The first thing that we ate was a piece of parsley dipped in salt. I like parsley but when it had salty water on it made it taste almost exactly like seawater, so that was the part of the feast that wasn’t all that good. The parsley reminds us of the hyssop (a type of bush) that the Jewish people who were in slavery in Egypt, spread lambs’ blood over the door posts to give a sign to the angel of death that they were they were Jewish. The saltwater is to remind us of the tears of the slaves.

Later, we had to get some lettuce and dip it in horseradish. Most people just ate the lettuce because the horseradish is so spicy. The horseradish and bitter lettuce represents the bitterness of being a slave. Later, we would’ve had some matzo (unleavened bread) but we had pitta bread instead with horseradish on one end and some haroseth, or another name is charoseth (stewed apple, raisins, cinnamon and shaved almonds) to counterbalance the bitterness of the horseradish. Haroseth also reminds the Jews that they had to build the bricks for pharaoh out of mud with no straw.

Every so often, we had a toast, four in all. One time Tom spilled lots down his Jewish travelling robe. We had to lean over to the left when drinking, to symbolise that ‘we’ weren’t slaves anymore because when you are a slave you can’t relax.

The lamb that we had was to forgive our sins; the Jewish people believed that you couldn’t be forgiven for your sins without sacrificing something.