April has been a busy month in the New Albany Floyd County Library! We started the month with a rare full Solar Eclipse practically in our back yard.
We displayed amazing works of art during the Floyd County Elementary School Annual Art Show and Reception.
We recognized Arab American Heritage Month with displays and stories.
Additionally, we shared storytimes focusing on Earth Day, Autism Awareness, and World Bicycle Day to name a few.
Not to be “passed over” (hehe), the annual celebration of Pesach, or Passover takes place this year from sundown on Monday, April 22 through sundown on Tuesday, April 30. The weeklong festival, one of the most widely celebrated of Jewish holidays, commemorates the freedom of Jewish people from slavery in ancient Egypt. The Hebrew name, Pesach, means “to pass over” because the plague in Egypt that killed all firstborns passed over the Israelites’ homes, sparing the lives of their children.
Family and friends gather together after nightfall on the first and second nights of the holiday for the high point of the festival observance, the Seder. During the Seder, which means “order” in Hebrew, the experience of the Exodus is told in story, song, prayer, and the tasting of symbolic foods. The Seder meals include four cups of wine, eating matzah and bitter herbs, and retelling the story of the Exodus.
Perhaps the most well known Passover foods are maror (bitter herbs) and matzah (unleavened bread), which is a reminder of the haste with which the enslaved people left Egypt because they did not even have time for the bread to rise.
For the duration of Passover, Jews eat no leavened or fermented food or drink, including cake, cookies, cereal, pasta, and most alcoholic beverages. (https://www.almanac.com/passover)
Rabbi Benjamin Berger, vice president of Jewish education at Hillel International, said Passover is known as the “festival of freedom.” “It’s a celebration of not only the freedom of the Jewish people emerging from slavery in Egypt, and really putting ourselves in the shoes of those slaves and those who experienced the release from bondage, but also it reminds us of the freedom of all people,” he said. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/03/29/when-is-passover-2024/73143014007/
The library has several books about Passover in our collection. Here are a few favorites:
