ultitude of
relatives, brothers and sisters, with their wives and children, and an
endless array of uncles and cousins, all of whom looked up to the Rabbi
as the head of the family, and so made themselves at home in his house,
never failing to dine with him on all great festivals.

Special among these grand gatherings in the Rabbi's house was the annual
celebration of the Passover, a very ancient and remarkable feast which
the Jews all over the world still hold every year in the month Nissen,
in eternal remembrance of their deliverance from Egyptian servitude.
This takes place as follows:

As soon as it is dark the matron of the family lights the lamps, spreads
the table-cloth, places in its midst three flat loaves of unleavened
bread, covers them with a napkin, and places on them six little dishes
containing symbolical food, that is, an egg, lettuce, horse-radish, the
bone of a lamb, and a brown mixture of raisins, cinnamon, and nuts. At
this table the father of the family sits with all his relatives and
friends, and reads to them from a very curious book called the _Agade_,
whose contents are a strange mixture of legends of their forefathers,
wondrous tales of Egypt, disputed questions of theology, prayers, and
festival songs. During this feast there is a grand supper, and even
during the reading there is at specified times tasting of the symbolical
food and nibbling of Passover bread, while four cups of red wine are
drunk. Mournfully merry, seriously gay, and mysteriously secret as some
old dark legend, is the character of this nocturnal festival, and the
traditional singing intonation with which the _Agade_ is read by the
father, and now and then reechoed in chorus by the hearers, first
thrills the inmost soul as with a shudder, then calms it as mother's
lullaby, and again startles it so suddenly into waking that even those
Jews who have long fallen away from the faith of their fathers and run
after strange joys and honors, are moved to their very hearts, when by
chance the old, well-known tones of the Passover songs ring in their
ears.

And so Rabbi Abraham once sat in his great hall surrounded by relatives,
disciples, and many other guests, to celebrate the great feast of the
Passover. Everything was unusually brilliant; over the table hung the
gaily embroidered silk canopy, whose gold fringes touched the floor; the
plates of symbolic food shone invitingly, as did the tall wine goblets,
adorned with embossed pi