Last night, the writers of Evangelical Dark Web debated whether the cause of the rise of seder dinners and the “Torah Observant” believers was resultant from a response to 10/7 and antisemitism in the church or whether the practice was the result of the increased availability. In any case, what has emerged is a historical larp of no real spiritual value.
The Bible makes this exceedingly clear.
Observe the month of Abib and celebrate the Passover to the Lord your God, for in the month of Abib the Lord your God brought you out of Egypt by night. You shall sacrifice the Passover to the Lord your God from the flock and the herd, in the place where the Lord chooses to establish His name. You shall not eat leavened bread with it; seven days you shall eat with it unleavened bread, the bread of affliction (for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste), so that you may remember all the days of your life the day when you came out of the land of Egypt. For seven days no leaven shall be seen with you in all your territory, and none of the flesh which you sacrifice on the evening of the first day shall remain overnight until morning. You are not allowed to sacrifice the Passover in any of your towns which the Lord your God is giving you; but at the place where the Lord your God chooses to establish His name, you shall sacrifice the Passover in the evening at sunset, at the time that you came out of Egypt. You shall cook and eat it in the place which the Lord your God chooses. In the morning you are to return to your tents. Six days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a solemn assembly to the Lord your God; you shall do no work on it.
Deuteronomy 16:1-8 NASB1995
The Passover is supposed to be celebrated in a designated location. This edict was maintained before Solomon’s Temple. However, it has not been maintained since 70 AD, after God smote Jerusalem. Aside from the disregard for the location, modern Christians and Jews do not sacrifice a lamb. The lamb is the whole point of Passover. And the lamb represents Christ. The Passover is a typology for God sending His Son to save His people from His wrath. After the Resurrection, there is no longer a need to sacrifice a lamb. Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper or Eucharist as the embodiment of the New Covenant.
Meanwhile, the Torah Observant sect do not sacrifice animals, even on the Passover. Perhaps they view eating lamb as a sufficient sacrifice. The seder dinner is just that: a dinner. It is not an authentic reenactment of Deuteronomy 16 or Exodus 12. The sacrifice is the point, and without the sacrifice, there is no Passover.
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Orthodox Judaism requires using a shankbone of a lamb to represent a lamb but eating some other meat not lamb because the lamb can only be eaten at passover if its sacrificed. Some Jews ignore the rabbinic ruling on that of course and eat lamb. And of course the Jew larping SDAs and such are not even going to be aware of this.
My wife and I once attended a seder led by a Jewish coworker who claimed to be Orthodox, but was also Vegan. The “lamb” in that seder was eggplant.