Five Myths About Passover

Friday night, Jews around the world sat will sit down to a Passover Seder — a ritual that involves, among other things, retelling the story of the Israelite Exodus from Egypt described in the Torah, drinking a lot of wine and eating a big meal with symbolically significant foods. It's one of the most religiously important and widely observed Jewish holidays, with 70 percent of Jews reporting in a 2014 Pew survey that they had attended a Seder in the previous year. Given the weight and complexity of Passover (which lasts eight days in the Diaspora), it's not surprising that there are plenty of misunderstandings about both its history and its practice.