Passover

It was her last bagel before Passover. As she sat at a table with a group of friends, chatting, munching and sipping juice yesterday morning, Adina Solomon said she was glad to have found a siyyum so that she didn't have to fast all day. Solomon attended the service and small breakfast that followed at Temple Beth Hillel-Beth El, a Conservative synagogue in Wynnewood, knowing that when Passover began at sundown last night, eating bagels would...

In another country and in another age, I recited, as the youngest at the Passover table, the traditional Four Questions, of which the last one is: "Why on all other nights do we sit and drink, some of us reclined, some not, whereas on this night do all of us recline at our ease?" Today, I am an adult. The question is asked of me - and it has become moot. I cannot lean back at my ease at Passover. Yet back then I did, along with my whole family. In fact, we all leaned back against dark odds.

Hanukah is early this year so that Passover can be right on time. The Jewish festival, which usually falls around the middle of December, begins at sundown Sunday. Rabbi Barry Rosen of Congregation Beth T'fillah in Overbrook Park explained why the holiday comes early. "The key to the Jewish calendar is that Passover must be in the spring," Rabbi Rosen said. "The Jewish calendar is a combination of the solar and lunar calendars and in a year, there is a differentiation of 11 days - the solar calendar is 365 and a quarter days; the lunar calendar is 354 and a quarter days.

Two days before the festival that celebrates the Jews' freedom from slavery, a class at Mishkan Shalom synagogue in Philadelphia burned pieces of paper that symbolized their liberation from another kind of bondage. They were private confessions, written on notes of paper. Rabbi Yael Levy set the fire to mark each person's transformation to a new place that would start during Passover, which begins at sundown Friday. The group was preparing for a ritual called Counting the Omer, a practice that begins on the second day of Passover and continues for 49 days.

"Baruch ata Adonai, Elohenu melech ha-olam, asher kiseshanu, be- mitzvotav, ve-tzivanu al biur chametz. " William Heine recites the Hebrew blessing that has been said for generations on the eve of Passover, the holiday memorializing the deliverance of the Jews from captivity more than 3,300 years ago. Like most Orthodox Jews throughout the world, Heine is about to embark on a ritualized search for chametz, or leavened bread, in his home....

For the only time in their unnatural lives, the gefilte were running. Paul Berue ladled one of the stubby glazed fish onto a glass plate, garnishing it with tiny carrots, onions and celery. The waitresses were coming at him like plagues. "Side of matzo," begged one. "I need a hot brisket platter," announced another. "I'm outta chopped liver," Berue hollered to his cooking staff. These are the times that try a Jew's soul. Lunchtime, Passover week, you wander the arid Center City streets, seeing people merrily munching pizza and chewing bagels (of all things)

How kosher is Jerusalem during Passover? So kosher that even the diet for the animals in the zoo is changed for the Jewish holiday. So kosher that the water company supplies the city only with well water for fear that lake water is insufficiently kosher for Passover. The weeklong holiday that begins tonight celebrates the escape of the biblical Israelites from bondage in Egypt. During the holiday, Jews are supposed to abstain from leavened bread out of respect for the sacrifices made by their forefathers during the exodus.

For Jews throughout the world, Passover, which begins Monday evening, April 21, commemorates the exodus from Egypt. For Edda Servi Machlin, author of the two-volume Classic Cuisine of the Italian Jews (Giro Press), it is also a time to remember the seder of 1944, when she and her siblings were in hiding from the Nazis in Italy. "As Easter approached," she said, "we carefully watched the moon. We knew that when it would be as round as a wheel of cheese, it would be the 14th of Nissan, the first night of Passover.

Passover and Easter. How can one affirm both at different times in different ways? Isn't religious truth so eternal and monotheistic that only one God and one faith dare be observed? I think not. I'd better not. I'm a Christian minister and my husband, Warren, is Jewish. Our children, Jacob, Katie and Isaac, are . . . children of ours. We have our way of being interfaith and others have their ways. Those who keep the Christmas tree and the menorah separate and distinct have their argument about purity of tradition, and it is a good one. Those who blend into the middle find God there as well.

On April 10, Jews the world over will arise in the midst of the ceremonial seder meal to open the doors of their homes for one special guest. At the table, a single cup of wine will just have been poured in readiness for the late arrival. Obviously, any one guest who is expected at every seder, every Passover, everywhere and every year can be no ordinary mortal. The sought-for guest of honor is none other than the prophet Elijah, whom Jews believe will herald the coming of the messianic age. The sages said he is most likely to arrive at one of three times: At the end of the weekly Sabbath, because the messianic age will be an unending Sabbath.