Kids learn about and celebrate Passover at Please Touch Museum

PHILADELPHIA (WTXF) - Friday, March 30 marked the beginning of Passover for the Jewish faith. The overlap of Passover with Easter Sunday is an opportunity for the Please Touch Museum to teach children about Jewish heritage and culture.

Participants Harper and Kennedy got the chance to set a Passover Seder feast themselves, the meal many Jewish families sit down to at the beginning of the eight-day holiday.

"The children can come in contact with traditions that are their own and traditions that are other peoples as well, so that they can all gain an appreciation and understanding of another person," said Danielle Defassio, with the Please Touch Museum.

Passover celebrates Moses leading the Israelites to freedom from slavery in Egypt.

"Something that's really special about the Seder is that every food has a meaning," Defassio explained.

It's a play of touch and smell and sight, using all senses to evoke emotion and true reflection on concepts otherwise difficult for children to grasp.

For example, horseradish meant to evoke the pain of slavery.

"They can understand what that concept of bitter is. And the tears being bitter and how terrible it would be if that's how you felt all the time going 'ugh!'" Defassio said.