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“You Shall Tell”: Passover and Passing Down Tradition

5 min read

By Rebeccah Swerdlow, Digital Imaging Specialist

Tonight marks the beginning of the biblical holiday of spring, Passover. Also known as Pesach in Hebrew, it commemorates the exodus of the Israelites from slavery. Per the second book of the Bible, the Jewish community was enslaved by the Egyptian Pharaoh, who feared their growing numbers and consequently ordered the death of all newborn boys. One child, Moses, survived into adulthood, and God spoke to him, ordering Moses to demand freedom for his people from the Pharaoh (fig 1.).

The Corrie ten Boom Bible open to Exodus 3, which recounts God calling Moses to return to Egypt.

Figure 1: Exodus 3, which recounts God calling Moses to return to Egypt, in the Corrie ten Boom Bible. Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) was a Dutch watchmaker who supported the Dutch resistance during WWII and helped Jews and other refugees escape arrest. Learn more about Ten Boom and this Bible here. Image © Museum of the Bible, 2024. All rights reserved.

To convince Pharaoh, God sent 10 plagues, and Pharaoh eventually ordered the freedom and expulsion of the Israelites. God then bestowed the Ten Commandments upon Moses, and the Israelites wandered the desert for 40 years journeying to the Promised Land.

Every year, this story is recounted at a Passover Seder, or ritual feast, as Jewish families and communities gather to read from the Haggadah (read more about the Prague Haggadah or the Afghan Liturgical Quire in our collections). The word is from the Hebrew for “you shall tell,” or higgadeta, found in Exodus 13:8, “And you shall tell your child on that day, ‘It is because of what יהוה [the LORD] did for me when I went free from Egypt.’” While this ritual text is relatively standardized, the food and traditions vary by community and ethnicity. My Ashkenazi family, for example, enjoys a mixture of nuts, apples, spices, and wine to make charoset, which represents the mortar that the Israelites used for construction in Egypt. But other communities use a different recipe for the mixture. Some of these traditions and instructions can also be found in Bibles made for Jewish audiences, like The Holy Scriptures, a Jewish Bible illustrated by Holocaust survivor Jacob Barosin (fig. 2 and fig. 3, read more).

Jacob Barosin’s Bible, open to the Passover story.

The Passover story continues in Jacob Barosin’s Bible.

Figure 2 & 3: Pages in Jacob Barosin’s Bible, The Holy Scriptures, explaining the holiday and traditions of Passover. Jacob (Judey) Barosin (1906–2001) was a Jewish artist and Holocaust survivor. This Bible was fully illustrated by Barosin. Learn more about Barosin and this Bible here. Image © Museum of the Bible, 2024. All rights reserved.

Not everyone has a Haggadah in their home, but the story of Passover is well documented in the book of Exodus. Specific verses recount Moses’s conversation with God in a burning bush, each of the ten plagues that afflicted the Pharaoh and people of Egypt, and the parting of the Red Sea as Moses led the Israelites out of slavery.

At the museum, you can engage with this story through several artifacts. Come see pages from Corrie ten Boom’s Bible, a notable Dutch-resistance heroine who helped hide Jews from Nazis during the Holocaust (figs. 4–6; click the icon on the bottom right of the image to take a closer look).

Figures 4, 5 & 6: Exodus chapters 11, 12, 14, and 15, which recount the events of tenth plague, the crossing of the Red Sea, and days in the wilderness, in the Corrie ten Boom Bible. Image © Museum of the Bible, 2024. All rights reserved.

Or come and engage with the Ten Commandments. At the summit of Mount Sinai, God gifted Moses two stone tablets with the engraved teachings, and though they are in every copy of the Bible, Museum of the Bible is fortunate enough to have historically unique printings, even some that got them wrong, like the “Wicked Bible” (fig. 7).

The Wicked Bible, open to Exodus 20 and Leviticus 19.

Figure 7 & 8: The Wicked Bible, flipped to Exodus 20 and Leviticus 19. This Bible was printed by Robert Baker, the “King’s Printer.” In this 1631 King James Bible, it omits the critical word “not” in Exodus 20:14, leading to the unfortunate exhortation, “Thou shalt commit adultery.” (Most copies of this edition were either corrected or destroyed.) Learn more about this Bible here. Image © Museum of the Bible. All rights reserved.

If you can’t make it to the museum this spring, you can still engage with the story through our digital collections. Through digitization, we can preserve and pass on this history to different generations and communities with more efficiency and ease than ever before.

The story of Passover is one of perseverance and faith. The Israelites endured centuries of slavery and decades of wandering through the desert. Moses persisted in his demand for freedom for his people from a pharaoh with a hardened heart. Today, Jewish communities gather every year to recount our hardships and appreciate our history and culture.

Mentioned in this article:

In Their Ancestors' Place: The Prague Haggadah in the Museum Collections | Museum of the Bible

Sacred Books: A Story of Jewish Heritage from Afghanistan | Museum of the Bible

Capturing the Collections: The Holy Scriptures, Illustrated by Jacob Barosin | Museum of the Bible