Let My People Go

I am not Jewish, and I am not Catholic, so to me this weekend is nothing other than three days in which I will be working on my thesis, and looking after my neighbour's cats. I checked my email this morning, though, and there ensued a Gmail chat with Blundering American, who is Jewish. Now, I know something about Passover, just like I know what Lent is, but I've never been to a sedar (nor have I gone 40 days without beer), and so today I learned something new:

BA: my mother did this really cute thing with the 10 plagues

PS: Now there's a sentence I never imagined I'd read.

BA: where she made little bags of plagues and as we said each plague we opened them...

PS: wait -- we're talking locusts, drought, etc?

BA: yep...blood, frogs, darkness, locusts, cattle disease, etc.

PS: ok, just checking

BA: you know the story of exodus right? you saw the ten commandments... charlton heston

PS: Yeah, yeah. I just don't understand what you mean by "doing" plagues.

BA: well, the haggadah, which is the book that you use for passover sedar is SO antequated. it just doesn't make the dinner fun...it's more of a chore than anything else

PS: Wait -- lemme stop you there, just for a second. You're going to have to back up a bit.

BA: Ok...during the sedar when you recite the story of exodus, you recite the ten plagues

and you dip your finger in your wine and spill a drop for each plague, because people died from the plagues

but they persuaded the Pharaoh to let the Israelites leave Egypt

now, typically you just say the name of the plague, spill a drop of wine and move on, however, my mother is a preschool teacher

and an artist

so, she made ten little bags...one for each plague

so as we recited a plague, a person would open their little bag

and there was something in each bag to remind people of the plague

little plastic frogs... sunglasses for darkness...

Neil didn't mention plagues in the holiday fun round of his Easter vs. Passover battle, but that sounds like way more fun than digging up dirty, cold, hardboiled eggs!