Test your knowledge

another option for us known as Mechirat Chametz – to what does this refer?

the purification of the soul. In which Egyptian city did Philo live?

may be transitory. It is crucial to have the right people with us at the right times.

It is also important to consider what type of supporter you are and to whom.

At a vulnerable and difficult time in your life, it may be hard to provide support to others. That is also when it can be the most difficult to ask for help.

This brings us back to the pelican and the echidna. At a local wildlife sanctuary some of my hospital patients have been able to engage in an education program. These patients are current and former frontline workers that have found it difficult to connect with others and ask for help.

A metaphor for their own lives is Line. She is a 40-year-old pelican that arrived at the sanctuary some years ago having been injured by fishing line (hence her name). The result of that was an inability to fly. Line has made her home on the lake and is hand fed daily by zookeeper staff, relying on a human support network for her wellbeing.

This is also the case with Turtle, the echidna who was found on his back in a pool of water as an abandoned baby.

My patients can identify with the pelican and the echidna and learn how to lead a different, but still meaningful life, by accepting support.

A support network is vital to ensuring a good quality of life and longevity.

Anne-Marie Elias is a psychologist in clinical practice for 25 years.

Our Festival of Freedom is fast approaching and Rabbi David Freedman has come to the ‘Pesach party’ offering our thousands of readers a quality quiz which attempts to scratch the surface of the length and breadth of his general Passover knowledge!

From Seder night to Jewish history to prayer to practical preparations to Israel and more, we will get the opportunity to look through a Passover prism and learn from each other over Yom Tov. Rabbi Freedman is sure to add to our understanding of this meaningful and pivotal time of year.

So, embark on this journey with family and friends and explore all-thingsPesach courtesy of a rabbi in our midst who cares deeply about so many issues and topics and above all, our Jewish community.

1. Why is the celebration on the first two nights of Pesach called a Seder?

2. Included in a manuscript compiled by the Babylonian sage Saadia Gaon, in the 10th century CE, is the earliest complete version of what?

3. In the lead up to Pesach we are expected to remove all chametz (leaven) from our homes. However, if we own a number of bottles of whiskey for example, the rabbis provided

4. Emanuel Goldenberg played the part of Dathan in the 1956 version of The Ten Commandments. By what adopted stage name was Goldenberg better known?

5. The Egyptians endured ten plagues, one of which was known as ’Locusts’. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, a

10. What is the significance of Leil Shimurim?

11. Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrkanus, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah, Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarphon spent Pesach night together relating the story of the Exodus. Where did their seder take place?

12. Popular in Jewish communities a) George Orwell b) Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel c) Sigmund Freud

16. In ‘Tommy Pickles parts the Red Sea’, which cartoon characters learn about the Passover?

17. Who said, “Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility”?

18. Which New York Jewish all-male a cappella group sang its way through the Passover Story using the music of Les Miserables?

19. Who wrote the controversial 1965 book entitled The Passover Plot?

20. Which Nobel laureate said, “I love Passover because for me it is a cry against indifference, a cry for compassion.” single swarm of desert locusts covering one square kilometre contains up to how many locusts – 20, 40, 60 or 80 million?

6. Complete the following sequence – Shekalim, Zachor, Parah and ---?

7. Which angel known as the Malach Hamovet is mentioned in the Haggadah?

8. A copy of which famous Haggadah was given to former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair by the Grand Mufti of Bosnia and Herzegovina at a special awards ceremony in December 2011?

9. Philo, a Jewish philosopher from the first century CE, wrote that Passover, figuratively speaking, represents throughout the Mediterranean and Middle East and often served at Sederim in Calcutta, Turkey, Greece, Morocco and Tunisia, what are Huevos Haminados?

13. On April 17, 1506, why were some people arrested for having in their possession, "some lamb and poultry prepared according to Jewish custom; also unleavened bread and bitter herbs”?

14. In 1882, Rabbi Yehoshua Leib Diskin of Jerusalem invited to his seder two English princes, one of whom eventually became which king of England?

15. Which religious group in Israel continues to celebrate Passover each year at Mt Gerizim accompanied by prayers and sacrifices?

21. The prayer known as Yizkor in which we remember the souls of deceased relatives is said on which day of Pesach?

22. John Montagu or Hillel – they are both said to have invented what?

23. What are the five types of grain which, if fermented, become chametz?

24. At the end of the Seder service it is a tradition to say, Leshana Haba’ah Birushalyim – Next Year in Jerusalem –but what would one say if one lives in Jerusalem?

25. True or false: In Israel you can buy Kosher for Pesach ice cream with seasonal flavours such as Charoset or Matzah Crunch.

DR YVETTE ALT MILLER COURTESY: AISH.COM

With the passing of Chaim Topol, we remember the film that catapulted him to fame. Israeli actor Chaim Topol, famous for playing Tevye on stage and in the film version of Fiddler on the Roof, died on Thursday, March 9th at the age of 87 after battling Alzheimer’s.

Growing up, a surprisingly large amount of what I knew about Judaism came from my favourite movie, Fiddler on the Roof. The musical captures much of the joy of Jewish life and traditions, and gets some key points wrong as well.

Here are a few things Fiddler gets right and two things it gets wrong.

Based on Yiddish stories

The 1964 Broadway musical was based on stories written by the famous Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem. His series of short stories about Tevye the Dairyman introduced readers to Tevye, a father living in a shtetl named Anatevka in an obscure corner of the Russian empire who’s “blessed with five daughters”, as his character says with heavy emphasis in the movie, which came out in 1971. (In the stories, he has seven.)

Tevye’s five daughters

When it comes time to marry, Tevye’s daughters rebel, each pushing the envelope a little farther. Tzeitel, the oldest, refuses to consent to marry the old widower Anatevka’s matchmaker picks out for her, insisting that she marry a young penniless tailor named Motel for love. Tevye relents, concocting a crazy excuse for countenancing the marriage.

Next, his daughter Hodel refuses to marry a religious Jew, choosing instead to follow a young secular Jewish Communist named Perchik to Siberia.

Finally, at the end of the film, the next youngest daughter, Chava, breaks with Jewish tradition completely: she announces she’s marrying Fyedka, a non-Jewish local man. In the Broadway musical and subsequent movie, Tevye agonises, then ultimately gives his blessing to the match, telling the couple “God be with you”. In the original stories, Tevye remains steadfast, refusing to countenance the match. (The original stories are also darker in tone, with his other daughters suffering difficult trials and sad fates.)

Sholem Aleichem was the pen name of Sholem Rabinivitz. Born in 1859 into a middle-class family in the prosperous town of Pereyaslav in the Ukraine, he grew up speaking Hebrew and Russian, as well as Yiddish. He always said he based his Tevye stories on a real-life milkman named Tevye – he once met in a tiny Jewish shtetl – who had a wry way of looking at the world and was committed to his Jewish religion. Sholem Aleichem wrote him as a comic character and envisioned him being portrayed on stage; a 1919 Yiddish play did capture Tevye’s stories to an appreciative Yiddishspeaking audience, followed by a Yiddish movie produced in 1939.

Depicting Shabbat and community

By the time the Broadway musical and Hollywood film came along, the shtetls that Sholem Aleichem had described were long gone. More than six million Jews had been murdered in the Holocaust just a generation before. Sholem Aleichem, like so many other European Jews, had moved to the United States. In the 1960s and 1970s, many American Jews were abandoning the tight-knit bonds that had held them together in immigrant neighbourhoods and were moving to more affluent, spacious suburbs. Fiddler on the Roof came along at a time when nostalgia for the old ways of life was bumping up against the new, secular reality of American Jewish communities.

The musical conveys some of the joy of a traditional Jewish lifestyle. One of my favourite scenes takes place late on Friday afternoon. Tevye’s rounds have taken longer than usual because his horse is lame and he’s had to pull his heavy milk wagon himself. As he approaches his ramshackle home, his