The Last Supper of Jesus: What Was It About?
For children 9-14, an introduction to the Jewish Passover holiday and the seder service
The day before this was published was Maundy Thursday, the day of the Last Supper of Jesus. According to most Christian traditions, the Last Supper was the Passover seder. What is Passover, and what is the seder service?
Passover is one of the most important Jewish holidays. To understand it, you need to know a little Jewish history.
A Bit of Jewish History
A very long time ago—about 3,900 years ago—a man named Abraham and his wife Sarah left their home in what is now Iraq to live in a land that God would give them. As far as anyone knows, Abraham was the first person to have a close relationship with God. God told him to settle in what is now Israel, in the Shomron and then in Judea. These places are now called the “West Bank” or “Occupied Territories” by many. However, since the time of Abraham they have had Jewish residents and they were the heartland of the ancient Jewish kingdoms of Judea and Israel. The Arabs invaded the land in the 7th century C.E., about 2500 years after Abraham.
The grandson of Abraham and his wife Sarah, Jacob (also called Israel), had twelve sons and one daughter. One of those sons, Joseph, made his brothers very angry and they sold him as a slave to some Egyptian traders. But because he was very smart and very honest, with God’s help he became the Pharaoh’s chief advisor.
There was a big famine all over the region. Finally, because they were starving, Joseph’s father, his brothers and their households came down to Egypt, where there was still food. They reunited with Joseph and stayed in Egypt, where they were known as Israelites because they were descendants of Jacob/Israel.
After that pharaoh died, the new ruler made all the Israelites slaves and forced them to make bricks and to build huge buildings for him.[i] Life was very, very hard for the Israelites. Finally the pharaoh made the Israelites drown all the boy babies in the Nile River.
Moses
One woman made a basket, put her tiny son in the basket, and floated it on the river. She sent her daughter to watch and see what happened. The daughter of Pharaoh found the basket with the baby. The baby’s sister ran to the princess and said she knew an Israelite woman who could help her take care of the baby. So the baby, who the princess named Moses, was taken care of by his real mother.
The Pharaoh kept making life harder and harder for the Israelites. Moses killed a slave master who was beating an Israelite slave. Then he had to run away. In the desert he became a shepherd. There God spoke to him and told him to return to Egypt and to tell the Pharaoh to let the Israelites leave.
He did exactly that. But Pharaoh kept saying No. Each time, God made a plague fall on Egypt. The plagues kept getting worse and worse. Finally God told Moses to tell the Israelites to kill a lamb and make a feast, but to paint the lamb’s blood on the outside of the frames of their front door. This would tell the Angel of Death that those were Israelite homes, so the Angel of Death would pass over them and not kill anyone inside. But in every other home, the first-born males all died.
Escaping Egypt
The day after this terrible plague, Pharaoh told Moses the Israelites could leave for three days. They had to leave immediately, and did not have time for their bread to rise. They ended up taking flatbread, or matza. Once free, the Israelites did not plan to return.
When the Israelites didn’t come back after their three days, Pharaoh sent his army to get them. The people were walking—men, women, old folks and babies. So they were slow. The army used chariots drawn by horses. They could move much, much faster.
On the sixth day after they left, the Israelites came to the Sea of Reeds, which is called the Red Sea in English. In front of them was water. Behind them, coming closer and closer, was the Egyptian army. So a brave man walked into the sea. The sea opened up so that the Israelites were able to cross on dry land. As soon as the last Israelite passed, the waters closed up again. Pharaoh’s army drowned but the Israelites were safe.
Remembering the Exodus
God told the Israelites to have a holiday every year to remember these miracles. First, that the Angel of Death passed over their homes. The name of the holiday, Passover, comes from this. Second, that God sent ten plagues to the Egyptians to show them that He was more powerful than Pharaoh. Third, that Pharaoh let them go. Fourth, that the sea opened so the Israelites could cross, and then closed up, drowning the Egyptians so that the Israelites were saved. There is no other account in history of people who were forced to be slaves later escaping slavery all together. This was a very, very special event.
The Passover holiday is 7 days long in Israel and 8 days long outside of Israel. In Israel, the first day, and the first two days outside of Israel, remind us that the Angel of Death passed over our homes, and that we escaped from slavery. The 7th day in Israel or 7th and 8th days outside of Israel commemorate crossing the Red Sea and escaping the Egyptian army.
In Israel the first and last days, and outside of Israel the first and last two days, are major holidays. On these days, no work is done and other laws are followed. These laws give people the free time to pray, visit with friends, and eat wonderful holiday meals. The in-between days are “half-holidays” where Jews who keep the tradition can do a little work, but also have time to enjoy life.
The Seder
The most important requirement for Passover is to hold a seder. The seder is the meal that many people say was Jesus’s Last Supper. At the seder we sit at the table, read the story of Passover out of a special book called the Haggadah or The Telling, eat certain foods that remind us of the suffering of the Jewish slaves, and thank God for giving us our freedom.
We have the seder in order to teach our children about being slaves and then becoming free. Near the beginning, the youngest child recites four questions that the Haggadah will answer. Eating special foods like matzah helps us remember what slavery was like and why it is so bad. After the history is told, we eat a large, wonderful meal. We even have dessert. But the last thing we eat is a piece of matzah so that we do not forget what the seder is about. Then we thank God for our food and our freedom and sing ancient songs.
Jews have lived all over the world, but our Haggadahs all have the same words in Hebrew. That is the language it was written in and the language of Israel today. Many Haggadahs are translated too. My Haggadahs have English on one page and Hebrew on the facing page. I also have a Haggadah written in Hebrew and Russian for the times my Jewish friend Irina from the Soviet Union came to my seder. When the Haggadah is in more than one language, everyone can understand.
Many Customs
There are many customs. Jews from Yemen, a small country southeast of Saudi Arabia, put their matzas in a bag that they carry over their shoulder. Everyone marches around the table to remind the children of escaping from slavery. Many people eat a hard-cooked egg dipped in salt water. The salt water represents tears and the egg represents new life. This is the theme of the holiday: from tears as slaves, we rose to a new life as free people.
We eat matzah instead of bread for the whole holiday. Jews from different places have other customs about special foods for the holiday. We also say special prayers. One interesting thing is that on holidays we read special psalms in honor of the holiday. But on Passover we say all the psalms on the first day or days, but after that we leave out two of them. We do this out of sadness that any Egyptians had to die in order for us to become free.
On the last day or days, the synagogue service has special prayers. Then we have more holiday meals, often with company. Many people sing the ancient songs at the table between the main course and dessert. I was once at a concert where one of these songs was sung twelve times, each time with a melody from a different country where Jews once lived. Many of those countries have no Jews living there now, though. After Israel was established in 1948, the Jews were forced to leave their homes in the Muslim countries of North Africa and the Middle East.
Passover is a wonderful holiday that teaches Jewish children a lot about their history. The Haggadah that was used at Jesus’s Last Supper might have been changed, though. Even today, not all Jews use the traditional Haggadah. Some people like to be modern, so they write new words and new ideas.
The problem is that as times change, those “new ideas” start sounding very out-of-date. When I was young, Jews living in the Soviet Union (what is now Russia and the formerly Communist countries) had very difficult lives. I once was at a seder that used a new Haggadah that talked about their suffering. But today, the Soviet Union is gone, all those countries are free, and many Jews who lived through that bad time now live in Israel. That Haggadah includes a lot of stuff that just doesn’t make sense now.
The traditional Haggadah has “stood the test of time.” That means that even though it is very, very old, the Haggadah, like the holiday of Passover, is still meaningful today.
For Parents, Teachers, and Others
I felt a little strange writing about Jesus in this piece, but the most common questions I got in the USA as a Jew were about Passover. I hope that this answers the most basic questions adequately. There are whole books about Passover; it is hard to do the subject justice in this short space.
For more information, I recommend searching on www.chabad.org or www.aish.com. Both sites have great information on the Jewish holidays.
[i] The Bible (Exodus 1:11) says “store-cities, Pithom and Ramses.” The Bible says they were also brick-makers, a specialized trade that was given to slaves. The pyramids were built centuries earlier. Falk, D.A., What Kind of Construction Did the Israelites Do in Egypt? TheTorah.com, https://www.thetorah.com/article/what-kind-of-construction-did-the-israelites-do-in-egypt, accessed March 28, 2024.
I highly enjoyed reading your article. Kol hakavod!