Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Orthodox Jewish rabbis turned the holiday on its head, ordering travel to be canceled and limiting the usually large Passover meals to immediate family only.
takes a lot of work."I wasn't always so happy to make my own holiday," said Toms River, N.J. resident Penina Nussbaum.
While others scrambled to figure out how to host Passover, Nussbaum remained calm. She had a head start. "We made an unequivocal statement to stay at home. Do not travel. Do not go to your neighbor. Don't go to your brother," Rabbi Aaron Kotler, president of Yeshiva Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, said in a Facebook Live conversation with the Asbury Park Press. "We know, for the last 20 years, you've been observing Passover as a family. But do not leave your home for the Passover holiday.
Anyone without a place to go was ordered to self-quarantine for two weeks before the holiday began and before attending anyone else's Seder meal. They canceled their travel plans, to parents and grandparents and in-laws' houses in other states. The long tables, designed for as many as two dozen extended family members and friends, will instead be used by only a few.
Passover, or Pesach, is one of the major holidays on the Jewish calendar, beginning Wednesday at sundown. It celebrates the exodus of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt. The holiday lasts eight days and, depending on the sect of Judaism, two traditional Seder meals on the first and/or second night.
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