FORT BENNING, Ga., (March 25, 2015) -- Fort Benning will observe the Jewish holiday of Passover with a Passover Seder April 3 at 6:30 p.m. in the Maneuver Center of Excellence Main Post Chapel, and all members of the community are invited to participate.

Passover is celebrated by the Jewish community as a means of commemoration of their liberation from slavery in Egypt and their freedom as a nation under the leadership of Moses.

"The central theme to the Passover holiday and the Passover reading is freedom," said Chaplain Capt. Moshe Lans. "It's about liberty, where we come from and a sense of belonging. ... If any population can relate to this holiday, it's the U.S. military, the very population that perpetuates freedom and allows everyone else to be free."

Passover commemorates the story of the Exodus as described in the Hebrew Bible, especially in the Book of Exodus, in which the Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt.

In the narrative of the Exodus, the Bible tells that God led the children of Israel from their slavery in Egypt by inflicting 10 plagues upon the ancient Egyptians before the Pharaoh would release his Israelite slaves, with the 10th and worst of the plagues being the death of the Egyptian first born.

The Israelites were instructed to mark the doorposts of their homes with the blood of a slaughtered lamb and, upon seeing this, the spirit of the Lord knew to pass over the first-born in these homes, hence the English name of the holiday.

During the Seder, the Passover story will be told and reenacted, and a variety of traditional Passover foods will be served.

"One commandment is to speak and tell about this Passover event so it can be as if every generation has experienced the Exodus from Egypt," Lans said. "Even though it happened long ago, none of us should take freedom for granted. None of us should take for granted the ability to have a relationship with God. It's a special relationship, one to cherish and appreciate."

This year's Passover will be the first at Fort Benning for Lans, who arrived here in December.

He has spent almost 24 years in the Army, the first 17 of which he served in the Army Reserve.

After returning from a 2005 deployment to Iraq, he completed rabbinical school and attended the Chaplain Basic Officer Leader Course. He was then commissioned as a chaplain in the Reserve in 2009 before becoming active duty in 2010.

Despite waiting until 2009 to be commissioned as a chaplain, Lans said it was a lifelong goal of his.

"I had always known there was a shortage of Jewish chaplains - rabbis - on active duty," he said. "I had always known that and I had always wanted to be a chaplain. In my senior year of high school, we were asked to identify our career goals, and I wrote I wanted to be one day the rabbi and Jewish chaplain at West Point. It was a childhood dream. I made other life choices that conflicted with (rabbinical school), and it brought me down a different path and then God led me back. I got off course and God showed me I had gotten off course over a long period of time."

After becoming active duty, he was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, where he deployed to Afghanistan for one year and returned to spend an additional year at Fort Hood.

From there, he was sent to Korea for two years before arriving at Fort Benning.

Now that he is here, he said he hopes to expand the Jewish events offered on Fort Benning. Currently, the only regular Jewish service is held on Sundays at 8 a.m. for initial entry training Soldiers at Regimental Chapel on Sand Hill.

"Hopefully by the early Summer, we hope to augment the IET program with a regular Jewish Sabbath service at least monthly or semimonthly," he said. "We hope to slowly grow, God willing, and I have a lot of ideas for activities, Jewish classes, fun-filled events and cultural events. With God's blessings, we're going to grow the Main Post Jewish community. There's an entirely different Jewish population whose needs have not been met or addressed.

"We already had the first Jewish holiday a month ago, which is called Purim, and we held a non-training Jewish event that was very warmly received. In addition to the single Soldiers who attended, we also had three Jewish Families who had all been on this post for more than two years and had never met each other just because there had not been Jewish events outside the training environment."

For more information on Passover or other Jewish events on Fort Benning, contact Lans at moshe.lans.mil@mail.mil or 706-676-5588.