Last night my husband and I attended our second Seder, this time with our 2 youngest children. Last year's Seder had only 1 child present, the rabbi's 12-year-old son. We learned much of the symbolism behind the Seder table but I was so nervous! You know I was raised Church of God in Christ. Stepping into the Hebrew roots of our faith felt like forbidden waters, almost as if you had invited me to attend a coven!
This year, we were supposed to go out of town for Passover, but decided at the last minute that it was not financially the best thing for us to do just now. So in my email, I found an invitation from a family to other homeschoolers in the city to attend a Seder at their home. We had never met them before. They were gentile messianic believers. Their other guests included Jewish-by-birth believers and some non-denominational Christians.
They're Seder was much more kid-friendly (seeing that there were so many children present. For the plagues, they had:
Blood: Poured water into a translucent pitcher with red Kool-Aid at the bottom to illustrate water being turned to blood.
Other plagues: At the table, at every adult place, there was a plastic baggie with plastic animals to represent the plagues. At this point in the story, we opened them and threw plastic frogs, gnats, flies, and locusts at the children.
Lice and boils: There were small black circle stickers and larger red circle stickers that we stuck on each other to represent the lice and boils.
Hail: We had baggies with ping-pong balls, but as a surprise, our hosts released some packing popcorn from the ceiling.
Cattle died: There were little plastic animals all over the table. We had to knock them over.
For darkness, we all had to be blindfolded. I got a great picture of my son with a fuzzy scarf tied over his eyes.
The table was also set in an "L" shape to represent "Egypt" and "Goshen." Of course Goshen was exempt from most plagues. LOL.
There were other kid-friendly portions of the Seder, including the 4 questions, and a cute-as-a-button little boy named Gabriel carrying a bag with matzoh on his back while another cute-as-a-button little girl named Chaya asked him where he was from "Egypt!" and where he was going, "Jerusalem!".
We didn't get home until 3 a.m. Leave it to our family to stretch totally out of our culture to try new things! My children told me today that they were afraid where were were going was going to be boring, but that they'd had a great time! Friend Hubby and I were able to add to our knowledge of Hebreic roots. I got to see a volume of Talmud for the first time with the mishnah, Gemara, and commentaries by famous rabbis such as Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac, otherwise known as Rashi. I have been reading Rashi's Daughters, and although it is historical fiction, I have learned a lot about Jewish culture and discerning between their interpretation of the Scriptures we call the Old Testament, and Jewish superstitions and mysticism such as the "Evil Eye", the demon Lillith, and other things.
I love learning new things. I pray that as long as I have a reasonable portion of health and strength and am enclothed in my right mind (there goes that COGIC coming out in me), that I may be ever learning about my Father's world.
"THE EARTH is the Lord's, and the fullness of it, the world and they who dwell in it." Psalm 24:1 AMP
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