Happy Passover, Chosen People!

As you know, Passover, one of the holiest days in Judaism, starts tonight at sundown. For non-Jews out there, BeliefNet explains it commemorates "The miraculous Exodus of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt." (As for why it's called Passover, it refers to when Jews marked their doors with lambs' blood so God would know to spare their babies as he slaughtered the offspring of their Egyptian oppressors.) Police Commissioner Ray Kelly recently reassured Jewish leaders earlier this month that the NYPD knows of "no plan to target Jewish sites" in the city, but the police are continuing their tradition of dedicating "additional resources to precincts with large Jewish communities."

Today's once-every-28-years sun-blessing seems to be a coincidental prelude to the eight-day holiday, where Jews eat unleavened bread called matzo because their ancestors didn't exactly have time to wait around for their bread to rise as they fled Egypt. Some three thousand years later, a bedridden Alan Ruck in Ferris Bueller's Day Off famously crooned, "When Cameron was in Egypt's land... Let my Cameron go!"

Here's a link to Time Out NY's index of "Best Passover Eats," and the official NYC tourist website also has a Passover dining roundup. And Fork in the Road declares the best kosher wines to pair with traditional Seder fare. Meanwhile, the Feebag remembers the time Marlon Brando read from the Haggada during the "best Seder ever," and yesterday NY Times web producer Karen Barrow wrote all about cleaning her kitchen for Passover! [Spoiler alert: It felt "liberating, as if I’m a teenage girl burning old photos of my ex-boyfriend."]