What does the true Passover dinner include?

Posted by on Apr 19, 2020

Question: According to the Torah, what does the Passover dinner include?

Answer: The law of Pesach (Passover lamb) is very specific on what the Pesach dinner should include. We read in Exo 12:8-10 that we shall eat lamb roasted in fire with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs. We are not to eat it raw, nor boiled, but roasted in fire. And what remains of the lamb, we are to burn with fire and not discard in the trash. It is not an ordinary meal, it is the Pesach of YHVH.

Passover lamb

Passover lamb

In contrast with the traditional Rabbinic menu, there are only three components in the Pesach dinner: roasted lamb, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs. However, the Rabbinic menu includes food that is not in the law of Pesach; even worse, the Pesach lamb is not in the Pesach (Passover) dinner! Instead, chicken breast and gefilte fish are served with matzah ball soup, eggs, apple with honey, etc. 

According to the Rabbinic tradition, this what most of the Jews eat on the first night of the Festival of Unleavened Bread; most but not all.

What is missed, however, is that Mosheh our teacher demanded that we should eat Pesach with unleavened bread for seven days during the festival, not just in the first night.

How about the wine? Did not Yeshua pour wine in the cup in the last supper with His disciples? But, was the last supper the Passover dinner, in the first place?

For more on Pesach (Passover) and how Yeshua, the Pesach of YHVH, fulfilled it, please, refer to the corresponding articles in the series The Appointed Times of YHVH.