A farewell to matza

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Today is the 7th and last day of the Passover week in Israel.
Last Friday our town's Chabad rabbi and rebbitzin arranged a big community seder with about 45 guests.
It was nice, and four hours long, and at the end the men danced in a circle with gusto!
But because it was the Sabbath, photography was not allowed.  Sorry!

We have been eating matzo for a week.
Only on Sunday, when the stores open again after Shabbat, will we be able to go buy BREAD.
And I bet the big boxes of matzot will be deeply discounted.  :)
Chag sameach and Shabbat shalom.
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If you're in the mood to see more about the seder and Pesach, please see my older posts under Passover.
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Nice seder last night

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Nice neighbors invited me to their long and bountiful seder table last night.

No noodles in the chicken soup; that's forbidden food all this Passover week.
Fluffy matza balls are much much better anyway! 

I brought to the seder a box of three special hand-made matzas from Kfar Chabad. 
The historic bakery in Kfar Chabad is the world's largest producer of hand-make matzot. 

Matza shmurah is baked quickly in a brick oven like in the picture. 
Its interesting story is explained in my post from last Pesach. 
But the main thing, as the box says, is "Get a taste of freedom," freedom from slavery in ancient Egypt and from all kinds of things that shackle our growth today.
Chag sameach--happy Pesach! 
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(Linking to ABC Wednesday.)
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Matza shmura!

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Look what a wonderful gift I received yesterday on the Eve of Passover!

And expensive too!
Every box is sealed with a sticker bearing a serial number and rabbinical certification of authenticity and kashrut.
Normally only very observant Jews go above and beyond to invest in matza above and beyond the standard square white, uniform, factory-produced matzot.

The box held three hand-made shmura matzas specifically for use on the festive Pesach seder table.

The back of the box has a handy guide to the elements of the seder.
Especially stressed is the requirement for every Jewish man and woman to eat matza three times on this night of our "going out from Egypt," each time the required minimum is about 27 grams (or some ancient authorities say 15 grams), i.e. "kezait," ("like one olive").

So, very carefully (because if one matza breaks, it is not kosher for the seder), I tore off the outer cellophane, cut the strong sticker, took out the plastic bag from the strong box, unwrapped the waxed paper, and . . .

tada!  The three precious matzot shmurot!
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In Hebrew, shmura means guarded.
Every stage of the making of this once-a-year specialty is carefully guarded, from farm to packaging.
"The wheat is plucked after the kernels start to harden but before they sprout new shoots. Kosher supervisors monitor the grain even as it’s growing to make sure the wheat isn’t sprouting."

This quote is from an article in Haaretz called Why Does Shmura Matza for Passover Cost More than Filet Mignon?.
You will enjoy reading it, I'm sure!

To see the process: a 2-minute video
and/or an old-fashioned video starting from the wheat growing, 11 minutes.
 
Chag sameach, happy holiday!
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(For more information and photos please click on the matza and Passover labels here below:)
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(Linking to Our World Tuesday and ABC Wednesday.)
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Matza for Natl. Grilled Cheese Day

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Now that the big important Jewish and Christian holidays are wrapping up, we can blog instead about those silly unofficial national days like the one America is observing today -- National Grilled Cheese Day.

Today bread would have been in the stores again, after the week of Pesach/Passover when it was prohibited, but I didn't want to walk to the supermarket in the rain to buy it.
So for Grilled Cheese Day I had to (again, still!) microwave-melt cheese on MATZA!
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That's My World -- matza

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Goodbye bread.
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Hello matza.
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Pesach begins this evening.
No bread for us, or any food with leavening, for the seven days of Passover.
Jews who observe the biur chamtetz ritual burned their last remaining morsels of bread in little bonfires this morning.
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For more fun posts about matza and for the deeper meaning of the "bread of affliction," you are welcome to click on my label MATZA.
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I'm getting ready to take the last bus from my village up to Jerusalem for the seder meal.
See ya later. Chag sameach--happy holiday!
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Circle K

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"Kosher for Passover" Nutella (all the way from Italy) spread on "kosher lePesach" matsot (made right here in Jerusalem) = the winning combination for the week of Passover, when bread is not permitted.
See the K inside the circle? That's the rabbis' stamp of approval.
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A kosher K for ABC Wednesday.
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Passover prep: That's My World

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Some of the kids of my moshav got together today to learn and teach how to make matzot.
Matza is the unleavened bread that we will eat instead of fluffy regular bread for the next week, remembering our quick-exit exodus from Egypt.

The flat hot bread that came off the taboon was really tasty.

Meticulous house-cleaning, grocery shopping, and preparing food for the seder meal of Erev Pesach--most Jewish Israelis can currently say That's My World, pretty much ALL of it.

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For more about mountains of store-bought matza you might see my last year's post.
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Passover seder

Pesach (Passover) is the holiday when families sit together at their table and before, during, and after the meal read the Hagaddah, the book of the "telling" of our deliverance from slavery in Egypt.
My kids and grandsons are scattered around the world in the Diaspora. So a kind old friend brought me to his family's seder in Jerusalem. The wife's side is of Turkish origin. It was a first for me to hear their melodies for the Hebrew and Aramaic songs in the Hagaddah, some quite different from the Ashkenazi tradition. Some they even sang in Ladino, which is a nearly extinct Romance language, descended from medieval Spanish, spoken by Sephardic Jews especially in the Balkans, Turkey, and the Near East, also called Judeo-Spanish. Beautiful!
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Here you see the famous matza ball soup. These matza balls were so fluffy, like clouds floating in the chicken soup. If made with a heavy hand, knaidlach sink like cannonballs (both in the soup and in your stomach).
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Dear friends, I am leaving at dawn tomorrow for five days of a special adventure down in the Negev desert. Please come back on Saturday for, God willing, exciting photos and stories. See you then. Shalom shalom!

M is for matza, mountains of matza

Why, you ask, do we Jews have to eat matzot and not eat bread on Passover?
Because . . . well, God said so! Verses 14-20 of Exodus 12 are all about what the Lord said to Moses concerning matza. Ex.12:17 says, "You shall observe the feast of unleavened bread, for on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt: therefore you shall observe this day, throughout your generations, as an ordinance for ever."
The Israelites, to escape Pharaoh's slavery, had to make such a quick get-away that the bread they prepared for the journey had no time to rise.
The main difference between fluffy bread and brittle matza, really, is hot air.
The moral of the story is that we should strive to be like the humble matza and not be puffed up with arrogance.
When the Talmud says "the yeast in the dough" it means the yetser hara, the "evil impulse" in people which is responsible for "all ferment in the human heart," causing us to sometimes act in not the right way.

To read "To Be a Matza" by good Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo, see here.


In the shuk today a man was selling these expensive special handmade 18-minute matzot shmurot, one kind hard and the other soft.
A soft matza? Is that not an oxymoron?
According to the Talmud the leavening process begins after water and flour have been in contact for 18 minutes, so the entire process of making matza, from the moment the water is added to the flour until the matza is taken out of the oven, must be completed in 18 minutes.
For the interesting inside story of matza baking, see here.

Oh, and for you Christians--if these round matzas look a lot like your Eucharistic host, they are!
If the Last Supper was really a Pesach seder meal, then when Jesus said "Eat this bread" what he was holding up was unleavened bread.
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Goodbye to bread

Enjoy it while you can. From this Friday until the end of next week (most) Jews will not be tasting any bread at all.
Instead, during the whole week of Passover we will eat "the bread of affliction," matza.
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Here you see the huge Angel Bakeries--the silos, flour mill, production lines.
Angel distributes its loaves and rolls all over the country and also supplies the prisons and the Israel Defense Force.
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