Can I still buy, use, give kosher for Passover matzoh and chocolates. How long is Passover celebrated? Does it start or end at sunset or twilight or sundown or nightfall - are they the same?
Passover's Start and End
Passover started in 2026 on April 1st. It's an eight day festival and continues until the close of day on April 9th. Just a minute, I read in one place sunset, in another nightfall. Are these just fancy words for the same thing? Apparently not.
Sunset, Twilight
Sunset is when the sun sinks below the horizon so you can no longer see it. Sunset is the movement of the yellow orb. It is a precise time.
Twilight lasts longer, after sunset. But twilight is when you still have enough reflected, dwindling light to see, and not turn on the street lights, or car lights? This depends on where you are in the world and the time of year. Dawn, too.
Nautical night time and land night time are different again, total blackness, and are when you can see stars.
Seeing Stars
I read somewhere that in the old days, before clocks, whether travelling or at home, the day ended, and sabbath began (when you said the prayers and lit the candles) when you can see three stars. Does it matter? You light the sabbath candles, say the prayer, or say the prayer and light the candles.
Candles & Safety
Some people allow electric candles. I am very wary about candles. You could set off a fire alarm in a hotel.
My grandmother forbade lit candles, after the wind or a draught blew a curtain across candles on the table and nearly set fire to the tablecloth and house, as well as burning people who tried to put out the flame. Never forgot the shock.
My tenants, Indians and British, lit flames for the birth of their child, set off a fire alarm, and the elderly blind man upstairs heard the alarm, came out, smelled the smoke as they carried the burning cauldon out through the hall. He fell down the stairs and nearly injured himself. They had been great friends, previously.
If you light the candles in a kitchen-diner on the work surface beside the sink, is that better?
But you don't throw water on a burning oil pan. That splashes the oil and flames further and is a major cause of fire.
In a kitchen you need a fire blanket and a fire extinguisher which are for different types of fires. But I am digressing. Let's go back to the Seder night and seder.
The second seder night
I was invited to a second seder night, in the UK.
In Jerusalem, Israel, they celebrate only one Seder night.
In the UK traditionally, like travellers and residents all over the world. you would celebrate two nights to be sure of coinciding with the time in Jerusalem. This is still done nowadays.
Sometimes a family will celebrate with their immediate family, or their whole extended family, on the first night. The second night is for visitors, singles, widows and widowers, foreigners, guests. Or it could be the other way round.
Sharing The Preparation Of A Seder
You can have the mother, grandmother, matriarch, making the first night. Her daughter or sister provides the second night. You can have one person providing one food, another cooking or buying the other food. Or take the leftovers from night one to the meal for night two. (Same as might be done for Christmas and boxing day in the UK, or wedding cake and birthday cake.)
Sunset Time In Diaries
With modern pollution, as well as awnings, and balconies, and being indoors, you might not see three stars. Religious people have diaries which tell them in advance the times, so they can tell you when to arrive for the following shabbat (sabbath) meal, or start of a festival.
If you are religious, or visiting people who are religious, you can go by the websites or newspapers read by orthodox, observant people.
Strictly Orthodox
Interesting, the people around the table were all of different degrees of belief. A lively debate debunked the idea that Jews were ever in Egypt, the basis of the whole story. Nonetheless, everybody present was happy to go along with most of the rituals and the reading of the Seder story from the Haggadah, more than 40 pages of it, with Hebrew and English.
Lent and Passover
Lent is derived from Passover. Pancake day uses up cereal in pancakes.
Passover, according to the Discovery Channel programme I watched, requires a spring clean, removing from homes and public buildings all last year's cereal which could have gone mouldy in a wet year and could give everybody ergot, whose symptoms in a previous century were nicknamed St Vitus's Dance.
Useful Websites On Sunset and Ergot, kosher and vegan
https://www.askdifference.com/nightfall-vs-sunset/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergot
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/547235/jewish/Are-All-Vegan-Restaurants-Kosher.htm
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