This newsletter will take a few days off for Passover, but I share below a few pieces I’ve written about the biblical Exodus holiday—some of them rather unusual.
I hope they might be useful to those attending a seder who would like to have something new to share, and to those who are not celebrating Passover but want to know a bit more of what it’s all about.
Writing for Christian Science Monitor in “An ancient matzo sandwich for Passover,” I note that a matzo, bitter herbs, and paschal lamb sandwich associated with the holiday represents history’s first recorded sandwich. It is recorded in Jewish books centuries before the famous gambling earl was born.
Why do non-kosher rabbits (or more precisely hares), who have nothing to do with the Passover story appear so often in illustrations of haggadahs, the central holiday text? I wrote on this in “Chasing the Passover Bunny” for the Forward and “In the Passover haggadah, enigmatic bunnies multiplied like rabbits” for Washington Post.
I wrote on “Top 5 works of Passover art” for Houston Chronicle, and I promise that four of them aren’t about rabbits. I also wrote for Houston Chronicle on the ways that illustrated and illuminated haggadahs have shaped (and been shaped by) the holiday in “Art brings the Passover story to life.”
And last year, I co-wrote a piece for Groundtruth Project/Religion News Service on the holiday and the pandemic in “Jews around the world prepare for a Passover different from any other.”
For those who are celebrating, happy Passover!