Rabbi Akiva Tatz Talks About When End of Days and How Ishmael and Esau Are Involved

 Nadene Goldfoot                                           

Rabbi Dr. Akiva Tatz is a prominent South African Orthodox rabbi, inspirational speaker and writer who is heavily involved in Orthodox Jewish outreach. He is also a doctor and world-renowned expert in Jewish medical ethics.  Rabbi Dr. Akiva Tatz   studied medicine at the University of Witwatersrand.  He spent a year in St. Louis, Missouri.  This is the year on a Jewish calendar of 5,785 out of a presumed 6,000.  Tne end of times could come any time in these ending  215 years.  It looks like the prophets were spot on when it comes to our present history.  

He's got me curious.   He was on J TV.                                   

 Isaac and Rebekah did pray for 20 years for children, and this is described in Genesis 25:20-26. Specifically, Genesis 25:21 states that Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife because she was unable to conceive. The passage also notes that Isaac was 40 years old when he married Rebekah, and they had their sons, Jacob and Esau, when Isaac was 60 years old, indicating a 20-year period of waiting. 

Ishmael was the 1st son of Abraham.    Ishmael's mother, however, was Hagar, the Egyptian handmaid of Sarah.    Ishmael was named by Divine command and was circumcised when 13 years old.   After he and his mother had been excluded from Abraham's home, he lived at Paran but joined Isaac, his half-brother in burying Abraham.   

Ishmael had a daughter who married Esau. Ishmael's daughter who married Esau was Mahalath, also known as Basemath. Esau was her uncle by marriage, as she was the daughter of Ishmael, Abraham's son, and Esau was the son of Isaac, who was Ishmael's half-brother. Esau married Mahalath/Basemath after realizing his Canaanite wives displeased his parents, Isaac and Rebekah. 

 Ishmael is traditionally the ancestor of the Arab peoples to whom the name, Ishmael, was applied in the Middle Ages.  He died at the age of 137. Traditionally, he is seen as the ancestor of the Arabs. Within Islam, Ishmael is regarded as a prophet and the ancestor of the Ishmaelites (Hagarenes or Adnanites) and patriarch of Qaydār.

Esau was the son of Isaac, Abraham's 2nd son whose mother was Sarah, 1st wife of Abraham as well as being her uncle.  Esau is also the elder twin-brother of Jacob, grandson of Abraham. Esau and Jacob's mother was Rebekah.   After Jacob obtained his birthright and the firstborn's blessing, Esau became Jacob's enemy, seeking to kill him.   How sad can one get seeing one twin wanting to kill his own twin brother?  Esau had three wives: Adah, Aholibamah, and Basemath. He also had five sons. 

• Adah: Daughter of Elon the Hittite. 
• Aholibamah: Daughter of Anah, granddaughter of Zibeon the Hivite. 
• Basemath: Daughter of Ishmael, sister of Nebaioth. 
• Sons: Eliphaz, Reuel, Jeush, Jaalam, and Korah. 
• Genesis 36:2-3: lists the wives as Adah, Aholibamah, and Basemath. 
• Genesis 26:34: mentions that Esau married Judith and Basemath, both Hittites. However, some Bible scholars suggest that Judith was not one of Esau's primary wives and may have been omitted from the genealogy in Genesis 36 because she did not bear children.  Some Bible commentaries also suggest that Basemath, daughter of Elon the Hittite, and Adah might be the same person

Jacob  was Esau's twin brother. He did the dastardly thing of buying Esau's birthright from him for a mess of pottage, then with his mother's help, received the blessing for himself.   He fled to Haran knowing this, but on returning, 20 years later, was received affectionately by Esau. How had he changed?   (Genesis 36:1) Jacob becoming Israel-a name change showing his inner change.  (Gen.32:25-29). At Haran, Jacob married his uncle Laban's 2 daughters, Rachel and Leah.

  by them and their handmaids, Bilhah and Zilpah, he had 12 sons--progenitors of the 12 tribes--and a daughter, Dinah.  

 The story of the twin brothers thus symbolized the relationship between the 2 nations, developing to the point of hostility.   In the Talmud, Esau was synonymous with villainy and violence.   The word Esau in late Hebrew literature implies a coarse materialist.  This shows how his origins has carried on his reputation since his birth.  Seems like this is shown today in Hamas.  and the Ayatollahs who have taken over Iran.   

Jacob was the favorite of the mother and Isaac's favorite was Esau as Esau hunted and supplied meat for the father to eat.  Rebekah knew, or felt she knew the heart of each of her sons.  She knew that Esau lacked certain feelings for people that Jacob had. It was she who pushed  Jacob into being deceitful and against Esau in receiving the final blessing from Isaac that was so important . (My take)

Rashi (1040-1105) , in his commentary on the Torah, says that the statement "Esau hates Jacob" is not just a narrative detail, but a well-known halakha, or established principle. This highlights a deep-seated animosity between the brothers that goes beyond a simple sibling rivalry. While Esau's initial embrace and kiss of Jacob at their reunion might seem like a reconciliation, Rashi, citing the Midrash, notes that some interpret the dots above the word "kissed" in the text as indicating Esau's kiss wasn't entirely genuine.   

• Rabbi Akiva Tatz's Comments:  Esau's character and the source of his hatred:
  • Esau is often portrayed as representing a worldly, physical orientation, in contrast to Jacob's more spiritual nature.
  • His hatred for Jacob stems from the blessing Jacob received from Isaac, a blessing intended for the firstborn, Esau. Esau feels deeply wronged and this resentment festers.
  • Some interpretations suggest Esau's initial desire for the birthright and blessing was not genuine, driven more by envy than a true understanding of their spiritual significance.
• The "Halacha: Esau Hates Jacob":
  • This well-known statement, attributed to Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, reflects a traditional view that Esau, and by extension his descendants (often identified with Rome/Edom), possess an inherent hatred for Jacob (Israel).
  • This is not necessarily interpreted as a universal, unchanging law but rather as a recognition of a historical pattern of animosity and persecution faced by the Jewish people.

Today, we can study and learn from DNA testing. 

• Kohanim (Jewish Priests):

  .

  In Jewish tradition, Kohanim are descendants of the biblical priest Aaron, and their lineage is traditionally traced patrilineally (through the father's line). Abraham would be the patriarch of this line.  J1 is the common tag for such descendants.  The Cohen Modal Haplotype (CMH) is a specific set of genetic markers on the Y-chromosome that is commonly found in men who identify as Kohanim (Jewish priests). It's not a single gene, but rather a combination of several short tandem repeats (STRs). While the CMH is strongly associated with Kohanim, it's not exclusive to them, and it also appears in other Jewish and non-Jewish populations, such as certain Arabs, proving the seriousness of the Bible.
• The CMH is often associated with Haplogroup J-M267 (J1), which is also common in the Near East.  

The CMH is found within Haplogroup J-M267 (J1) on the Y-chromosome ancestral tree. Haplogroup J-M267 (J1) is commonly referred to as 'Semitic' or 'Mediterranean' because of its elevated frequency in those areas. 

However, Haplogroup J-M267's highest frequency (and greatest diversity) is in Iraq and in the Zagros mountain range found in Western Iran; following our history in the Bible to a tee.  

Y-chromosome haplogroups are incredibly useful for tracing male ancestry and studying human migration patterns because the Y-chromosome is passed down virtually unchanged from father to son. However, small changes, or mutations, do occur over time, which create new branches or "lines" within the Y-DNA family tree (known as the Y-DNA Haplotree), making it easier for scientists to track and distinguish lineages.  

An example is how the Arab line changed from the Jewish line of Cohen.  

The dominant Y-chromosome haplogroup in Arab populations is J1 (J-M267), particularly the J1-P58 clade. This haplogroup is found in high frequencies, reaching up to 80% in some Arabian Peninsula populations like Yemen, Qatar, and Sudan, according to recent studies. 

After 4,000 years, we now have the Abraham Accords, where 4 Arab countries so far have joined Israel in a peace pact, FINALLY!    4,000 years!!!!!  They would be mostlikely the descendants of Ishmael, but Hamas terrorists must be from the line of Esau,  still full of hate of which even they seem to not have a good reason.  

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://help.familytreedna.com/hc/en-us/articles/6202378100751-The-Cohen-Modal-Haplotype-Badge

Abraham's Ancestry-An Amazing Journey Through Time and Geography

 Nadene Goldfoot                                            

     The Garden of Eden, 5,783 years ago according to the Bible,  where Adam and Eve came from, was the factory.  It seems that it was located on the land mass of Africa, where so many bones of various eras of development have been found. Homo sapiens evolved in Africa from Homo heidelbergensis. They co-existed for a long time in Europe and the Middle East with the Neanderthals, and possibly with Homo erectus in Asia and Homo floresiensis in Indonesia, but are now the only surviving human species, the first we know about named in the bible:  Adam and Eve.  

Adam was made, according to the Bible, in the image of G-d from the dust of the earth on the 6th day of creation which was the last work day of G-d because the 7th was his day of rest. .  His duty was the dominion over the rest of the animals on earth.  Eve was created out of one of Adam's ribs and was intended as a help/a partner for Adam, definitely a help in the creation of more humans.   Adam and Eve's first children were Cain and Abel. Seth was the 3rd child and lived for 912 years. The sons of Seth were the nomadic Sutho, shepherds,  tribes mentioned in the neighborhood of the Palestine-Syria frontier in about the 15th century BCE. It was Balaam (Num.24:17) who mentioned them.   They seem to have been related to the Hebrews.  They could be Abraham's cousins.    Cain killed Abel, the example of fighting between the nomadic shepherd and the settled agriculturalist.  Cain was accidentally killed by his own blind grandson, Lamech.  .  

Abraham, the ancestor of Jews and their cousins, today's Muslims, are well documented in the Torah and its extension, the whole Tanakh.  His name was Abram and he lived in about 1948 BCE, born in Ur on the Tigris River of the Chaldees.  

Abram's father was Terah and mother was Amathlai of Haran whose parents were  Nahor and Iyoska, going back:  Serug and Milcah, Reu, Peleg, Eber, Shelah, Arpachshad, Shem, and finally, Noah. 

Noah's story is that he saved his family including his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth,  by building an ark or ship before the great flood, and they managed for 40 days on it, landing on new land. If his father, Lamech and mother, Adah,  were alive, they were with Noah.  Lamech's father was Methuselah who lived for a very long time.  His father was Enoch, and was remembered in stories about Noah.    He had loaded it with all the animals he was familiar with, for he didn't know where they'd land and what lay before him. From his sons sprang the 1st 70 people (types or tribes) from whom humanity was derived.  This can also be read somewhat in the Babylonian tale of Gilgamesh, an epic that contains a parallel flood story with the hero called Utnapishtim.  many midrashic stories were woven around the story of Noah.  Therefore, we now have humanity moved to Turkey as hunters and gatherers of food.  

This goes along with my father's Y haplogroup line of  Q's (QBZ67).  The origin was said to be in Siberia, Mongolia and parts of Turkey.  It's an ancient Jewish line-of which today is 5% of 0.02% of the world population, a very small group of men. Does this mean that they are one of the oldest groups of males that can trace back to Noah? 

Q-M242-his genetic title originally;  is believed to have arisen around the Altai Mountains area (or South Central Siberia), approximately 17,000 to 31,700 years ago. However, the matter remains unclear due to limited sample sizes and changing definitions of Haplogroup Q: early definitions used a combination of the SNPs M242, P36.2, and MEH2 as defining mutations.)    

J1, the Cohen gene,( this haplogroup evolved ~ 20,000 years ago somewhere in northwestern Iran, the Caucasus, the Armenian Highland, and northern Mesopotamia. The major branch-J1a1a1-P58-evolved during the early Holocene ~ 9500 years ago somewhere in the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, and southern Mesopotamia.) This seems to be the landing site of Noah's Ark as well.                  

     The Middle East, and landing on Mt. Ararat:  The Garden of Eden could have come from Egypt for it's a country on Africa.  The Ark could have sailed over the Mediterranean onto Turkey during the Flood. Iraq was the scene of the tower of Babel of Babylon.   

Even I must use Noah in our genealogy history, for he landed on Mt. Ararat, thought to be  located in extreme northeastern Turkey, near the borders with Iran and Armenia.  Nevertheless, Mount Ararat is traditionally considered the resting place of Noah's Ark, and, thus, considered a biblical mountain. Mount Ararat has been associated with the Genesis account since the 11th century, and Armenians began to identify it as the ark's landing place during that time.  

That's where Abram, later called Abraham's ancestors came from.  They had come from the East and he had migrated west to Canaan with his family which included Terah, his father, and his wife, Sarai, later called Sarah. Sarah was his niece, which shows that they did marry into their own family.  Siblings did not marry in Abraham's group, though, like the Egyptian royalty did.    

The beautiful plan of creation included giving male humans DNA that could be traced back to their beginning roots.  Abraham was the ancestor of Moses, born in 1391 BCE to Amram and Jochebed. Amram's father was Kohath, and went back to Levi, son of Jacob whose name changed to Israel, father of 12 sons who became the 12 Tribes of Israel.  Their DNA line is J1, called the Cohen gene, coming direct from Aaron, brother of Moses who would have been J1 as well.  Jacob's father was Isaac whose father was Abraham.  

                                Sarah with Hagar, her handmaid

 Abraham had a child with Hagar, Sarah's handmaid when Sarah was very old, past child-bearing age. Then she surprised everyone and did get pregnant and had Isaac.   The child Abraham had with Hagar was  called Ishmael. Hagar took her son and left the family due to all the in-fighting of the children, Ishmael and Isaac going on.  

Isaac,  Abraham's son by Sarah  had twins, Jacob and Esau.   Jacob's fraternal twin, Esau,  fought with Jacob, having the opposite type of personality.  They were even enemies.  Esau left the family group and married with Others not related.  Jacob had fled to Haran and stayed there for 20 years before connecting with his brother once more.  The three most important men in our Jewish history were Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  

How do people remember such facts, especially names?  We saw this happening in the Black tribe mentioned in the book, Roots: The Saga of an American Family is a 1976 novel written by Alex Haley. It tells the story of Kunta Kinte, an 18th-century African, captured as an adolescent, sold into slavery in Africa, and transported to North America; it follows his life and the lives of his descendants in the United States down to Haley.   

  Haley spent the last chapter of the book describing his research in archives and libraries to support his family's oral tradition with written records. If Haley's family line remembered facts orally, I believe ours could have used this method as well, possibly combined with written. If you're interested in your family, read this book, whoever you are.       

Abraham's journey can be tracked by oral history and today's DNA.  That way we can see who he has left behind as descendants.                             

Resource:

Tanakh, Stone Edition

https://australian.museum/learn/science/human-evolution/homo-sapiens-modern-humans/#:~:text=Homo%20sapiens%20evolved%20in%20Africa,the%20only%20surviving%20human%20species.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roots:_The_Saga_of_an_American_Family

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33758277/#:~:text=We%20show%20that%20this%20haplogroup,the%20Levant%2C%20and%20southern%20Mesopotamia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_Q-M242

From Abraham to Jacob, Moses Wrote of Children's Behavior And How They Grew Into A Valiant People

 Nadene Goldfoot                                          

  Terah , Abraham, Sarah  leaving Ur of the Chaldees near the Euphrates River for Canaan, a trek of 897 miles !  Figure: 10-15 days to walk 300 miles;    So, it would take at least a month to go 900 miles.  Hopefully, they traveled with wagons and camels, of course.  At some point around 3500 B.C. in Mesopotamia, wheels were added to sleds to make the first carts. Wheeled vehicles were soon used in warfare. These early wheeled vehicles gave rise to animal-powered chariots and wagons, allowing people to travel far from their homes. This helped to build great empires.  

The Land of Israel (Hebrew: אֶרֶץ יִשְׂרָאֵל‎, Modern: ʾEreṣ/Eretz Yisraʾel, Tiberian: ʾEreṣ Yisrāʾēl) is the traditional Jewish name for an area of the Southern Levant. Related biblical, religious and historical English terms include the Land of Canaan, the Promised Land, the Holy Land.  Palestine should not be used until after the year 135 when the Romans named it for the Philistines, vindictively.   (see also Israel (disambiguation)). The definitions of the limits of this territory vary between passages in the Hebrew Bible, with specific mentions in Genesis 15, Exodus 23, Numbers 34 and Ezekiel 47. Nine times elsewhere in the Bible, the settled land is referred as "from Dan to Beersheba", and three times it is referred as "from the entrance of Hamath unto the brook of Egypt" (1 Kings 8:65, 1 Chronicles 13:5 and 2 Chronicles 7:8).

Abram/ Abraham changed his outlook of religion.  His father, Terah, was an idol maker, and one day, Moses, accidently knocked over an idol which of course, broke. 

 His father yelled at him when he got home, and Abram said that the other idol in the room had hit this idol and knocked it down!  Fast thinking, but maybe Abraham was thinking about how people could bow and pray to the clay statue that his father had formed.  G-d had spoken to Abram.  When he was married to Sarah, daughter of Haran, and  also son of Terah, he talked his father into leaving with them and head out for Canaan.  He wanted to get away from these narrow-minded people who all believed in these idols so that they could have a good life.  

Abram had married his niece, the beautiful Sarai while in Haran.  Much later, when they thought Sarah had missed the window of conceiving,  they had a son, Isaac.

Sarah had proved to be barren.  Earlier, when Sarai had given up hope, she had told Abram to take her handmaid, Hagar,  who could conceive as she was young.  She bore Ishmael. When he had finished speaking with Abraham, God went up from him. 

On that very day Abraham took his son Ishmael and all those born in his household or bought with his money, every male in his household, and circumcised them, as God told him. Abraham and his son Ishmael were both circumcised on that same day. (Gen. 17-10-14)

They were set apart as a people by being circumcised. (an uncircumsised male who will not circumcise the flesh of his foreskin--that soul shall be cut off from its people-he has invalidated My covenant.)  

 At the age of 90, Sarai had the surprise of her life by giving birth to Isaac who was circumcised at 8 days.  Abram was tested by G-d by telling him to sacrifice Isaac, and he just about used his knife but stopped, said to stop through intervention of an angel (Esau's guardian angel).   

Isaac in turn, at age 40,  married Rebekah and Jacob and his twin, Esau were  born.   Famine drove Isaac from the Negev to the Philistine country. The twins were not identical but fraternal twins,  and were complete opposites, having difficulties throughout their life.  

Ishmael, jealous of the new-born half-brother, Isaac, pinched and bothered him so much that Abraham had to lead away both Hagar and his son away from the camp.  With the age difference and different mothers, they were not about to be friends.  

Esau and Jacob, fraternal twins, the oldest by minutes, lost his birthright and firstborn's special blessing because of the cleverness of Jacob, causing the worst kind of friction between them.  Esau was out to kill Jacob, who realized this and had fled back to Haran.  They met again 20 years later.  The twins symbolize the two nations' relationship who develop to the point of great hostility. 

Genesis 26:34–35 describes Esau's marriage at the age of forty to two Hittite Canaanite women: Judith, the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath the daughter of Elon the Hittite. This arrangement grieved his parents.  In Gen.35, he is identified with the Edomites.  Esau was born into a godly family, but turned to the more material path, and that his Hittite wives led him completely away from the belief of One G-d that Abraham had introduced and Isaac followed.   It only took Esau, a 2nd generation to ignore his parents' path of religion.  This shows that children all have their own minds and do not always stick together in practices and beliefs.   

Basemath (Gen.26:34) 1st of Esau's wives.  Tradition has it that Esau had hunted, eaten, and drunk for years with sons of Elon, his wife's brothers,  and also had sworn, sacrificed and vowed to their false gods of the fields and groves.  Having outdone her brothers in his debaucheries, Esau finally had brought Bashemath, a Canaanite, and Judith, daughter of Beeeri, another Canaanite, into the covenanted camp of his father.   

Judith (Gen.27:1) had grieved and vexed Esau's parents.  Judith did not worship the one G-d.. The account of Esau losing 1st born blessing   comes immediately after marrying his Hittite wives (Genesis 26:34).               

Jacob, after returning to Haran, married his uncle Laban's 2 daughters, separately, Leah and Rachel.  By them and their handmaids, Bilhah and Zilpah, he had 12 sons, progenitors of the 12 tribes-and a daughter, Dinah.  He returned home, which would have been the Negev, and he struggled with a heavenly emissary and overcame him,  and was rewarded with the name of Israel.  His son, Joseph disappeared, but finally Jacob was reunited with him in Egypt where Joseph  had become Pharaoh's chief minister.  Jacob settled in Goshen in Lower Egypt, dying there at the age of 147.  His body was taken back to Hebron and buried in the Cave of Machpelah.  The name, Jacob, has been found in Akkadian and Egyptian sources and is in the Torah.  

By a 2nd generation, especially if a family has had to divide and live in many parts of the country, can lose sight of the religion of their fathers.  One hopes that a 1st-born son will follow through, but not always.  As in Isaac's story, if the son has married outside his faith, chances are that without that special helpmate, the practices might become lost.  

What we're facing is what Abram and Sarai faced with Ishmael- a generation cut apart from the family and taking on another religion, or not accepting all the customs which managed to hold the family together as a religious unit.  It doesn't take much, just a generation or 2 and they are lost to the family values.  We went through this during the Greek era of Hellenizing.  Now, with the Holocaust destroying families, it's leaving people either to practice Judaism or to become atheistic, or at odds with Judaism.

Our holidays of celebration have managed to hold us together.  Passover is one of them that goes through our history and teaches us of our ancestors and what they did and why we are to remember them.  We celebrate with a feast at a dinner table with a book and food:  

The Seder Plate holds:  3 matzos and:a bowl of salt water-representing the tears of slaves-dip the karpas into it, 

1. Maror - Bitter herbs, which symbolize the bitterness of the slavery that the Jews endured in Egypt. To represent maror, many people use grated horseradish or a whole horseradish root.
2. Charoset - A sweet, brown paste-like mixture that represents the mortar used by the Jewish slaves to build structures in Egypt. While recipes for charoset do vary, it typically includes some combination of apples, nuts, red wine, and spices. Dates and raisins are other common charoset ingredients.
3. Karpas - A leafy vegetable, often parsley or celery, that is a symbol of spring and hope. It is dipped in liquid (typically salt water) at the beginning of the Seder.
4. Zeroa - A roasted lamb bone that represents the special Paschal sacrifice on the eve of the exodus from Egypt.
5. Beitzah - A hard-boiled egg that symbolizes the temple sacrifice and rebirth.

At my Passover Seder 2018, end of meal as I see the coconut macaroons on the table

Family Seders are when a family gets together
 

Families hold a seder on the first and sometimes second night of Passover. It is fundamentally a religious service set around a dinner table, where the order in which participants eat, pray, drink wine, sing, discuss current social justice issues and tell stories is prescribed by a central book called the Haggadah. 

The seder is time to reflect our history of a major event, the Exodus. It's a time of role play, as we imagine we were there.  Food on the table reminds of of what we went through. Each speaks to us in reminding what happened.   The more we do, the more meaningful our history becomes.   Our history book is the Haggadah (Haggadah shel Pesach) which tells the story. 

From time immemorial, Jews have celebrated Passover in memory of their liberation from slavery in Egypt, as described in the book of Exodus in the Bible.  throughout the festival, matzah (unleavened bread) is eaten instead of ordinary bread, to recall the hurried baking of matzah during the Exodus itself. A really great Seder takes over an hour between  going through our textbook Haggadah and eating including all the historic elements. We learn that on the last night in Egypt, each Jewish household ritually slaughtered a lamb and then consumed it at a family gathering.  This ritual was commemorated in Temple times by each householder in the sacrifice of a lamb at the Temple on Passover Eve.  Then lamb was then eaten at a festive gathering of the family or by a group of friends, who spent the evening recalling the memory of the historic deliverance with prayers and psalms.  this banquet---reverent in purpose and joyful in practice---has been perpetuated through the ages in the Seder ceremony.    

Jews from all over the world have clamored to return and many have.  Somehow through the ages, they held onto their religion, or at least parts of it.  According to statistics presented by the Population and Immigration Authority, 57,223 people immigrated to Israel from May 2022 until the beginning of January 2023 – 41,813 from Russia, 13,490 from Ukraine and 1,990 from Belarus. Of these immigrants, 32% (18,149) are currently not residing in Israel.That means 68% of the 57,223 are still there.  Even if they only last 5 years, it will be a life-changing experience for them that should bring them much closer to the culture and religion and value system of Jews, and more of a personal identification that most all people are looking for. It's pretty exciting when so many people in a town in Israel are Spring Cleaning, and stores are full of Passover goodies.  I made aliyah in September of 1980 and had to return by Thanksgiving 1985.

This year of 2023 is another where Ramadan, Passover and Easter come at the same time.  Ramadan, a month-long festival, lasts from Evening of Wed, Mar 22, 2023 - Evening of Thu, Apr 20, 2023.  Passover's 1st seder is  Evening of Wed, Apr 5, 2023 - Evening of Thu, Apr 13, 2023, and Easter is Sun, Apr 9, 2023. On April 9th, all three religions will be celebrating.