The JewJu Blog


Ellen Morrow Ellen Morrow

Can you eat during the Seder?

In our family, we grew up with an unspoken rule that there was no eating during the Seder, except for what was required as part of the seder. Except for babies in highchairs. It was a revelation to me when someone suggested putting out snacks on the table, initially to make the wait easier on our children.

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Ellen Morrow Ellen Morrow

What does Haggadah mean?

“Haggadah” is a Hebrew word that means “telling” in the sense of “recounting”. As such, it’s also the name of the book that is used during a Passover Seder to guide participants in the retelling of the exodus from Egypt and the rituals associated with this retelling.

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Ellen Morrow Ellen Morrow

What is written inside a Mezuzah?

“Mezuzah” means doorpost, but it has come to mean the object that Jews hang outside their doors, on the doorpost. It’s composed of two parts, the scroll, sometimes called a klaf (קְלָף ) which has the words of the mezuzah, and a case for the scroll.

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Ellen Morrow Ellen Morrow

Is a Mezuzah good luck?

If you do an Internet search for “mezuzah folk tales”, you’ll find plenty of stories of terrible things happening to people whose mezuzot are somehow not kosher….

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