Saturday, April 4, 2015

Happy Passover, Birthday, Easter, and Paska.


Last night (Friday) was the first Passover Seder.  Today is my granddaughter’s second birthday, tomorrow is Easter in Western Christianity, and next Sunday is Orthodox (Greek) Easter.


Passover or Pesach always takes place around the same time as Easter or Paska because the holiday of Passover, commemorating God’s liberation of the Jewish People from slavery in Egypt, was the occasion for the Last Supper.  In fact, before the year 325 Easter was calculated upon the lunar-based Hebrew calendar and all one had to do to determine the date for Easter was to “ask a Jew in your community” when Passover was celebrated.


All that changed in 325 when the First Ecumenical Synod calculated the exact date of Easter from the more modern cycles of the sun-based Julian calendar.  That became Christianity’s generally accepted method for calculating the date of Easter and continued to be so for more than five hundred years after the Great Schism of 1052 separated the Church of the West to Rome and the Church of the East to Constantinople (Istanbul).

Then, in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII introduced what is known as the Gregorian calendar for the express purpose of correctly calculating Easter, something the Julian calendar was not believed to have achieved.  Today, the Gregorian calendar is the world’s officially accepted civil calendar (except in Greece’s 1500 year-old monastic community of Mount Athos—see Prey on Patmos), but there still is not agreement among the Christian world over whether it correctly fixes the date of Easter. 

Indeed, as recently as 1997 the World Council of Churches proposed a method of using modern scientific knowledge for precisely calculating Easter and replacing divergent practices.  It was not adopted.

As for how Passover fits into all this, Julian calendar Easter always falls on a Sunday after the first day of the eight-day Passover holiday and generally within those eight days, though at times more than a month later.  Western Easter, relying on the Gregorian calendar, also generally falls within Passover’s eight days, though three times in every nineteen-year period it falls a month before Passover.


Yes, that’s why Easter is considered a moveable feast, as opposed to Christmas that always occurs on the same date.


I guess you could say that, of all these celebratory springtime occasions, the only certainty is that my granddaughter’s birthday always falls on April 4th. :)

Happy Birthday, Rachel.


And a Happy Easter, Kalo Paska, and Zissen Pesach to all. 


Jeff—Saturday

12 comments:

  1. And my late husband - born Easter Sunday - so Bonny, blithe, good and gay squared - alwayd had his birthday March 24th

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  2. Jeff, this is more complicated than I thought. I was taught that Easter was the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. And that Passover was on the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox. Since The Last Supper was a sedar, in the year Christ died, the full moon in question was on a Thursday. Hence the Resurrection was on a Sunday. Which is why Sunday is the day of worship for Christians. Passover and Easter are almost always close together, unless the full moon is ON the vernal equinox, in which case that day is Passover and the Roman rite Christians (and all the Protestants) have to wait for the next full moon to roll around and celebrate the Sunday after that. Now I will have to google this to see why you and I learned different things.
    In my Jewish-Italian immigrant neighborhood growing up, this week almost always meant everyone was celebrating, and all the grandmothers were roasting lamb. Yum!!

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    1. Once again I agree with you...it's more complicated...but your understanding of the vernal equinox situation is correct. What complicates it are the three different calendars used in the calculations. Passover is based on a lunar calendar, while Eastern Orthodoxy uses the Julian sun based, and Western Christianity the Gregorian.

      Personally, I prefer the ask your son the rabbi approach.

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    2. Jeff, I beleive your son the rabbi lives in Texas. so does this guy, who explains why in some years, Passover comes AFTER Easter, which according to what I learned should never happen:

      The answer, as William H. Jefferys, the Harlan J. Smith Centennial Professor of Astronomy (Emeritus) at the University of Texas at Austin, explains, is that, since the standardization of the Hebrew calendar in the fourth century A.D., "actual observations of celestial events no longer played a part in the determination of the date of Passover." Thus, "the rule for Passover, which was originally intended to track the vernal equinox, has gotten a few days off."

      And moon has been called "inconstant!"

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    3. Once again it has to do with the differing calendars. That 4th Century "standardization" by the First Ecumenical Synod in 325 switched off the lunar calendar but the Hebrews did not and an additional lunar month every so often can result in Easter being a month earlier than Passover...this comes to you sans any rabbinical input on Shabos :).

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  3. Rachel's quite cute! Must favor her grandmother...

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  4. As all damsels should.... :) Thanks, EvKa.

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  5. Happy Easter! Happy Passover! Happy Spring! and all things. . .just happy wishes to you!

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    1. Thank you, Jackie and Joel. Same to you, my friends.

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  6. Your granddaughter is a cutie. Every time someone explains the moons and Easter and Passover I get a headache. I just like when they are close together. So a Happy Easter and zissen Pesach to one and all.

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    1. Thank you, Lil, we share the same views on my granddaughter and the headache inducer. :) All the best to you, too.

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