The night they ate standing up

The tenth plague is the one that breaks Egypt, and the instructions given to Israel are oddly domestic: a lamb per household, roasted, eaten with bitter herbs and flat bread, sandals on, staff in hand, ready to move. And blood from the lamb painted on the doorframe. Where the blood is, the judgement passes over. Notice what it does not say — that Israel was innocent. Only that a substitute died and the household was covered. That night Pharaoh finally lets them go, and a nation walks out of slavery in the dark. God commands that the meal be repeated every year for ever, so that children will ask what it means. Fifteen centuries later, at that same meal, a rabbi picked up the bread and said: this is my body.