Food on the Passover table, including the traditional charoset and Matzah bread. Photo: RNZ / Sophia Duckor-Jones
The Jewish Passover celebration begins in New Zealand at sundown on Saturday evening. It is a major celebration in the Jewish calendar which marks the birth of the Jewish people and their freedom from slavery in Egypt.
This year, the Leader of the White House Faith Office, Paula White, has suggested Christians should celebrate Passover 'in order to unlock seven supernatural blessings'.
But both Jewish and Christian leaders in New Zealand said Passover shouldn't be treated as a transaction with God.
Auckland Rabbi Moshe Rube said Passover is a celebration of a specific story, but also a time when all people can reflect on holding on to hope in difficult situations.
"Sometimes a person, or a people, will find themselves in a very difficult situation and they always have to remember that they're more than that," he said.
Rube is Rabbi of the orthodox community, Auckland Hebrew Congregation, which has been the hub of Jewish living in Auckland since the 1850s.
He said non-Jewish people are curious about Passover, and Jewish families will often invite their friends to the Seder dinner.
"The thing that piques interest is the Seder, which will happen Saturday night and Sunday night, and the Seder is basically a meal where we tell the story," said Rube.
He said the Seder is an act of remembrance, through the telling of the story and the different foods, rituals and symbols.
For example, only unleavened bread will be eaten to remember the way the people had to rush out of Egypt, while a date and apple paste recalls the bricks the Jewish people were forced to make while in slavery.
While non-Jewish people are invited into the celebration, Rube rejects Paula White's idea that people can use it to access supernatural blessings.
"It's very natural blessings, natural in the sense that through our connection to our community, to our families, to ourselves, to our traditions, and specifically a child sitting at a Seder of his parents and receiving what they have to give, that is the blessing."
Jonathan Dove is the Senior Pastor of Grace City Church in Auckland and heads the Auckland Church Leaders Network.
He said White's promise of blessings for celebrating Passover is the wrong approach.
"It risks turning faith into some transaction with God and that goes against the very heart of Christian faith," he said.
However, he said he has found huge value in experiencing Passover, which ties into the events of Easter as Jesus was crucified during Passover.
He encouraged any Christian interested in Passover to reach out to Jewish friends or a local synagogue to find out more.
Paula White suggested that Christians should celebrate Passover to get seven blessings, including God assigning an angel to you and bringing prosperity.
But Dove said Christians don't have to go looking for blessings.
"There's so much more for Christians in the New Testament. We have Jesus pointing to the Spirit of God that Christians would say dwells in the life of every believer, and so we don't need to have some kind of angel following us around we have God himself who is here, present with us."
Passover continues until nightfall on Sunday 20 April.
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