"A Rugrats Passover" was directed by Jim Duffy, Steve Socki, and Jeff McGrath from a script by Peter Gaffney, Paul Germain, Rachel Lipman, and Jonathan Greenberg.

The episode scored a 3.1 Nielsen Rating, making it the highest-rated show in Nickelodeon's history,[2] and received overwhelmingly positive reviews, including from Jewish community publications.

However, both episodes faced controversy when the Anti-Defamation League compared the artistic design of the older characters to anti-Semitic drawings from a 1930s Nazi newspaper.

Boris hasn't reappeared by the time Tommy's best friend, Chuckie Finster, and his dad, Chas, arrive to join the celebration.

The basket and baby are discovered by Pharaoh Angelica, who shows Moses around her palace and kingdom, and decides to make him her partner.

As Boris explains that the Pharaoh was oblivious that Moses himself was actually a Hebrew, Chas enters the attic, looking for the kids, and becomes locked in with the rest of them.

The episode then pictures Tommy as Moses fleeing to the desert, where he becomes a shepherd and forgets about Egypt and the Pharaoh, until the voice of God calls to him from a burning bush, telling him that he must free the Hebrews from slavery.

Minka, Didi, and Stu arrive in the attic to find the group enthralled by the end of Boris' story: Moses, cornered, calls down the power of God to part the Red Sea, which the Hebrews are approaching.

[4][5] Germain wrote the episode's teleplay along with regular Rugrats writers Peter Gaffney, Rachel Lipman, and Jonathan Greenberg; animators Jim Duffy, Steve Socki, and Jeff McGrath directed.

[6][7] While scripting the episode, now entitled "A Rugrats Passover", the writers were forced to audit many elements of the portrayal of plagues, particularly the third one, so it could still be accessible to children and not too frightening.

[15] Creator Klasky identified the episode's depiction of the Pickles family as "very loving, [and] basically functional"[15] as strikingly different from the prevailing trends in contemporary television programming.

[17] According to Catherine Mullally, then-Vice President and Executive Producer of Nickelodeon Video and Audio Works, the episode was the highest Nielsen-rated telecast in the network's history.

[2][11][28] The cassette was reissued, alongside newer Rugrats videos Grandpa's Favorite Stories and Return of Reptar, in early 1997.

Authors Michael Atkinson and Laurel Shifrin, in their book Flickipedia: Perfect Films for Every Occasion, Holiday, Mood, Ordeal, and Whim, praised the episode for celebrating "secular Jewishness in the wisest and most entertaining fashion [...] Grandpa Boris regales the kids with an epic, albeit abridged, Exodus story.

[36] The controversy resurfaced in 1998, when the ADL criticized another appearance of Boris, this time reciting the Mourner's Kaddish in a Rugrats comic strip published in newspapers during the Jewish New Year.

Unlike Hecht, Nickelodeon's then-president Herb Scannell agreed with the criticism and apologized, promising never to run the character or the strip again.

[40] Rugrats in turn produced a second Jewish holiday episode, this time to meet the network executives' original Hanukkah special pitch.

[42] The special, entitled "A Rugrats Chanukah", was originally broadcast on December 4, 1996,[43] and received a Nielsen rating of 7.9 in the Kids 2–11 demographic.