My very vague understanding is that the two celebrations are related because the Last Supper was a Passover Seder. With that in mind how come Easter is occurring nearly a whole month before Passover this year?
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The Jewish calendar is a lunar calendar, but it’s kept in sync with the (solar) seasons by means of adding a new month every few years to stop it from getting too far behind (so formally, it’s a lunisolar calendar). Each month starts at a new moon.
Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox. Usually the first full moon after the equinox falls during the Jewish month of Nisan (when Passover falls), but that’s not always the case.
Passover is unusually late this year, because this year is a leap year in the Jewish calendar, where we added an extra month (Adar II*) right before Nisan.
Easter is also unusually early this year, since there was a full moon like two days after the equinox.
This year, Easter Sunday falls on the 21st of Adar II when converted to the Jewish calendar (Passover is the next month, the 15th of Nisan through the 21st of Nisan). Easter will always be around the 14th to 21st of some Jewish month, since it falls in the week after a full moon (a full moon marks the middle of a Jewish month); I believe it will always fall during either Adar (II) or Nisan.
Basically, the calculations used to keep the Jewish calendar in sync with the seasons don’t try to keep the full moon after the equinox always during Nisan, so it sometimes ends up the month before.
(*Technically, what happens is that the month of Adar gets split into two months, Adar I and Adar II. Really Adar I is the “extra” one, since holidays and the like that fall during Adar are celebrated in Adar II)
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