As Israel last night began celebrating Passover, prisoners won a brief release from jail. The Sea of Galilee was placed off-limits. And a hurried exodus for a handful of Jews from Yugoslavia gave the ancient festival of freedom a thoroughly modern dimension.
The week-long Passover holiday commemorates the biblical exodus of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, and the start of their journey to the Holy Land. In a real-time parallel, seven Jews from Yugoslavia, four of them from Kosovo, have made their way to Israel via Hungary in the past two days - and were welcomed personally yesterday by the Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu.
Jewish leaders in Yugoslavia say any hundreds more would like to make the journey, but are being held up by Israeli bureaucracy - an allegation rejected in Israel. Most of Yugoslavia's 3,500 Jews are reported to be disinclined to leave, however, and the rabbi of Belgrade, Rabbi Yitzhak Asiel, was last night conducting their opening Passover Seder service, having been granted a festive freedom of his own: he was called up as a military reservist in the Yugoslav army, but excused after intervention by the city's Greek Orthodox and other religious leaders.
Orthodox and traditional Jews refuse to eat leavened bread for the week of Passover and stick instead to unleavened food such as the flat matzah crackers, because their ancestors in Egypt fled in such a hurry that the bread they were baking did not have time to rise.
To ensure that the ultra-Orthodox are spared any risk of encountering bread, Israel's national water carrier has gone so far as to stop pumping drinking water from the Sea of Galilee, the country's main reservoir, where fishermen might have breaded the waters with doughy bait. Instead, this week, it is drawing water only from deep underground sources.
In contrast to many recent festivals, when Israel, citing security concerns, has barred Palestinians from crossing into Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip have not been sealed off this Passover.
In a more dramatic gesture of freedom, the Israeli prisons service has granted short festive furloughs to about 1,000 prisoners - including Ami Popper, jailed for seven life terms after the unprovoked murders of seven Palestinian workers eight years ago, whose sentence has since been commuted to 40 years.
Passover also offers Israelis a brief respite from politics, six weeks before general elections. Early yesterday morning, the Central Election Commission announced the final line-up of parties and would-be prime ministers: a record 33 parties are seeking seats in the 120-member Knesset, and five candidates are battling to prevent Mr Netanyahu winning a second term.
The five are: the Labour leader, Mr Ehud Barak, who is slightly ahead of Mr Netanyahu in the polls; the centrist candidate, Mr Yitzhak Mordechai, whose campaign seems to be running out of steam; the right-wing no-hoper, Mr Beni Begin, who was almost ruled out after some of the required signatures of endorsement he presented proved to be forged; Mr Azmi Bishara, an Arab Knesset member making a token bid for the job; and Rabbi Yosef Ba-gad, a former Knesset member whose campaign is regarded as a joke.
The contest seems certain to come down to a second-round run-off between Mr Netanyahu and Mr Barak, to be held two weeks after voting on May 17th.
AFP adds from Jerusalem:
Mr Netanyahu's brother-in-law came out yesterday in favour of Palestinian statehood. Dr Matania Ben Artzi, a mathematician, is one of 520 intellectuals and peace activists who have signed a petition calling on Israel to permit the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Dr Ben Artzi is one of two brothers of Mrs Sarah Netanyahu. The other brother, Mr Hagai Ben Artzi, is a far-right militant who has harshly criticised the Prime Minister for signing even timid land-for-security accords with the Palestinians.