Passover and Elijah

I just finished reading an excellent book called Celebrating Passover: A guide to Understanding the Jewish Passover for Latter-day Saints by Marianne Monson-Burton

It takes you through the rich history and symbolism of this ancient feast and how to celebrate your very own Seder complete with recipes and script (Haggadah) Since I'm on the Relief Society committee I would like to do one of these Passover feasts as an activity in the Spring. We shall see if anyone else is as excited about it as I am.

This book confirmed one of my Passover suspicions as well:

"On Easter Sunday 1836, during the Passover festival when Jewish families around the world opened doors and invited him to enter, Elijah appeared to the Prophet Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery in the newly dedicated Kirtland Temple. There he restored sealing keys that permit families to be bound together eternally.

The importance of this date is underscored by an amazing astronomical coincidence that links the date of the Saviors resurrection with Elijah's return in this last dispensation. The Jewish lunar calendar and our modern solar calendar do not often align, but Elijah's return in 1836 occurred not only during passover week, as anticipated by the Jews, but also on an Easter Sunday calendrically similar to the proposed date of the Savior's resurrection, being both April 3 on the Gregorian calendar and 16 Nissan on the Hebrew calendar. Mormon scholar John P. Pratt said, "The Easter of 1836 was calendrically the most similar in history to the Easter of A.D. 33. [the year that Jesus was crucified] And if the earth's orbit continues unchanged, that Easter should retain this distinction for another three thousand years. The year 1836 was the only such occurrence in the nineteenth century!"

This is obviously much more than a remarkable coincidence. Elijah's return occurred on the exact anniversary of the resurrection, which emphasizes the essential and holy nature of the priesthood restoration..."

That is one Passover that is vitally important to Latter-day Saints.