Tale of two seders

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, April 24th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: a tale of two Seders.

As Christians celebrated Easter, many in the Jewish faith marked the close of Passover. That’s a weeklong festival that includes the Seder meal.

REICHARD: WORLD spoke with two rabbis. One celebrated Passover looking forward to a new Jewish Messiah. The other says the Messiah has already come. Here’s WORLD’s Travis Kircher.

TRAVIS KIRCHER: The week before the Jewish Passover officially began, Rabbi Shlomo Litvin was on a seek-and-destroy mission. The target? Leaven: Not just yeast, but any substance that would cause dough to rise.

RABBI SHLOMO LITVIN: My house, the couches are flipped over right now. My kids are scrubbing under the bottom of the fridge, anywhere that a contaminant might meet there might be a little bit of leaven, we clear out.

Litvin is the director of eastern Kentucky's branch of Chabad Lubavitch, a form of Orthodox Judaism. Litvin strives to live by the Mosaic law outlined in the Torah. It commands the leaven purge before Passover begins. Litvin and his family take the search seriously.

LITVIN: So Cheerios, pretzels, of course, cake and bread and pies. And there's so much...I have, thank God, seven kids. There is leaven everywhere in my house when we start cleaning for Passover.

Litvin says the purge is important, because the Passover festival—particularly the Seder meal—is central to Jewish history. It’s when Jews remember how Yahweh delivered them from slavery in the land of Egypt and taught them how to as a free people.

LITVIN: Freedom means freedom to worship God. So that's what we're celebrating, freedom from an earthly master, in order to dedicate ourselves entirely to the creator of Heaven and Earth, our Father in heaven.

Litvin’s Seder meal will include matzah bread, bitter herbs, salt water and traditional readings. But he admits one key element won’t be on his table: the Passover lamb. It never has been. He says Jews haven’t been able to eat the lamb since the Romans destroyed the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD. Litvin says he’s hoping someday a Jewish Messiah will change all that.

LITVIN: One of the 13 national beliefs of Judaism that every Jew has believed in for the last 3300 years is that there will eventually be an everlasting Temple in Jerusalem, that there will be yet another anointed king from the house of David who will redeem those who long for God's salvation, bring them back to the land and there rebuild the temple.

And Litvin is watching. He says he knows the requirements for the Messiah.

LITVIN: To be a scholar of God's law, to fight the battles of God, to be son after son from David…

But while Litvin believes the Messiah may show all people the way to God, he says the Seder meal is only for the Jews. He compares a Gentile celebrating Seder to a boy who celebrates his brother’s birthday by blowing out candles on his own birthday cake.

LITVIN: To me, someone who is not bound by the covenant, ...it feels more performative than earnest.

But not every Jew celebrates the same.

On Saturday, the night before Easter, a very different Seder celebration takes place at St. John’s Community Church, about 15 miles northeast of Louisville. Roughly 70 people are gathered in the church gym. They include people of all ages—both Jews and Gentiles. A team leads Jewish worship songs, while some of those in attendance join hands and dance.

They're led by Rabbi Aaron Bortz. Bortz is a Messianic Jew—a believer in Christ. And he’s making a controversial claim. He believes Judaism—true Judaism—and Christianity are one and the same.

RABBI AARON BORTZ: Christianity is what Judaism was to grow into…

Bortz says true Judaism recognizes Jesus Christ as the Messiah prophesied by the Old Testament. And tonight he’s hosting a Seder meal to celebrate both the Jews’ deliverance from Egypt and deliverance from sin, through Christ.

BORTZ: and we see him as the Ha'av, Havan Veruch Hakodsh. That means the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit..

Bortz says a conversation with a Sunday School teacher got him thinking about putting on the Seder.

BORTZ: He said to me, "I've been a believer and a teacher for over 40 years of children, and I never knew that the Last Supper was a Passover Seder." Well, that's a shame

Scholars differ on whether the Last Supper was an actual Seder meal—as the Gospel of John indicates that it occurred before the day of preparation. Additionally, many of the Seder rituals celebrated today developed after the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. But the last supper’s proximity to Passover means it’s full of similar imagery.

Bortz admits that as New Covenant believers, Christians don’t have to keep the Passover. But he says the Christian church has had a bad habit of shying away from its Jewish roots since the days of Constantine. And events like this help unite Christians and Messianic Jews.

BORTZ: The church is following Yeshua, but they don't know him as Yeshua. They know him as Jesus. They don't know him as the Messiah. They know him as Christ, and they always refer to those terms. They don't want to use the real word.

SOUND: [Crowd at Messianic Seder]

Each part of the Seder meal has a different purpose. Bitter herbs—typically horseradish—remind attendees of the bitterness of slavery to Egypt, and of their own sin. Parsley dipped in saltwater recalls the saltiness of the Red Sea when God parted it to save his people. A sweet mixture of nuts and apples called Charoset represents the bricks and mortar the Israelites made while in slavery. But at this Seder as well, there is no Passover lamb. That’s because Bortz says Messiah Jesus, the Lamb of God, has already been offered.

BORTZ: If you’re here and you believe in Messiah, you have been redeemed. You have been bought back. That’s what redeemed means!

Jews often end Passover with the phrase “Next year in Jerusalem.” For many Jews, it’s the hope that the Messiah will be revealed. But for Seder attendee Joseph Schult, it’s not about the hope that a Messiah will come. It’s the expectation that the Messiah…will return.

JOSEPH SCHULT: Even Jesus says in the New Testament, "I will not drink of this cup. I will not eat of this meal until I eat it new with you in My Father's Kingdom." This is an eternal feast. This will be happening when we get to Heaven.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Travis Kircher…in Louisville and Prospect, Kentucky.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Previously, this story misidentified the Seder element charoset as maror. We regret the error and have corrected the story.

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