Tonight is the evening before the Pessach holidays that is traditionally celebrated with a big seder - a festive dinner with the whole family. seder means the "order" of the food and drinks and of how to set the table and arrange the food on the big plate (keara). On Pessach, leavened bread and any other leavened products (chametz) are forbidden to eat and even own. That is why already some days before, religious families clean their home very carefully in order to find and burn any crumb of chametz. Instead one eats mazot, unleavened dry flatbread.
The reason for this tradition is the celebration of the exodus of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt when they had to leave so quickly to the desert that the dough for bread did not have time to leaven.
Pessach is also called chag aviv (spring holiday) and many posters at train stations and people everywhere wish you in these days:
Chag sameach/ pessach sameach/ chag aviv sameach!
(sameach means glad.)
We celebrated Pessach in the Hebrew course, but we keep eating normal bread and our cleaning today was not as careful...
