Since Monday at sundown, Jewish people around the world have been celebrating a story that has lasted for thousands of years — a story about pain and joy.
It's a time for family, friends and remembrance.
Passover ends April 10 for a duration of eight days.
The biblical Book of Exodus explains the story of Passover. It commemorates the time period beginning when Moses asked the pharaoh of Egypt to free the Jewish people from years of slavery until their eventual freedom.
"Many people aren't aware of the struggles, and that Jewish people have been oppressed throughout history," said Jackie Dunayevich, a nursing sophomore and reformed Jew. "It is a holiday where you really have to be grateful for what we have now and what our ancestors did for us.
"When my parents came here, they didn't have much money because they grew up in a very Communist country and seeing the struggles they went through and seeing what they did for their children definitely relates to Passover."
On Tuesday, Dunayevich went home to Farmington Hills to share a meal, or Seder, with her family to commemorate the holiday.
"Seder means order," said Ricky Kamil, who led Seders at the Hillel Jewish Student Center on Monday and Tuesday. "There is a whole order of things we have to go through during the Seder."
The Passover Seder is rooted in symbolic rituals, said Kamil, an interdisciplinary humanities junior. The "order" re-enacts the journey from slavery to freedom of the Jewish people.
Sometimes this can last up to three hours, said Liz Harrow, a member of Kehillat Israel, a Lansing synagogue.
During Seder, "we take out 10 drops of wine to remember the 10 plagues God put over the Egyptians," she said.
Harrow said even though the Egyptians enslaved the Jews, the Seder remembers the Egyptians' pain throughout each plague.
Harrow said parsley and salt represent the tears of the Jews, and matzo is eaten to show the haste when leaving Egypt. Matzo is a bread made without yeast.
"It is a very powerful holiday in the Jewish tradition," said Ken Waltzer, MSU's Jewish Studies Program director. "Every Jew is commanded to think they are still in Egypt and leaving slavery. We react to that story to renew our own commitment to social justice, freedom and Jewish peoplehood."
Waltzer said the story of Jewish "peoplehood" is constructed when the Jewish people made a covenant with God, and Moses led them toward the promised land of Canaan.
Also, Passover does not just celebrate the Jewish people's tribulations, but remembers the tribulations of others, he said.
"All the people in the world aren't free," Waltzer said. "Slavery still exists in the 21st century."
