The Jewish Spring Festivals
Passover/Unleavened Bread, First Fruits, Shavout (Pentecost)
David Roberts. The Israelites Leaving Egypt (oil on canvas), c. 1830.
Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham, England.
(Listen to an audio version of the blog post below!)
With the weekly celebration of the Sabbath as a foundation, this week’s blog now turns to three annual Jewish festivals celebrated in the springtime. Importantly, these festivals are deeply rooted in the agricultural cycle: Passover (Leviticus 23: 5) begins at twilight on the 14th day of the lunar month of Nisan (March/April), the first month of spring and the sowing of seed, and it marks the beginning of new life/Unleavened Bread (Leviticus 23: 6) begins on the next night, the 15th day of Nisan, and it lasts for seven days (in practice, however, the entire eight days is commonly referred to collectively as “Passover”); First Fruits (Leviticus 23: 11) occurs on the day after the Sabbath following Unleavened Bread, and it celebrates the fruitfulness of the land that God has given to the Israelites; and Shavuot (Pentecost) occurs on the 6th day of Sivan (May/June) and it marks the first harvest of wheat.
But in Judaism those cyclical agricultural feasts also intimately link to the linear historical drama of the Jewish people: Passover/Unleavened Bread remembers the rebirth of Israel after a long, fallow period of bondage in Egypt; First Fruits remembers a new beginning in a land of promise; and Shavuot (Pentecost) remembers the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai and the birth of Israel as God’s covenant community. To be sure, these festivals retained their agricultural roots, but their primary meaning in Judaism was thoroughly historicized. Even the Sabbath—Shabbat, the 7th day of rest, which was completely unknown in pagan antiquity and unrelated to any agricultural cycle—remembers the creation of the world, recounted in Genesis 1 & 2.
Consequently, the paradigm shift from nature to history enables a linear understanding of time as opposed to a cyclical one, and it sanctifies events rather than places. Mount Sinai is not holy, but the moment of revelation is; Moses ascends Mount Nebo to die, but no one knows where he is buried; hence, he cannot be worshiped or venerated. As a practical matter, time and history are much less susceptible to idolatry than people and places. And importantly, if history is linear— with a beginning, a middle and an end—then history moves toward a final destination, toward an end-point. Thus, the linear trajectory of history has a purpose . . . and a conclusion. As Thomas Cahill points out in The Gifts of the Jews, “in the two great narratives of the first two books of the Bible [Genesis and Exodus], Israel invents . . . history.”[1] And of course Christianity, which emerges from 1st-century Palestinian Judaism, reflects the exact same world view. So, let’s have a look at these agricultural festivals, see how they reflect the Jewish historical drama and understand how Jews celebrate them today.
The first two festivals—Passover/Unleavened Bread and First Fruits—occur within eight days of each other; the third festival, Shavuot (Pentecost) fifty days after the Feast of First Fruits. All are springtime festivals, marking the beginning of life, in both a physical and historical sense.
Passover/ Unleavened Bread (Leviticus 23: 5-6)
In Jewish life Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, although technically separate feasts, are traditionally treated as one. As Leviticus says, “The Lord’s Passover begins at twilight on the fourteenth day of the first month. On the fifteenth day of that month the Lord’s Feast of Unleavened Bread begins; for seven days you must eat bread made without yeast” (Leviticus 23: 5-6).
Passover, of course, celebrates God redeeming his people from Egyptian slavery. As the story is told in Exodus 12-13, the Israelites are to stay indoors, slay a lamb without defect, put some of the blood on the doorframes of each Israelite house, and then roast the lamb and eat it. On that same night, says God, “I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn—both men and animals—and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt” (12: 12-13). The next verses establish the Feast of Unleavened Bread: “This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord—a lasting ordinance. For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel. On the first day hold a sacred assembly, and another one on the seventh day. Do no work at all on these days, except to prepare food for everyone to eat—that is all you may do” (12: 14-16).
Passover is the oldest continuous religious festival among any of the world’s religions. In Christianity, Passover becomes Good Friday/Easter, the time when Jesus, the “Lamb of God,” is slain for the sins of the world and is then resurrected on Sunday morning, enabling our redemption. Recall that as Jesus moves toward the cross during Holy Week, he and his disciples are in Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. Good Friday/Easter exactly parallel Passover/Unleavened Bread, in the manner of stepped-up parallelism that we so frequently see in the New Testament.
In a Jewish home, preparation for Passover/Unleavened Bread begins days—or even weeks—before the actual holiday by thoroughly cleaning the house, washing windows and curtains, and even painting. As the holiday approaches, people turn to the utensils used during Passover, they polish brass and silver and scrub pots and pans, dishes and cutlery. Since Passover always occurs during early spring, one could think of this as spring house cleaning! Thoroughly cleaning the house also ensures that all traces of yeast—or hametz—is removed so it doesn’t accidentally make its way into the Passover food. On the night before Passover, adults and children inspect the house for any speck of hametz. This involves a charming Passover tradition: The house is darkened, and each child carries a candle as he searches for hametz; when he finds some—which he does, since his parents hide some—all cheer and congratulate him or her.
The actual Passover celebration begins on the evening of the fourteenth day of the first month with the Seder dinner. This is the dinner that Jesus and his disciples celebrated in the upper room the night before his crucifixion. Seder means “order,” and the dinner follows a prescribed order that is detailed in a Passover Haggadah, a small book that tells exactly how to run the Seder and that retells the Passover story. Each person has a copy next to his or her plate. The table also includes a Seder plate—a large plate that is divided into six sections. Each section contains a symbolic food:
Karpas—A green vegetable such as parsley, which is dipped in salt water before eating. The parsley recalls springtime; the salt water recalls the tears shed by the Israelites as slaves in Egypt and the suffering of the Jewish people over the centuries.
Maror—A bitter herb such as horseradish, which recalls the bitter days of slavery.
Roasted egg—Animal sacrifice ended with the destruction of the Second Temple in AD. 70. The roasted egg recalls the sacrifices made at the temple during festivals in the early centuries of Judaism.
Roasted lamb shank—This recalls the lamb that was slain and roasted in each household before the Israelites left Egypt.
Charoset—A mixture of ground walnuts, grated apples, sugar and wine, which recalls the mortar used to make Pharaoh's cities of bricks.
Matzah—Unleavened bread.
The Passover Seder follows this order:
Lighting the candles.
Blessing God for providing the wine and drinking the first of four cups.
Washing the hands.
Dipping the parsley in salt water and eating it.
Breaking the bread.
At Passover the bread is unleavened—or matzoth—instead of the delicious Sabbath hallah. There are three matzos on the table, stacked and covered with a cloth. A delightful tradition has developed at this part of the Seder. The leader breaks the middle matzoth and hides a piece, “putting it away for later.” This piece is called the aftkoman. The children are encouraged to “steal” the aftkoman sometime during the meal. After the meal ends, the child who has “stolen” it returns it for extra dessert. This keeps the children awake and interested during the lengthy Seder; it also adds a sense of festivity, joy and laughter to the meal.
Telling the Passover story.
After breaking the matzoth, the leader refers to it as the “bread of affliction” and expresses hope that all those who are afflicted will see freedom in the coming year. The youngest child at the table then asks: “Why is this night different from all other nights?” This begins the retelling of the Passover story. At the conclusion of the story, the second cup of wine is drunk.
Eating the meal.
Drinking the third cup of wine.
In addition to all those present, a cup of wine is filled for Elijah the Prophet and the outside door is opened to welcome “the messenger of redemption.” Recall how the Hebrew Scriptures close: “See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will strike the land with a curse” (Malachi 4: 5-6).
Singing the Hallel Psalms.
When the meal is over, grace is said, and then the Hallel Psalms (Psalms 113-118) are sung. These are the psalms that Jesus and his disciples sang when they finished their Passover Seder (which we call the Last Supper): “When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives” (Matthew 26: 30). The final cup of wine is drunk after the Hallel psalms are sung.
Closing prayer.
First Fruits (Leviticus 23: 9-14)
The Feast of First Fruits is closely allied to Passover/Unleavened Bread. Passover begins “at twilight on the fourteenth day of the first month” (23: 5), and the Feast of Unleavened Bread begins on the fifteenth day and continues for seven days (23: 6). As we noted above, the entire eight days of Passover/Unleavened Bread is traditionally referred to as simply Passover. The Feast of First Fruits, then, follows in sequence, beginning on “the day after the Sabbath (in Judaism the Sabbath is on Saturday, not Sunday)” (23: 15), so in Christian parallel, First Fruits falls on Easter Sunday. It also coincides with the start of the barley harvest in Israel. Leviticus 23: 9-14 provides that the first sheaf--or ormer--is presented as an offering at the sanctuary. None of the new crop could be eaten until the ormer had been offered.
Shavuot (Pentecost) (Leviticus 23: 15-16)
First Fruits is important because it dates the next major festival, the Feast of Weeks, or Shavuot. Leviticus 23: 15-16 says: “From the day after the Sabbath, the day you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, count off seven full weeks. Count off fifty days up to the day after the seventh Sabbath, and then present an offering of new grain to the Lord.” Shavuot brought the spring harvest to a close. In later Biblical times Shavuot also celebrated the anniversary of the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai, which we read about in Exodus and Leviticus. The Septuagint (or the LXX), the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, refers to the fifty days between Passover and Shavuot as pentekonta hemeras, from which we get the term Pentecost. Pentecost, then, originally meant Shavuot, one of three Jewish pilgrimage festivals. When we read in the beginning of Acts that “there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven” (2: 5), we understand that they were there for Shavuot—the Festival of Pentecost. Acts 2: 1 simply states: “When the day of Pentecost came, they (the disciples) were all together in one place.” Pentecost became a Christian holiday only after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2; before that, it was a Jewish festival, as it continues to be today. In the Hebrew Scriptures, Shavuot (Pentecost) marks the birth of Israel as a covenant community under Law; in the New Testament it marks the birth of the Church as a covenant community under Grace.
Notice the Jewish/Christian parallels in these first three festivals. Jesus and his disciples come to Jerusalem for Passover, as they should for a pilgrimage festival. Jesus celebrates the Passover Seder with his friends in the upper room. He gives new meaning to two important elements of the Seder meal: unleavened bread and wine. The day of Passover, Jesus—the Lamb of God—is crucified. The day after the Sabbath—or the Feast of First Fruits—is the day of Jesus’ resurrection. On Easter, Paul says, “Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15: 20). Jesus stays among us for forty days and then is taken up into heaven; ten days later—at Shavuot (Pentecost), the feast marking the birth of Israel as a covenant community under Law—the Holy Spirit descends in what appears to be tongues of fire (as God descends in fire on Mt. Sinai in Exodus 19: 16-19), marking the birth of the Church as a covenant community under Grace. The parallels are stunning in both structure and symbol, offering a beautiful example of the stepped-up parallelism that is such an important literary feature of the Bible.
Our next blog will focus on the Jewish Fall Festivals: Rosh Hashana (Head of the Year), Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) and Sukkot (Tabernacles).
[1] Thomas Cahill. The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels (New York: Nan A. Talese/Anchor Books, 1998), p. 128.