Israel: Tweeting the Passover Seder · Global Voices
Elizabeth Tsurkov

The Jewish holiday of Passover began on the night of Friday April 6, and millions of Israelis gathered with their family for the Seder, the traditional ritual feast. The feast is preceded by reading the Haggada, which (among other things) describes the Exodus of the People of Israel from Egypt. The Passover Seder is notorious for being lengthy, and if followed according to the rules, eating commences after hours spent around the dinner table, reading from the Haggada and singing. The Seder, which is traditionally done with the extended family, is also infamous, much like American Thanksgiving, as an occasion when one is forced to spend time with disagreeable family members.
Table set for the Passover Seder. Image by Gilabrand, Wikimedia Commons.
Israeli Twitter users, known for their sense of humor and cynicism, could be counted on to tweet their Passover Seder experiences.
Lior Oren wrote:
Rotem wrote:
Avishay wrote:
Amir wrote:
Referring to the strict religious prohibition on consumption of leavened bread during the week of Passover, and the great effort religious/traditional Jews make to clean their homes and remove all bread prior to the start of the holiday, DKapuchino joked:
Musician Mux 2000 reported:
The blogger Gal Chen wrote:
And, of course, there were the political tweets:
Noa Dror wrote:
There is a tradition of leaving an empty chair for Prophet Elijah at the Passover Seder table, to express the hope for his return along with the Messiah. In recent years, Israeli families added an empty chair for the kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, to also signal the hope for his return. Referring to this practice, Journalist Yair Tarchitsky mocks the Israeli public for not caring about Ouda Tarabin, an Israeli Bedouin who is imprisoned in Egypt for accidentally crossing the border into Egypt.
Israeli blogger and social justice activist Haim Har-Zahav ‏wrote:
And then there were the tweets discussing the non-stop tweeting of the Seder itself:
Dudi Rosenthal joked:
Liron wrote: