Passover

Passover, also called Pasch () or Pesach (; ), or Peysekh in Yiddish, is a major Jewish holiday and one of the Three Pilgrimage Festivals. It celebrates the Exodus of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.

According to the Book of Exodus, God commanded Moses to tell the Israelites to slaughter a lamb and mark their doorframes with its blood, in addition to instructions for consuming the lamb that night. For that night, God would send the Angel of Death to bring about the tenth plague, in which he would smite all the firstborn in Egypt. But when the angel saw the blood on the Israelites' doorframes, he would pass over their homes so that the plague should not enter (hence the name). The story is part of the broader Exodus narrative, in which the Israelites, while living in Egypt, are enslaved en masse by the Pharaoh to suppress them; when Pharaoh refuses God's demand to let them go, God sends ten plagues upon Egypt. After the tenth plague, Pharaoh permits the Israelites to leave. Scholars widely believe that the origins of Passover predate the biblical Exodus, with theories suggesting it evolved from earlier semi-nomadic or pre-Israelite rituals and was later transformed through religious and cultic traditions.