THIS IS A small pageant,
WHICH YOU CAN PUT ON FOR PASSOVER.
Leonardo deVinci's Painting of
The
Lord's Supper Adaptation
Note: Leonardo deVinci's THE LORD'S SUPPER painting is a very popular Maudy Thursday program in many churches today. One of our volunteers took this basic program and added the Hebraic flavor of a mini-seder back into the meal. The whole program with the Coordinator's Guide is available on our website for you to view or print off. There is a mini-haggadah (booklet), too, that you may distribute to the attendees, too. This was done very successfully within a denominational setting. Over one hundred people attended and were blessed. It was completed within 90 minutes and included a pot blessing meal within that time, and even one group dance was taught. Simply save this file to a disc or your hard drive in a .txt format and take it into any wordprocessor for your own use. Our thanks to the volunteer for making this program available to us. The Script of the Service is on this link!
Coordinator's Information
Let me describe how this evening was presented: First, the pastor's committee decided to allow us to modify the standard presentation as desribed above. Once the modifications were approved, we submitted a plan with the script to the pastor's committee well in advance to allow for a leisurely time to assemble all the needed people and rehearse extesively arriving at the event well rehearsed and relaxed....and anyone who believes that may also be interested in buying a certain bridge in New York that my cousin Vino has for sale! Hahaha!
So, with a good laugh, let us describe what happened...for years our friend Dana had faithfully attended our groups passover seder. And each year she sat in her denominational church waiting and waiting for the opportunity to share the festivals of God with her church family. Dana was and is the youth director of her church, so for the last six years, she has celebrated a few of the feasts with her teenager followers, and would make the announcement of each festival in her adult Sunday School Class. With a groan, the adults would endure her announcement and just shake their heads. Whatever would they do with Sweet Dana? But endured they did! Over and over, she would smuggle a few of her teenagers into our group's seder, and pray that a fire would be lit within her church. But alas...she sat alone.
The pastors came and went as they often do, and finally one arrived that would give Sweet Dana the time of day. She went to the board meeting each month only to hear the usual things, and then the new pastor seemed to ---maybe---possibly show some interest. Could it be? Perhaps? This might be the year? Finally in March the ladies of the church said that it was their tradition to present Leonardo deVinci's THE LORD'S SUPPER every other year, and this was THE YEAR. With a groan, Dana's eyes crossed and she just sat there waiting for the proverbial, "Go ahead and do it" from the powers that be. Sure enough! It came! But with it, came the knowledge that "it won't hurt to ask ONE MORE TIME" so Dana asked if perhaps THIS YEAR, she might use the youth to be involved in this event and to help add a few "Jewish things" to enhance the evening. Suspiciously, the pastor's committee, said, "Like what?" Gently Dana assured them that it would truly be a wonderful "mini seder". After the usual, "how much time are we talking, Dana" she assured them that it might be 90 minutes. The ladies reminded her that it was traditionally a pot luck supper, so there would have to be time to eat included in the evening. Little by little Dana worked on adding first the matzah, and then other things until it was finished.
Frantically at about 4 pm on the day of the event, it was finished and she was ready to go. She had told everyone to bring pot luck dinner --- but just no pork, okay? The costumes were dug out of the closet in the choir room, so that all the disciples would be dressed in period costumes. Then they were ready!
As we arrived we were shown to a table where there was water and towels to wash our hands. She had teenagers there acting as our guide to get us seated with a chosen disciple. We grinned when our disciple turned out to be one of our neighbors! What fun! He was Bartholomew. It didn't quiet his nerves when he realized that we were Dana's teachers for the last six or seven years! hehehehhe but he said, "Well, atleast I won't have to worry too much about the teaching portion. If I screw up, then you will be there to help bail me out!" We laughed and looked around.
Everyone had brought their assigned covered dishes and teenagers were taking them to the kitchen. Believe it or not, they had dug out the real church dishes! Not paper! REAL dishes and glasses! Wow! (By the way, paper plates ARE kosher. REALLY!)Everything looked great! Each disciples' wife was asked to bring a table cloth and to set the table very nicely. In the middle fo the table was a china plate with all the elements on them. Salt and pepper shakers were right there next to the salt water for the dipping, and the bulletin was on each plate.
The disciples were asked to go to their places at the head table, and the pastor began with an astonishing statement, "Tonight we are blessed to share in a teaching of our Messiah Yeshua. You know, HE was a Jew. All of His disciples were Jews. The Bible was written by Jews, and tonight we are going to see HIM through Jewish eyes. We've been robbed of much of this knowledge, and we must begin to see this festival and the others through HIS eyes for the first time." WOW! Tom and I were spell bound for the next 90 minutes as this group of over one hundred denom