Tonight marks a special milestone on the Jewish calendar: the first night of Passover. Jews across the world gather with their families and friends for the Passover Seder, the festive meal designed to commemorate the biblical story of the Israelites’ liberation from enslavement in Egypt – a thrilling tale filled with vicious plagues, a splitting sea and a heroic Egyptian adopted prince.

The Passover Haggadah is a book of compiled readings and songs referenced throughout the Seder to convey the Passover story. Over 7,000 editions have been published, each with its own commentary and illustrations. My Haggadah growing up had colorful claymation pictures; I loved it so much that I occasionally picked it up for some light reading over the summer.

While Passover Seders vary across time and place, they all contain the same basic elements. Here is a run-down of the highlights:

1. The Seder Plate

The Seder Plate contains six different foods, each with its own symbolic meaning in relation to the Passover story. For example, bitter herbs represent the harshness of slavery, parsley signifies the springtime and a hard-boiled egg symbolizes the continuity of life.

When I was 10, I was inspired to assign meaning to every food I ate for several weeks following the Seder: mashed potatoes symbolized sand, broccoli epitomized the trees in my backyard, and an orange represented the color orange; I was a very deep child. I stopped playing the game after I failed to deduce the significance of waffles.

2. The Four Questions

To establish the Seder’s interactive atmosphere, the asking of the four questions is reserved for the youngest child at the table who can read or at least sing. In my family, this tradition allowed for the early discovery of a musical prodigy when my younger cousin of two-and-a-half years successfully sang the questions. She is now 11 and about to sign a record deal – just kidding.

Each of the Four Questions enquires the significance behind a tradition that distinguishes the Passover Seder from all other nights of the year. The most famous of these traditions is the eating of the matzah – the dry, tasteless cracker meant to represent the unleavened bread the Israelites ate in their haste to leave Egypt.

Since my sister and I are twins, the question of the “youngest child” always posed some ambiguity despite the clear documentation that I was born seven minutes earlier. In any case, people seem to enjoy the spectacle of twin girls chanting together in different keys, so our birth order was deemed irrelevant.

3. The Four Children

The allegorical tale of the four children provides a script for how to engage four different personality types within the Passover Seder: the wise child, the wicked child, the simple child and the child who does not know how to ask a question.

I like to think of the story as an early ancestor of the self-help parenting book “How to Talk About the Past with Your Wise/Wicked/Bashful/Simple Teen So That They Really Listen.” The Rabbis who wrote this were clearly ahead of their time in the child psychology department.

While I usually liked to identify with the wise child, one year I contracted a severe case of laryngitis right before the holiday. I could not speak and thus aptly represented the child who does not know how to ask a question.

4. The Afikomen

After dinner, children customarily partake in a competitive treasure hunt for a missing piece of matzah called the Afikomen. Matzah wrapped in a napkin camouflages pretty well with household furniture, so locating it is never an easy task. My triumphant retrieval of the Afikomen from my great uncle’s window sill marked one of my prouder childhood moments.

Once this essential piece of matzah is found, everyone eats a piece of it, providing the perfect aftertaste to a delicious meal.

5. Elijah the Prophet

Within Jewish tradition, rumor has it that Elijah the Prophet visits every Seder on the night of Passover, which is why families set the table with an extra cup of wine. Growing up, Elijah always seemed to come and leave while I was in the depths of the Afikomen search. It took me several years to realize that he lives across the street from the Tooth Fairy.

And that concludes my preview of the traditional Passover Seder, coming tonight to a home near you with complementary matzah ball soup and four glasses of wine. Chag Sameach!

Merav Kaufman is a Collegian columnist. She can be reached at [email protected].