Next week will see celebrations to mark the start of Passover, or Pesach, a major event in the Jewish calendar.
A spring festival lasting seven or eight days, it features a ceremonial meal called a Seder, where the biblical story of the Israelites’ liberation from slavery in Egypt is retold.
Paramedic Amba Cooper, who has worked in SECAmb for 11 years having started as an ECSW, shares the celebration’s significance and what it is like to observe Passover while on operational duties.
“This festival actually starts the week before with removal of Chametz – which is anything with leavened grain products in, so bread and pasta, for example – from the home. This is an important part of this festival as during Pesach we won’t eat any leavened bread at all,” says Amba.
“This is because this festival celebrates the liberation from slavery 3,000 years ago, which happened so fast the story says that the Jews leaving Egypt did not have time to let their bread rise, so now in modern day we don’t eat any leavened bread as a symbolic acknowledgement of this.”
During Passover, a key observance is attending a Seder, a ceremonial meal involving storytelling and symbolic foods.
“The first night consists of a meal with our family, this meal involves the Seder Plate. This will have Maror – bitter herbs such as Horseradish – along with Chazeret, a bitter green vegetable such as spring onion, these represents the bitterness of slavery. We also have Charoset, a fruit or nut paste, such as peanut butter, which is in contrast to the bitterness of the Maror and represents the mortar slaves used to build,” Amba explains.
“We have Kapras, leafy green vegetable such as parsley, ideally dipped in salt to represent the tears of the slaves, Zeroa, a shank bone, to symbolize the sacrificial lamb – we don’t do that in modern times! And Beitzah, or egg, representing the festival sacrifice and the circle of life.
“The meal involves a cup of wine to open the door for Elijah and the Afikomen (a piece of matzah which is unleavened bread) is hidden somewhere in the home for the kids to look for, with prizes for them finding it. We sit around the table to have our meal and tell the story of the liberation from slavery in Egypt 3,000 years ago.”
Pesach is an important community time for those of Jewish faith. Working is prohibited on the first two and last two days of the festival. As Amba and her husband Jamie, an ECSW, work operational shifts at SECAmb, they accept observing this might not always be possible. But while the job comes first, Amba says they miss family time and being with their community greatly, much like how people miss their families across Christmas and New Year.
“This year we are both working the first night of Pesach, so instead we move our family meal to the second night. Our Rabbi says this is fine as our jobs are to help others and the religion can ask no more than that, to help others and be a good person, so we don’t need to extend our personal Pesach by a day to make up for missing the first night. Yet there is a pang of guilt that our children are missing out,” added Amba.
“Not that they notice, they think the afikomen is a fun game, they listen to the story, they eat the meal with us, to them it doesn’t matter the day, what matters is the family time. While we are working we miss services at our synagogue, but no one minds. They understand our jobs, they even include a special prayer in each service for those who help others.”