Except that the Synagogues are decked with flowers, while the Decalogue
is solemnly intoned from the Scroll of the Pentateuch, the Feast of
Pentecost has no ceremonial trappings even with the orthodox. Passover and
Tabernacles stand on a different footing. The abstention from leavened
bread on the former feast has led to a closely organised system of
cleansing the houses, an interminable array of rules as to food; while
the prescriptions of the Law as to the bearing of palm-branches and other
emblems, and the ordinance as to dwelling in booths, have surrounded
the Feast of Tabernacles with a considerable, if less extensive,
ceremonial. But there is this difference. The Passover is primarily a
festival of the Home, Tabernacles of the Synagogue. In Europe the habit
of actually dwelling in booths has been long unusual, owing to climatic
considerations. But of late years it has become customary for every
Synagogue to raise its communal booth, to which many Jews pay visits of
ceremony. On the other hand, the Passover is _par excellence_ a home
rite. On the first two evenings (or at all events on the first evening)
there takes place the _Seder_, (literally 'service'), a service of
prayer, which is at the same time a family meal. Gathered round the table,
on which are spread unleavened cakes, bitter herbs, and other emblems of
joy and sorrow, the family recounts in prose and song the narrative of
the Exodus. The service is in two parts, between which comes the evening
meal. The hallowing of the home here attains its highest point.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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