What Do You Know About Passover Music?

Reprinted from ReformJudaism.org

Here are eight questions to engage you and your family in the eight days of Passover. Listen to the Passover songs below.

1. The Song of the Sea —the biblical Passover song which the Israelites sang after safely crossing the Sea of Reeds and evading Pharaoh’s army—is unprecedented in the Bible because:
a. It is the first song to appear in the Bible
b. It is the first biblical song to praise God
c. It is the first biblical instance of using musical instruments
d. All of the above

2. In the original Hebrew text of the song Echad Mi Yodea (Who Knows One?), the “who knows two” verse refers to the two tablets of the law. In the Ladino version of the song, called Quien Supiense, to what/whom does “who knows two” refer?
a. Moses and Aaron
b. Two Shabbat candles
c. Esther and Mordechai
d. The first and second Temples

3. The closing Passover seder song, Chad Gadya (One Kid), tells the story of a baby goat, which was eaten by a cat, which in turn was bitten by a dog, etc., until the “Holy One” arrives to put an end to the chain of events. The “one kid” has long been thought of as a metaphor for what?
a. The animals on Noah’s ark
b. The Jewish people
c. The first-born sons of the Israelites
d. There is no metaphor

4. Which 19th-century classical composer created a famous oratorio about the Prophet Elijah?
a. Ludwig van Beethoven
b. Giuseppe Verdi
c. Gustav Mahler
d. Felix Mendelssohn

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