Coshocton Christian Tabernacle hosted a Seder Feast

Beacon Staff | March 27, 2023

Coshocton Christian Tabernacle hosted a Seder Feast led by Josh and Annette Sofaer from Jews for Jesus on Sunday evening March 26. Both serve as full time missionaries with Jews for Jesus. They live, work and minister in Southern California. They are here in Ohio for about a week to visit eight different churches during Passover.

The Seder Feast was an evening to learn about Jewish traditions by clapping and singing in Hebrew, experiencing a kosher meal and other traditions. The word Seder means “order” in Hebrew. There is a very specific order to the Seder service and meal. Jews for Jesus is an international Christian Missionary organization from California connected to the Messianic Jewish movement that believes Jesus is the Christ and the son of God.

“Thank you for inviting me to come and share Passover,” Josh said. “You get a chance to participate in the Passover rather than hearing a presentation. The last supper was the Passover meal and Jesus celebrated because He was Jewish. I am Jewish and I have celebrated Passover every year of my life. It is one my favorite holidays of the year and I also believe in Jesus as the Messiah. The writers of the New Testament were Jewish and tonight I want to help you to understand some of the background of what we read in the New Testament and we are also going to be celebrating Passover. More than any other story in the Bible, Passover tells the story of redemption. We’re told to gather together and celebrate and remember the Exodus from Egypt.”

Passover is a meal that happens in a home with an extended family.

“Each table tonight, you are a family whether you like it or not,” Josh said. “You need to appoint a Mamma and a Papa. The celebration was set into a particular order called a Seder at about 200 AD. For over 200 years Jews have celebrated in exactly the same way. Passover takes typically five or six hours but it is not going to be quite that long tonight.”

Angie Eberhard, event coordinator and treasurer for the church said, “We did this over 20 years ago when we were at our old church on Browns Lane. It was the same gentleman that is here tonight. Seder is how the Jewish people celebrated Passover. The Jewish people have a lot of rituals and customs that they walk their families through The families met together one time a year and it has a lot of historic significance to the Jewish people. We are having a Kosher Jewish meal after the Seder and we’re very selective with the menu. We stuck to chicken, Jewish meat balls, Passover potato kugel, Israelie salad, and kosher eggs. There are 6 elements to the Seder feast. First, washing your hands, get a sprig of parsley from a bowl, then dip the parsley into a bowl of salt water and eat it. The third bowl has a hard boiled brown egg, fourth bowl Haroset (a mixture of chopped apples, nuts and wine), the fifth horseradish and sixth an onion, but you don’t eat it. We are excited to learn about the Jewish culture and why they celebrated Passover the way they did.”

The parsley represents the initial flourishing of the Israelites during the first years in Egypt. The salt water represents the salty tears that the Jews shed in their slavery in Egypt. Next, eating an egg is a sign of mourning and Haroset symbolizes the mortar enslaved Israelites used when building Egyptian cities. Horseradish “bitter herbs,” recalls the bitterness and suffering under slavery.

The first step in a Seder is the night before Passover the fathers make sure there is no yeast at the table because this is the festival of unleavened bread. Anything that contains yeast must be taken out of the house, then, pray and thank God for this evening. For the second step the Mamma or the women of the house light the candles. The lights sanctify or set apart time. They stand for the blessing over the candles and recite the blessing in Hebrew. Next, washing hands with a tradition of a bowl, a pitcher of water and a towel. This would have been the time that Jesus would have girded himself and gone to each of the disciples and and washed each of their feet, setting apart the people for a life of service. Next, drinking of the first of four cups of juice. There is a blessing for each cup in Hebrew, then in English. One word at a time four times over the course of the evening. The first cup is the cup of sanctification. Children are also a part of the Passover, they ask the four questions. The children are answered and told the story of when they were slaves in Egypt. Moses asked Pharaoh to let my people go. The 10th time Moses asked Pharaoh said no and God sent the last plague, the killing of the first born of every home in the land. Except where blood from a lamb was on the door posts of the home and the angel would pass over that house. If you were not Jewish and put blood on your door, your first born would be spared because this was not based on ethnicity. This means that salvation and redemption is not based on where you were born. It’s based on whether you are covered by the blood of the lamb. Washed by the blood of the lamb comes from the Passover.

“The Jewish holiday of Passover is something that goes all the way back to the Bible. People have been celebrating in someway or another for a long long time,” Josh said. “In the New Testament one of the things we see of Jesus was His celebration of Passover because His family was Jewish and it was at a Passover meal that He instituted communion. He talked about his own death and even talked about His Resurrection and the life to come. We call that meal the Last Supper, but people don’t realize that the Last Supper and Passover are the same thing. The Passover Jewish people celebrate today is similar to but not exactly the same as Jesus celebrated. A lot of the same ideas are there and a lot of the same practices are there. Of the few things we are trying to do here, one is we are trying to help people understand the background and the context of the New Testament and realize that when Jesus took bread and said, ‘This is my body,’ and a cup of wine and said, ‘This is my blood,’ it wasn’t some random thing. It was in the context of a whole meal, so understanding those themes the third thing is to say and show that you can be Jewish and believe in Jesus today. My wife and I are living proof of that.”

Pastor Mike Jansen said, “We were originally thinking we would have maybe 80 to 100 people but we have around 150 people right now. We just kept taking reservations. This is a walk through of the Passover that Jews still celebrate today. Moses took them from Egypt to the Exodus to get to the Promise Land. We will incorporate Communion right into the service today. In the Old Testament when the Hebrew Nation was in slavery for 400 years there came a time for deliverance. Moses was going to deliver the people to the Promised Land. There was 10 plagues that the Egyptians suffered and the Hebrew Nation didn’t because they were under the protection of God. It got to the 10th plague which was the worst because the very first born was going to die. Moses told them, ‘You are to bake unleavened bread, to pack your things, you are to slaughter a lamb and have a feast because you will be walking out of Egypt. To protect every first born from the Death Angel you have to put the blood of the lamb over your door frame. When the death Angel sees the blood of the lamb he will pass over your house.’ Christians recognize that Jesus was the sacrifice for their sins. His blood shed for us is the only reason anyone of us is going to get to heaven. The only reason anyone can get to heaven is you have to acknowledge Jesus as your savior. That is the tie between the Old and the New Testament.”