Re-Chametz-ification

I still haven't broken Passover. And I'm kind of cool with that.

(Okay, I sort of promised myself as I sat down to write that this wasn't going to turn into a my-Passover-was-cooler-than-yours post. I'll try to keep it that way. But it still might.)

A few years ago, when I was living in Israel, I went out to lunch with a bunch of folks. This was two, maybe three weeks after Passover ended. My friend B., who's kind of a spiritual giant and lives on a different plane of existence than the rest of us -- he routinely takes half an hour or longer to pray the (usually 3-minute) mincha service -- happened to mention, while we passed around the wicker bowl of laffas, that he hadn't broken Passover yet.

This was soundly greeted by a round of "Whut?!"s from the table.

B. explained. It's not that he was purposely prolonging Pesach (say that three times fast) -- he just wanted to hold on to the feeling. He didn't even say that. What he said was much more subtle, and much more wise. Something about how going from from chometz to bread, was a single huge step, like going from slavery to freedom, and if we do it all at once, we miss the full spiritual experience.

Caveat #1: Not everyone has the patience (or the space in their lives) for a full spiritual experience like that -- and most of us need to dive back into our bread. I was going to make a salad for lunch today, but I didn't have time, and so I grabbed a bagel from the freezer, slathered on some cream cheese, and made my train in time. But yesterday I packed Passover leftovers, and I was feeling pretty damn good about it. (Caveat #2: my wife is a personal chef, which most people aren't -- and hence, my lunch of manchego gratin and ratatouille was probably not most people's Passover experience. Gloat gloat gloat.)

People like B. amaze me, not because they have spiritual experiences, but because they have such a talent for making spiritual experiences last. For me, I have a great morning prayer, or hear a great song, it's gone the moment I step out the door and the angry Brooklyn traffic crashes me down to reality. Sooner or later, I know real life is going to sink in -- and, with it, the hametz.

Passover Price Gouging

I told you how my family and I don't use many processed foods for Passover, thus avoiding many of the ugly price-fixing that goes on during the holiday. But some things, you just can't buy -- unless, of course, you want to squeeze your own olive oil.

These two bottles of grapeseed oil look basically the same, don't they?

There's just one tiny difference: One bottle, we bought a couple of weeks ago, before the Passover rush (that's the open one). We ran out last night (during Chol Hamoed) to buy the second. Aside from that, they're virtually identical. Or are they? Oops -- look again.



That's the bottle of oil we bought way before Passover -- before the supermarkets started isolating their Passover products to a specially-tagged PASSOVER SALE NOW! section. And what about the bottle on the right? You'll notice it doesn't have a price tag.

Fortunately, we managed to save the receipt.



Now, $8.99 versus $12.49 isn't a huge difference, 29% of the total cost -- unless you think of it on a macro scale. Imagine being charged 1/3 more for everything you bought in a week. (In our part of Brooklyn, with an average family size of 10, chances are almost everyone is affected more than we are.) Despite the successful lawsuits against Manischewitz and other matzah companies for price-fixing, there are huge problems that need fixing. Even after all that Pesach cleaning, it's still a dirty business.

Ignoring Passover

I always look forward to the Passover seder. Any ritual organised around reading a book is good by me (those people who shout Bible verses in your face on the subway platform notwithstanding...although, if you catch them in a quiet mood and ask about their lives, you'll get some pretty wild verbal autobiographies), especially when you're with the people you love, or a bunch of strangers with interesting things to say, or some combination of the two, which is the way it played out this year.

We were de-invited from our first seder because our hosts' kid developed mumps, which, since we've got an 8-months-pregnant woman and a toddler, is not an ideal situation. (Of course: we live in Crown Heights. Where else in the world is there an outbreak of mumps in 2010?!) On the other hand: Being that we're in Crown Heights, it's totally natural and normal and not at all a breach of social etiquette to call some random folks and say, we need a seder, can we come over?

And that's what we did -- my friend (and awesome poet) Jake Marmer's in-laws were glad to take us in for the night. And the next night, we returned the favour -- not to them, but to the aforementioned combination of friends and strangers, some of whom knew the seder inside, out, and backwards, and some of whom hadn't been to a seder in years.

That's one of the advantages of a seder. With the same text in front of you, the preeminent Torah scholars of the generation and the Child Who Does Not Know How to Ask a Question are on the same footing. The big question of the Haggadah isn't "How is this night different?" -- anyone can see how this night is different, and the Four Questions are really just statements that echo that. The real question is, why is this night different? And anyone is equally qualified to dig into the text and answer that.

When I was a kid, Passover eating was pretty simple. Most nights, we had regular meals with matzah replacing the bread: matzah burgers, matzah pizza, matzah lasagna. It's totally doable, and even cool as a change-of-pace sort of thing. Desserts were plentiful: macaroons, coconut marshmallows, and jelly-filled whatevers. My grandmother made "matzah rolls" out of matzo meal and lots of eggs, and we could even have sandwiches. We were always okay with that, with the matzahfication of our food. Or at least we were for the first couple of days, until we got bored of matzah and our pee started smelling like burnt toast and we started counting down the days (ok, hours) until we could eat the B-word again. Life -- for the 8 days of Passover, the day before (when you stop eating grains in mid-morning), and the month before (when you stock up desperately for food you can barely stand) -- becomes centered around this frantic rush of fortifying our boundaries to Passover. Food substitutes and iPhone apps seem to be created for that very purpose, to help us ignore the un-ignorable: that we're neck-deep in a leaven-less life.

This year, it seems to be the official position of MJL's blog (well, of Tamar's posts and my own) to advocate a different sort of simplicity: rather than doing a simple find-and-replace routine on your diet, where you replace any sort of grain with matzah, try eating simpler foods, unprocessed foods, and stuff that doesn't come out of a package.

All of this is a long way of saying, there are as many ways to keep Passover (both food-wise and otherwise) as there are people who are keeping it. And one of those ways is to pretend that nothing's wrong, that your diet is completely fine and that you just forgot to buy some bre -- yeah. But why turn a potentially awesome transformation of your diet into a gnarly routine of substitution?

Matzo lasagna image from Albion Cooks.

Happy Passover (and, oh yeah, a kosher one)

A rabbi used to go around wishing everyone a kosher Purim and a happy Passover. Someone stopped him and said, What are you, crazy? Don't you have it backward?

The rabbi shook it off. "Not at all," he said. "On Purim, everyone is very concerned about being happy, so they make sure to do it. And on Passover, everyone's worried about cleaning their houses and getting rid of their hametz, so they make sure to do that. But on Purim, with all the happiness, people sometimes need to remember to keep it kosher. And on Passover, when everyone's stressed out, they need to remember to keep it happy."

I don't remember where this originally came from, but I heard it from Shlomo Carlebach, as quoted by Shalom Brodt. Either way, have a rockin' Passover. And, yes, a kosher one.

Passover with the Four Sons

If you haven't noticed, since G-dcast started, we've been playing around with the way we tell stories. For Chanukah, we did a sweeping story of the Maccabees. For Passover, we decided to zero in a little bit...and tell you a nice little family story. About arguing. Of course.

Eat Matzah Fast

Jeremy Moses of MyJewishLearning just took it upon himself to break the world record for matzah eating. (Disclaimer: before he tried, there was no world record for matzah eating.)

Every year at seder, we're supposed to eat the entire 2/3 of a piece of matzah (okay, that's if you're eating shmura matzah -- 1 entire sheet, if you go by the machine-made *ahem* cheating *ahem* kind) in one action, without swallowing. Add that to the fact that you're not supposed to have eaten matzah at all in the past 30 days...Well, if you can get it down in one gulp, you're kind of a hero.

(Jeremy also wants me to add that, when he was practicing, he did it much faster than he did on the video. So there.)

Can anyone break it?