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Blessed Be the Food

1 byte added, 08:17, 8 April 2023
{{Video|url=https://vimeo.com/202227066|szer=400|poz=right|opis=The seven seder dishes<br>{{small|By Nina Paley}}}}
''Matzah'', or unleavened bread, is eaten in memory of the Jews escaping Egypt in haste and thus having no time to wait for the dough rise. ''Zeroa'', or a&nbsp;lamb shank, commemorates the lambs whose blood the Jews used to smear on their doorposts as an identification marker just before the escape, as well as those later sacrificed in the Jerusalem Temple; nowadays, it’s usually substituted for with a&nbsp;chicken wing. ''Beitzah'', or a&nbsp;chicken egg that is hard-boiled and the then additionally roasted, is another memento of temple offerings. Two kinds of bitter herbs – ''maror'' and ''hazeret'' – symbolize the bitterness of slavery in Egypt. Ashkenazi Jews (those from northern Europe) typically use romaine lettuce for ''hazeret'' and horseradish (often dyed red with beetroot juice in the style of Polish beet-and-horseradish relish) for ''maror'' – even though horseradish is neither bitter nor a&nbsp;herb. ''Haroset'' is a&nbsp;sweet paste of apples, walnuts and honey, meant to stand for masonry mortar to remember that Jewish slaves in Egypt were mostly used for construction work. Finally, the seventh food is ''karpas'', or some green vegetable (e.g., parsley leaves) which is dipped in salted water, a&nbsp;symbol of the tears shed by the Jews in slavery. All of this is paired with wine.
It wasn’t before the Middle Ages until this set of seder foods was fully formed, but Passover supper must have consisted of more than just bread and wine already in Jesus’s times. In fact, it doesn’t really matter what Jesus really ate for his last meal before death; what matters is Jews usually had for the seder around the time that the Christian custom of blessing food fro Easter was being born, which took place in the early Middle Ages. Christian priests at the time had a&nbsp;tendency to reuse Old Testament rituals in their liturgy.<ref>{{Cyt