For all of you on QZ who are Jewish (as I am!)
Have a very Happy, Healthy Passover!
Don't eat too many macaroons, especially the chocolate covered almond filled ones! Yum! :)
Happy Passover! I'm not sure if I'm going to keep it this year, though. I barely eat anything that doesn't have bread, so I'll probably collapse in school without it!
Passover History (Bear with me, I suck at the details of my own religion, but I'll give it a try).
The Hebrews (now days called Jews) were slaves and in bondage in Very ancient Egypt, about I think sveral thousand years BEFORE Christ was born. All of the Pharoas of Egypt kept the Hebrews in slavery. The Hebrews were born, lived, and died, suffering the brutality, beatings, and bondage of slavery. Then...God sent word through I think an Angel, who said that a "Deliverer", a mortal person, who would be the first born child of a Hebrew, one of God's chosen people, would be born one day, to deliver the Hebrews out of slavery.
The Pharoa at the time heard of this angel's prediction, and the rumored word among the Hebrew people of the "Deliverer". So, Pharoa ORDERED that EVERY first born child of EVERY Hebrew, be murdered/killed throughout all of Egypt. Millions of first born Hebrew children, were killed/slaughtered.
But, one Hebrew woman, Yoshabel (I know I spelled this wrong), did not want to see her first born child die. So she put the child in a basket made of water proof reeds and floated him in the river, hoping that God would send the child on a journey to safety.
Then...down the river, the Egyptian princess (I forget her name) who was barren, and could not give birth, found the basket and child. She claimed the child as her own and named him...Moses.
Moses grew into a man, raised as an Egyptian Prince, to become Pharoa one day, but....the actual son of Pharoa, Ramses was jealous of Moses, wanted to be Pharoa next in line, and was out to ruin Moses. One day, Ramses discovered Moses was indeed the son of Hebrew slaves, not a real Egyptian Prince nor son of the Egyptian princess. Ramses banished Moses in rags with nothing but one days' food/water into the desert, and Ramses became Pharoa.
Moses, guided by God...made it safely through the desert, found a wonderful tribe of people living in the desert, took a wife, became a shepherd, but one day he noticed the thunder cloud over Mt. Sinai. Moses asked his wife what that was, and she told him...God lives on that mountain, and no mortal man dare go there. But Moses did...and saw a continuously burning bush, which had the voice og God who spoke to Moses...and God told Moses that HE was the deliverer, to go BACK to Egypt..to deliver the Hebrews out of slavery.
Moses returned to Egypt. Many, may times, he asked Ramses, now pharoa..."Let My People Go!" Every time ramses/Pharao refused, and every time, God sent a scourge over Egypt in anger, from flaming hail storms, to turning the Nile river...red with blood(the red sea).
One last time Moses implored Pharoa, "Let My People Go", and Pharoa refused. Thus, God, in anger...remembered when the first Pharoa had ordered the slaughter of every first born Hebrew child...so God sent this time...the Angel of Death to kill the first born child of everyone in Egypt, with a plague. The Angel was meant to kill only those who put the Hebrews in slavery, but the Angel of Death could not distinguish a Hebrew house from an Egyptian or slavemaster's house.
So...God told Moses to tell the Hebrews to wipe lamb's blood OVER the doorway of every Hebrew House....so that the Angel of Death would know...to PASSOVER..those households and Not kill those first born children in those homes.
That night, as The Angel of Death...Passed Over those homes, only killing the first born children of the slavemasters, the Hewbrews still felt sorrow and despair..and wilst they had supper, they ate salt and bitter herbs to remind them of that awful night. That that should not have had to happen, and sorrow for the children who would die that night since Pharoa had not freed the Hebrews when he was simply asked to do so.
As The Angel of Death swept over Egypt, Pharoa KNEW there was a God...and that Pharoa had done wrong not heeding Moses' request. So Pharoa freed every Hebrew slave. The very n