jack

Whatever time you start, apologise for being late, but contrast the situation to other people's tradition which would have been even later.

Argue whether you should avoid eating things like rice which are absolutely definitely not leavened bread, but there is a tradition of avoiding them. Agree that everyone coming to the seder agree that you shouldn't avoid them, but decide to avoid them anyway just in case.

Don't eat anything until you're explicitly told to eat it. Don't finish any cup of wine until the last one.

Announce how Rabbi Hillel invented the sandwich.

"Seder" originally comes from Hebrew meaning "Judiciously skip ahead without telling anyone the page number because everyone has different books"

Try have everyone recite things in unison using different translations.

Explain the story of the first passover and the exodus from egypt, but repeating that every year would get a bit repetitive after several thousand years, so spend most of the time telling stories about other people telling the story.

Argue whether parting the red sea and letting the israelites get halfway across and then stopping and letting the water roll back over them could reasonably be construed as "sufficient" or not.

Tell everyone you don't usually exchange presents before exchanging presents.

Sing the jewish version of Partridge in a Pear Tree, starting "One is our God, in heaven and on earth."

Just when you've got used to switching between english and hebrew, to shake things up, there's suddenly an aramaic forerunner of House That Jack Built, that ends with God destroying

Sing the jewish version of the House that Jack Build about a little goat, that ends with God destroying the angel of death.

The year you first came was the first time people did the animal noises while singing, but because it's been every year you've been there, you're firmly convinced that's a tradition about eighteen hundred years old.

Comment that that's a recent addition to the passover liturgy (recent in this context meaning "a continuous tradition of barely more than 400 years").

Stay up too late discussing different interpretations.

It's presumably obvious, but I feel I should specify that I don't actually know what I'm talking about. I'm absorbed a large amount of information from pillow talk with Liv (we have the best pillow talk), and I hope it's fair if far from complete, but don't get into an argument where you say "well, Cartesiandaemon said Liv said Rabbi Hillel said the prophet Elijah said Moses said God said X, so it must be right!" I'll do my best to make sure what I say is somewhat true, but it will contain many examples where the emphasis is in the wrong place and it gives the wrong impression :)

When is it?

Passover begins (within a day or so) on the day of the full moon in the week before Easter, and lasts for seven (or eight) days. Occasionally there's a glitch in the Gregorian/Hebrew calender syncromesh and passover is a on the day of the full moon BEFORE the full moon in the week before Easter, in which case you should urgently go to Eastercon, because it will be one of the few times you can go to Eastercon and your girlfriend can eat in the buffet that serves gluten, because passover has dietary restrictions (see next post) which can clash unfortunately if thrown with little warning into a mix with food service and vegetarianism.

Most Jewish holidays are at the start (?) or occasionally middle (?) of the month, which are always within a day or so of the full moon. What's with all the "within a day or so"? Well, originally there was a harvest festival at about this time of the year, so the year started when it was obviously spring, and the month started at the new moon. But there's a couple of extra days that appear or disappear in order to ensure that certain festivals DO NOT fall on the Sabbath or do not fall ADJACENT to the Sabbath, etc, etc, and do not ask why, because then someone will explain it to you, and then you will say "ah, but what if..." and then they will hand you a book bigger than your head and ask you to read it and then you'll learn about two-thousand years of calendar-fiddling and then your brain will explode.

What's with all the "off by one" days? You might have THOUGHT that a religion (apparently) devoted entirely to pedantry would have extremely precise lengths of major holidays. Well, some time in the last three millennia (you will see this qualification a lot) someone observed that if the beginning of the year and month was determined in Jerusalem, it may take a couple of days for the change to propagate to everywhere else, so people got into the habit of celebrating everything twice just in case they were a day off, to make ABSOLUTELY DOUBLE SURE they got the right day. And (you'll see this a lot too) this became a tradition. You might not have thought you'd need to do this for a festival in the MIDDLE of the month, but there you go. (If it takes the messenger several days to get there, you might still be off-by-one even if you count backwards from his arrival). Eventually someone invented an algorithm and made the calendar just follow that, and then invented magical "internets" which could convey date and time round the world at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light, but the tradition remains in most places. This tends to happen more for orthodox and conservative movements outside Israel (?)

But everyone outside Israel celebrates the meal on the first AND second day (?). Which is very nice because it lets you celebrate the first one with your family, and then if you're very nippy on your feet very quickly dash to Scandinavia with your boyfriend in order to lead the service on the second night there. Obviously not EVERYONE does that. It's probably just Rachel. But it's what I'M used to. And in the unlikely event that the earth is destroyed and these notes are the sole remaining Jewish instructions, well, then it will become a tradition, and everyone will say "I don't understand, why is the second night the 'stockholm' night?"

How long is it?

Passover is the whole seven (or eight) days. The meal (the seder) is on the first (and second) nights. (Everything has several names, I often get confused.)

How long will it usually last

We normally start at 6, have a service for an hour or so, have a leisurely meal, and then finish with more service between 10 and midnight. But everywhere will be different.