matzo

Who said Passover meals had to be only Matzot and potatoes?

Across the country and the world, Jews are busy cleaning their houses of all chametz, or leavened products, and buying matzot, or unleavened bread, for the holiday.

We lit Hanukkah candles, fasted on Yom Kippur and ate Matzot on Passover.

Authorities, moreover, tried to compel observant Jews to work on Saturdays and prohibited the production and sale of matzot in synagogues.

Similarly, in his now classic article that has been reprinted in this volume, Sarna describes in full color the efforts of Manischewitz family members to manipulate the system in the face of rabbinic opposition to their production of machine-made matzot. To overcome obstacles, they opened a yeshiva in Jerusalem that taught students to endorse their product.

According to the Orthodox Union, an authority on certifying kosher food: "Regretfully, because one can only perform the mitzvah of eating matzot at the Seder with a matzo that is made from one of the five varieties of grain (barley, wheat, rye, oats, and spelt), eating matzot using any of the other flours that are gluten-free would still not enable one to fulfill the mitzvah." Gluten is found in wheat, rye, and barley.

Thus, for example, he called the eating of matzot on Passover a "stupid ritual" ("stupidi riti"), and he designated the custom of laying tefillin (phylacteries) as a primitive remnant of the real Orthodox Jew ("of whom, fortunately, very few remain"--Lombroso, 1894, 14).

Mark reached into his magic bag and brought out matzot, grape juice, charoset, horse radish, a small container of salt water, and three Haggadot.

Other religious lawmakers have begun drafting legislation to circumvent the court's decision and plug any loopholes in the 1986 Festival of Matzot Law, which forbids the display of bread in public, but not the sale of bread.

In view of the lack of any explicit statement which prescribes the observance of the Sabbath beginning from Friday evening, the sanctification of the preceding evening was deduced from texts which pertain to the observance of the Day of Atonement and the (first) Day of the Matzot Festival.