Crossover and Passover coincide this year.

Crossover is the deadline for House bills to receive a constitutional majority, 71 votes, and cross over to a Senate committee, which will hold a public hearing on the legislation. Same for Senate bills coming to the House.

If you miss this deadline, your bill goes to the Rules Committee. It may still get a hearing but at a later date.

Time is not your friend in these last two weeks. So that delay can be fatal.

Because Passover begins tonight, the crossover deadline has been extended from today to tomorrow.

When we reconvene, I will offer this prayer:

Why is this Crossover different from all others?

At the seder table last night and tonight, the youngest child asks: “Why is this night different from all other nights?”

The first time that Jewish boys, and more recently girls, are able to read the Four Questions in Hebrew – in front of their extended family, is a proud moment indeed.

We call this holiday Passover because the Angel of Death, the malechamovitz, killed the first born sons of Egyptian families but passed over the houses of Pharaoh’s slaves, the Jews.

After this tenth and final plague, Pharaoh let my people go.

The exodus to freedom has inspired many generations and many peoples.

In the Palm Sunday gospel, Luke writes of the day of Unleavened Bread on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover.”

In 1968, Dr. Maryin Luther King, Jr. was planning to join the seder of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who had stood beside him on the march from Selman to Birmingham. An assassin’s bullet prevented that celebration.

Last year, a seder was held in the White House for the first time. The search for the hidden piece of matzo, the afikomen, was conducted by the only two children present – Malia and Sasha.

Wherever the seder is held, it concludes with a declaration – in centuries past a dream, but now a reality:

Next year in Jerusalem.

Amen.