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Thoughts and Well-wishes on Passover and Easter

When you write a column scheduled to appear at regular intervals, you face the inevitable challenge of the news cycle rendering the column obsolete, or the due date not corresponding with any scheduled event on which you can build the column.

Fortunately for me, the column you are reading now appears one day before the beginning of Passover, two days prior to Palm Sunday, and a little over a week from the end of Passover and Easter Sunday. That creates the opportunity for some philosophical musings on the significance of the two holidays, which more or less, but not precisely, coincide for reasons grounded in history.

I’ve written before about the relationship of the two holidays, and why their coincidence is not precise. Easter Sunday is always the first Sunday after the first full moon following the Spring Equinox on March 20th or 21st. That’s why it can vary from late March to mid-April. Passover falls in accordance with the Hebrew calendar, which is likewise lunar in its origin, but calculated a bit differently.