can throw them at the kids. You won’t have to worry about clean-up.
