It’s actually the eggs. And I point out from the outset what I believe, beyond various academic discussions: Easter eggs, an inevitable element in this season whether they are made of chocolate or not, were already present in the Hebrew Easter.
With 1,300 years before, Pesaj, the Jewish holiday that is undoubtedly the basis of the Christian celebration, is celebrated around a family dinner (two dinners if it is outside of Israel) where the central plate that presides over the table has various foods symbolic.
There, mixed between the unleavened bread, the bitter herbs, a chicken bone and other things, is located, timid, as if passing by, a hard-boiled egg, generally somewhat burnt, that does not mix well with its neighbors.
The truth is that it does not have a great role in the Seder, the traditional 15-step dinner, established millennia ago. Its consumption is not accompanied by a specific blessing as the intake of other foods is, and it is not part of what must be eaten, as a minimum requirement, during the old dinner.
But there is the egg, representing the offering that was made on every festive occasion while the Temple of Jerusalem existed. That is why it is burned, recalling what once happened with a kid, a steer or a lamb.
That peculiar egg, for unknown reasons, ended up being transfigured into the current Easter egg, and in the process a few new meanings were attached to it, quite different from the original. Questions of times and customs, as almost always…
Meanwhile, with Easter already over and with a couple of days left before Pesach, what we should be left with, at least in Jewish practice, is counting the days – one by one – to reach the next holiday, Shavuot. o Pentecost (we count 49 days and the party is the 50th).
Because? Because Passover simply recalls the liberation from Egypt following centuries of slavery. And even when that only justifies such a party, ultimately it is an incomplete party that takes on its real dimension on Shavuot when the delivery of the Torah, of the Law, of the commandments is remembered.
Because it is not enough to free oneself “from”, if we do not know “for what” we free ourselves. And to capture that, you also need that food…
* Rabbi, member of Comipaz
