It’s almost time for Lent, so I find myself also preparing for Passover. We celebrate this Jewish festival as a family at home on Good Friday as a kind of ‘big Shabbat’.
This year we’re going to share it with another family too, so I’ll be reworking our service sheet from last year, adding in part to suit the ages of the children who’ll be there.
As part of our preparation, I’ve also bought two Jewish books which are really age-appropriate for our girls to introduce them to the idea of Passover: Sammy Spider’s First Haggadah and Sammy Spider’s First Passover. We already had Sammy Spider’s First Shabbat, so I was hoping the Passover ones would be as good, and they are. S is already getting excited about it, which I love. We’re also learning new vocab like matzah and afikomen.
One of the elements of Passover I like is how it focuses on joy and celebration, while also remembering hardship. The tears of the slaves in Egypt are remembered with salt water and eating raw horseradish root (!). With this in mind, I’ve adapted the idea for a pancake prayer activity for us to do on Shrove Tuesday. It’s also a nice way to talk about how things taste, as currently, S says everything tastes of apples LOL!