Passover starts tonight. It’s an important Jewish holiday on both a cultural and religious level.

Its symbolic value is especially potent this year: The titular “passing over” involves engaging in an act of sacrifice to allow death to bypass your household ...

In biblical text, that act was the sacrifice of a lamb.

In Exodus, Jewish households with doorways marked by lamb’s blood would be spared from the 10th plague - the killing of the oldest male child - in the biblical story.

Today, most Jewish households affix a scroll called a mezuzah to their doorways.

Even secular Jews do it. The tradition transcends religious belief.

And on this Passover, the idea is universal.

The sacrifice most are making involves staying home. The death we wish to avoid is not for our own households, but all households.

To Jews in North America, Passover is like Christmas: That one holiday where kids will travel home to see their families.

It is the most important family gathering of the year - the one holiday you don’t ignore.

There’s no travel home this year. Canadians are staying put.

There will be no large versions of the Passover meals known as seders.

All Canadians are staying home, sacrificing in their own ways, waiting for death to pass.

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