Sunday, April 20, 2014

Passover Continued

Kadesh (Sanctification) is when you all fill your glasses with either wine or grape juice and then whoever there who spoke Hebrew would recite something and then once they were finished we could take the first sip of our drink. Urchatz (Washing the hands) and his little brother brought around a dish of water and he brings it around for you to dip your fingers in it and then drying them. Karpas (Green Vegetables) is used and you dip it into salt water and then eat it. The salt water was represented by the tears of the slaves. Yachats (Breaking the Matzah) is when they take this big looking cracker looking thing and they break it in half and then they put one half back from in between the two other Matzahs where it came from. The other half is used as a Afikoman which is a tradition to have someone hide it in the house and then later in the dinner it is a competition for the kids to go see who can find it first in the house and bring it back to the table so you can "officially" finish dinner. Maggid (Story recital) is when we went around the table and all took turns reading the stories out loud from the packet that was on my chair and everyone had one.
Matzah is then broken up and passed out after that to everyone at the table. If you don't know what one it is like, think of a very dry cracker with like no flavoring at all but they are made in a very special way.  Maror is when they pass horse radish out and you eat it on the Matzah, it is not a good taste at all but it isn't supposed to be because it is supposed to remind you of the horrible times that happened. After that they passed around this sweet sauce thing made of apples and nuts to put on your Matzah which made them taste much better. I cant find what it is called but at one point there is this thing where they say a whole bunch of small sayings and you stick your pinky finger in your glass every time they say it and put it on your napkin and you do it about ten times and you can not lick your finger at the end because it is disrespectful. Schulchan Orech then happens which is the rest of dinner which we ate things like Matzah ball soup which I thought was really good and green beans and some over weird traditional foods that were new to me but a lot of them were different but still good! Tzafan is when the kids go search for the Afikoman and who ever finds it gets a prize. At his house the winner got $20 and all the rest of us got $5 for trying still! Hallel (Songs) were sung in Hebrew and there family sung them while we just enjoyed listen to them! Nirtzah (conclusion) is the ending where you say your final prayers and then dinner is officially over.
All of this took about two hours or maybe a little more and we even did the shortened tradition at his house so I cant imagine what the long version is but I do know that we skipped some parts to make it shorter and less boring for us. Over all it was a great time and I learned a lot! Sorry If any of my terms are wrong  I used http://www.happypassover.net/passover-customs/index.html to help me reminder the terms and specifics that I didn't remember exactly. If you ever get a chance to learn about a new culture I would for sure do it cause it was a really good learning experience!

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