Passover 2000, continued

Had Gadia

The Hagadda is read out, which is more or less the story of the Exodus interspersed with poetry and songs. And to finish the evening off the schoolchildren perform the Had Gadia, which is a little morality play

... Ah, yes, the food. The orthodox sit in front of the food until the Hagadda is read in its entirety. We don't have the stomach for such stoicism. Four glasses of wine are drunk during the reading, we combine the drinking of the first with eating the food. It works very well that way.

A man buys a kid for two zoozim
(The two furry white creatures are representing this unfortunate animal)

Zooz: ancient silver coin, worth a quarter of a shekel, plural: zoozim

A cat kills the kid
(Four cats here)

A dog kills the cat
(A whole kennel of various breeds)

A stick kills the dog
(In this instance a minor forest)

The fire burns the stick
(The orange represents the flames)

Water extinguishes the fire
(A bit of wishful thinking: We live in a country hit by drought every few years, even in the best of years rain is sparing - an average of 330 mm a year)

An ox drinks the water
(Two oxen here, not a drop wasted)

The angel of Death kills the butcher (on the left of the stage wearing the white hat) who slaughtered the ox which drank the water that put out the fire which burned the stick that beat the dog which killed the cat that tore the little kid to pieces.
All this for two zoozim. This certainly is getting your money's worth.

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