Holidays, Home and Passover

As it is the time of Easter Holidays, I went back home to Tallinn. Surprisingly, it is warmer than in Leicester (geographical note - Estonia has much colder climate, BUT against stereotypes it DOES NOT snow all year round :D) and I enjoy the sunshine of spring that is fighting with this forever-lasting winter. I came back yesterday and just in time for the Celebration of Passover.

As you see I got to eat some delicious traditional Jewish food as gefilte fish - it such fish (as you could guess) dish, made of mixture of the poached fish.

I have mixed feelings about this celebration. It is quite of a BIG DEAL one as it commemorates the liberation of Jewish people from the ancient Egyptian slavery. I am assuming that this story is quite of a well-know for every one as most of the people are familiar with Moses and 10 plagues of Egypt. The moment when Bruce Almighty splits the soup is an echo of the events when Moses freed his people from the slavery in Egypt by splitting the Red sea. Bad comparison, however quite descriptive.

So here is what I like about this celebrations:
- It is a family Celebration, so everyone gathers together around the table and it always feels great

- It has a special order. This Passover (Pesah) meal is called in Hebrew Pesah Seder and it means order. Therefore there are special steps of the process of meal. This makes you even hungrier and everyone wait till the last step when you can eat everything. 

- Food lies on the plate also in a special order,and every product symbolises specific thing -  and I love to put it nicely :)

- Me and my mum always sing some traditional songs

However there are some not that pleasant parts of it:

- It lasts for 7 days, and all these days NO BREAD is allowed, to be more precise no wheat or flour. And i Love all the pastries and cookies, and... oh, it makes my belly cry. On the plus side - it is a good and not too strict diet. Why is that? - you will ask, apparently when Jewish people left the Egypt, they had no time to wait for the dough to rise and left with no bread at all, they were eating what now is called Matza - flat unleavened bread. 

So now you have some general picture of this celebration. To describe the whole order would take me good few pages, so i guess that this one will just give you an overview.

Happy Passover, everyone!

PS: For some entertainment click here