Seventh Plague: Hail 4' 21

 

Hail proved to be one of the easier 10  Plagues to model for the diorama.  I  hung styrofoam balls attached to clear fishing from the ceiling lamps over the counter.  Then I made edible hail (from  rice crispy /marshmallow balls) to toss all over the Egyptian counter

After that every other food item we ate all day was round and hard and hot e.g. dinner was roasted chicken and lamb meatballs, baby baked potatoes and beets, and Brussels sprouts.

Thunderstorm of hail and fire: Ex. 9:13–35

This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me, or this time I will send the full force of my plagues against you and against your officials and your people, so you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth. For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth. But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. You still set yourself against my people and will not let them go. Therefore, at this time tomorrow I will send the worst hailstorm that has ever fallen on Egypt, from the day it was founded till now. Give an order now to bring your livestock and everything you have in the field to a place of shelter, because the hail will fall on every man and animal that has not been brought in and is still out in the field, and they will die. […] The LORD sent thunder and hail, and lightning flashed down to the ground. So the LORD rained hail on the land of Egypt; hail fell and lightning flashed back and forth. It was the worst storm in all the land of Egypt since it had become a nation.

— Exodus 9:13–24

The Fifth and Sixth Plague: Distressed Animals and Boils 3 '21

Today we again combined two plagues into one day to insure we talked about all ten plagues before the holiday ended.

Our Fifth Plague involved hand modeling an edible representation of a sick  Egyptian Lamb.  

I used seasoned ground lamb for the face and ears, ground chicken for the wooly bangs, sliced olives for the eyes and nose, and a slice of red pepper for the tongue, then baked the entire patty in a 350 F oven for 30 minutes.

I served it on a bed of backed potato hash browns, slices of fresh veggie with homemade tzatzikisauce .

It wasn't quite as visually appealing as I thought it would be, but it tasted good and made the point. 

For the Sixth Plague, I served homemade babba-ganoush,  and hummus as sauces with teaspoons of palmetto-cheese and /or hot sauce and matzah bread as a mid-day snack.

Pestilence of livestock: Ex. 9:1–7

This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me. If you refuse to let them go and continue to hold them back, the hand of the LORD will bring a terrible plague on your livestock in the field—on your horses and donkeys and camels and on your cattle and sheep and goats.

— Exodus 9:1–3

 Boils: Ex. 9:8–12

The Sixth Plague: Miniature out of the Toggenburg Bible (Switzerland) of 1411

Then the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, "Take handfuls of soot from a furnace and have Moses toss it into the air in the presence of Pharaoh. It will become fine dust over the whole land of Egypt, and festering boils will break out on men and animals throughout the land."

— Exodus 9:8–9

 

Third and Fourth Plague: Lice and Flies 3'21

  

The Old Testament tells us of 10 Plagues and  8 days... What to do?

Our solution... combine a couple of those plagues together in a couple of days.

First Combo is lice and flies.

We started the day off with a large toy fly sitting on the edge of Bruce's egg and matzah breakfast.

You should have seen the look on Bruce's face.

Lunch was cream of Mushroom soup with lots of fresh coarsely ground pepper to look like flies and lice climbing in the bowl.

By then Bruce was really getting into this plague,

 and soon had the lice fighting over his matzah

By the time dinner time rolled around, 

Bruce als0  had the lice surrounding the Pharaoh and threatening the Pharaoh's family.

In fact,  Bruce was pretty unhappy with me when I put the lice and flies away.

 Lice or gnats: Ex. 8:16–19

"And the LORD said [...] Stretch out thy rod, and smite the dust of the land, that it may become lice throughout all the land of Egypt." […] When Aaron stretched out his hand with the rod and struck the dust of the ground, lice came upon men and animals. All the dust throughout the land of Egypt became lice.

— Exodus 8:16–17

For those of you who might want to try this at home, my local Dollar Tree came through with props for the lice made from rhinosaurus beetles found in their children's toy section ( I just clipped off the proboscis to get a close representation of a louse) and Dollar tree also had lots of toy flies.

Jamie Geller helped out a lot with edible snack suggestions for this plague. e.g. I used dark chocolate Nonpareils to symbolize a white lice-covered desert snack.

See: Edible 10 Plagues - Jamie Geller

 

2nd Plague of Passover : Frogs ( 3' 21)

Much of the early drama of the Exodus story takes Place in Egypt and revolves around the Ten Plagues which God let loose upon Egypt to force the Pharoah to allow the enslaved Jews to leave the country.   To make these plagues more meaningful, we chose to represent each of these plagues in the order they occurred on each successive day during the Passover holiday. Whenever possible we used a combination of food and artificial props to reinforce the concept.

The 2nd of these plagues*  involves frogs leaving the Nile and invading the residences,  public places, and temples all over the land. To represent this horror, for dinner  I hand-modeled and baked a pair of frogs (made from ground chicken) and set them on a lily pad of romaine lettuce leaves surrounded by (green salsa)  pond slime.

I also molded a green jello frog and sat it on a pistachio-pudding pond for desert, but Bruce had the frog half eaten before I remembered to take a photo.

* "But wait a minute; you are probably thinking.,"What happened to the first plague?"  To represent the first plague  Water turning to Blood, yesterday (3/27/21)I set an all  Red table cloth  (to represent the Nile) down on the  Egyptian Breakfast Bar, and served an all-red dinner consisting of sashimi Ahi Poki, with red cabbage slaw,  red rice,  cranberry juice drink, and red jello with small dying fish shaped from white pear slices floating in the jello.  It was a clever way to reinforce the idea of the water staining everything blood red, and it was very  tastey, but red-on-red color combinations do not photograph well at all. 

Passover Begins.

 The Jewish holiday of Passover ( in Hebrew Pesach) commemorates the exodus of the Jews from slavery in Egypt.  The Holiday originated in the Torah, where the word Pesach refers to the ancient Passover sacrifice  ( knows as the Pascal Lamb) and commands jews worldwide to commemorate the events leading up to it. Pesach  is also said to refer to the idea that God "passed over ( Pasach) the houses of the Jews during the 10th plague in Egypt, and the slaying of the firstborn.  The holiday is ultimately a celebration of their freedom and the story of the events leading up to the Jew's exodus from  Egypt and is a really important holiday for people of the Jewish faith.  But it is also but a very powerful metaphor that is appreciated by people of other faiths as well. 

This year The eight-day Passover holiday begins on Saturday 4/27 at Sundown and ends on Sunday 4/4 at Sundown, which means the dates for celebrating Passover and Christian Easter Events ( 4/1- 4/4) overlap this year. (As they do most years.) .This is not really too surprising since Jesus was celebrating a Passover Seder at his Last Supper. But it does mean that we have to be extra careful in the way Bruce and I choose to honor our Christian and Jewish heritages lest we have displays that look like Moses and the 12 tribes were shepherding and a flock of rabbits through the Red Sea. To separate the two holidays we decided to separate the two holidays by placing our secular Easter ornaments in ou front-yard, and decorating our great-room inside of the house for Passover.

As I said Passover is a REALLY important Jewish Holiday, so we decided to treat it as such, by not only having the traditional seder meal, watching reruns of the 12 Commandments on TV, and live streaming Central Synagogue Passover Services but by surrounding ourselves for eight days with visual clues that would reinforce the Exodus story.

We started by separating our great room into three distinct segments of the story: Egypt, The Red Sea, and The Promise Land.

Egypt: was represented on our kitchen breakfast bar at the Northern end of the great room. Two large( cardboard) pyramids flanked each end of the granite-topped bar. Peg-people hand-painted to represent the Pharoh, his wife and children, and some Egyptian soldiers stood at one end, leaving the middle open for dioramas dramatizing the plagues and events leading up to the exodus. As you'll soon see, our plan called for the Egyptian plateau would hit by a new plague each day.

The Red Sea: Was set up on our dining room table which is in the center of the great room.

First, we covered the table with a sand-colored table cloth. Atop the tablecloth, we put another blue-colored table cloth that I had cut and painted to represent the parted sea.

In the middle of the parted Red Sea, marched Moses and all twelve tribes 

with their flags.

I was careful when setting them up to set them out in the order that historians tell us the tribes marched.. ( In truth, there is quite a bit of disagreement about that order, so I had a lot of wiggle room in setting this up).

Like the Egyptians,  family members of the twelve tribes were represented by 2 " peg people which had been hand-painted with a unique set of colors representing their tribe. and each tribe carried with it a flag with its tribal symbol.

Even though there were only 4 to 6  peg people set up to represent each tribe, when all twelve tribes were placed on the table's sea bed, it made a pretty impressive display.  Can you imagine what it would have been if we had 30,00 to 300,000 people assembled?

The Promise Land has been set up in the Southern end of our great room.

If you remember our (10/6/20) Sukkot post, you will undoubtedly recognize our Sukkot tent repurposed to represent the Promise Land. Part of the reason for setting up the tent was because it could act as a reminder of how the Jews wandered in the desert for 40 years before reaching the Promise Land.

We even created a map to show the route the twelve tribes took to reach the Promised Land. Again experts disagree strongly on the route Moses took to reach the Promised Land, so this is only one possible route that they could have taken, and the map was placed there just for us to get our bearings on where some of the major known landmarks named in the journey are situated.

The other reason why we wanted to put up the tent was that both of us had had such a strong sensation of peace whenever we entered the tent during the  Sukkot holiday, and we wanted to see if we could replicate that sense of sanctuary again.  And yes,  we really do still feel a deep sense of serenity when we go into that space. 

Making Charoset for Passover: 3 '21

 

Usually, I just make an Ashkenazi charoset with apple, honey, nuts, and cinnamon for Passover, but I felt inspired by this article to try something new.

So I spent a couple of hours this morning making batches of the Panamian, Turkish, and Israeli charoset ( See recipe link below). Bruce acted as my taste tester ( I really had to twist his arm on this assignment). In all, I wound up canning twelve jars of charoset. Normally I'd think that would be enough to last us a year, ( which is why I didn't try making any of the other charosets recipes), but as much as Bruce liked these delights, I have a feeling they may vanish as soon as I unseal the jar. I am going to set a few jars aside for use at our Passover Seder.

Israeli charoset, Sephardic charoset, Panamian charoset, Turkish charoset... even Texas-style charoset! Find your new favorite. https://bddy.me/3evynwH