Throughout the generations and in all places of our exile, Pesach has been beloved by the Jewish people. Aside from its deeper meanings, there is no holiday where the rules about food are stricter or more numerous. Here in America, we take it for granted that all our Pesach food needs will be amply available. But even in times and places where it wasn’t, Pesachdik food – and especially matzah – has played a singular role in Jewish life.
Forbidden!
In the former Soviet
Union, religion was illegal, and matzah was not generally available. Over the
seven decades of Communist rule,
knowledge of Judaism all but disappeared among most Soviet Jews. Yet one of the
few things that people remembered was eating matzah on Pesach.
Miriam, who now
lives a frum lifestyle in America,
told me how she got connected to Judaism: “My mother was not at all religious
and knew almost nothing about the laws of the Torah, but it was after the
downfall of the Soviet Union, and she went to pick up matzahs from the shul in
our town. While she was there, she saw a sign about a camp for Jewish children.
She enrolled me in the camp, which lead to my attending a Jewish school. Matzah
was the catalyst that started the whole process.”
The situation was
similar in 15th century Spain. After the Jews were expelled during
the Spanish Inquisition, some Jews remained, pretending to be Christians while
observing Judaism in secret. One of the ways these hidden Jews were discovered
was through their food preparations. The agents of the Inquisition knew the
details of Pesach food and used the families’ servants to testify against them.
Matzah was perhaps
the most damning of the Passover foods that brought Jews before the Inquisition,
according to Dr. Yvette Alt Miller, who writes on Aish.com about the charges
that were brought against a hidden Jew: “‘He celebrates the Passover, on that
day eating matzah, celery, and lettuce as the Jews do,’ the Inquisition put
forth. ‘He gets unleavened bread from the Jewish neighborhood on the Passover.
He buys new dishes for Passover. He does everything else the Jews do on
Passover….’”
Round or Square?
Matzah has only
two ingredients, flour and water, yet it is as pricey as a fancy cake. This
year, matzos made by hand cost about $29 a pound! Matzos have been made by hand
from time immemorial, of course, and, according to Rabbi Berel Wein, “The work of baking the matzahs was
physically demanding and was often done by widows and poor women. There is a
lot of rabbinic literature filled with warnings to owners of matzah bakeries
not to verbally abuse the women workers, especially those who were widows.
“When machine matzahs started to be produced [after the Industrial
Revolution], it created an uproar in the rabbinic world,” continues Rabbi Wein.
“Some rabbanim liked the machine matzahs better because machines do not get
tired at four in the afternoon, its products were uniform and well baked, and
the machine did not get insulted if it was yelled at. It also allowed the
prices to be lower. The problem with the machines was the small bits of dough
that could get caught in the machinery. Most of the chasidic communities in
Eastern Europe refused to use the machine-made matzahs on Pesach, but they
gained popularity in other places, such as the United States.”
The round handmade
matzos are called shmurah matzah, which
means “guarded matzah,” because special care is taken to make sure it
does not become chometz. It is
guarded from the time of harvesting in the fields through being ground into
flour, and finally, baked. This concept comes from the Torah, where it says, “And you shall guard the matzos…” (Exodus 12:17) Some people use only hand matzah
for the Seder in order to fulfill the requirement that the matzah must be made
with the intention of using it for a mitzvah.
Machine matzos may be shmurah or non-shmurah, which are guarded only from
the time the wheat is ground into flour. People who use non-shmurah machine matzah rely on the
person who turns on the machine to have the right intention.
A European Pesach
Several years ago,
I interviewed two women who had grown up in Czechoslovakia before the war, and
they told me about their families’ Pesach food before supermarkets existed. Although
these women are no longer in this world, their memories live on.
Sorah said, “There was no shortage
of food. We had huge quantities of potatoes, grown on our own land, which we
stored in our cool cellar, underground. During the winter, my family would shecht
our geese, and we would save the schmaltz (fat) to use for Pesach. My
mother would sauté potatoes and onions with goose fat. It was delicious.”
Sorah’s mother also made her own wine.
“We had big glass barrels which we filled with grapes that were washed and
dried. Then we smashed the grapes. Every day we stirred the grapes in the
barrel, and eventually we strained the liquid. The same mixture will turn into
vinegar if it is not stirred at all. Everything on Pesach was homemade. We even
made our own candies and prepared pumpkin and sunflower seeds and walnuts for noshing.”
I asked Chana about her memories of
Pesach. “Oy, my mother worked so hard,” sighed Chana. “Right after Purim she
would begin by whitewashing the walls, which got sooty from a year’s worth of
smoke from the cooking. She made the paint by pouring boiling water on chalk.
Then she would kasher the kitchen. All the women from the surrounding
villages would purchase flour from my father and bake matzos in our kitchen.”
Halacha or a Minhag?
We are all aware
of the halachos that relate to chometz
on Pesach, which are kept by all Jews who adhere to halacha. The Torah forbids
us to eat any actual chometz or
mixture of chometz, foods or substances derived from the five
grains (wheat, barley, rye, spelt, oats) that have undergone a process known as
chimutz (leavening). This fermentation is a chemical reaction occurring
when any of the five grains meet water or similar moisture for a given period
of time. The Gemara also discusses how Chazal forbade types of chometz that are not typically
eaten (one common example is Play Doh). However, certain types of food that
were not prohibited in the Gemara were
forbidden later. Those segments of Klal
Yisrael that prohibit these foods do so because of a minhag (custom) – a practice that was accepted by that community.
Other minhagim have evolved in relation to
Pesach. Even though minhagim do not
have the same level of stringency as a halacha, they should still be adhered to
by all who come from that community. (Heard from Rabbi Yossi
Rosenfeld.)
One minhag is called “mishing.” In order to protect themselves from eating Pesachdik food
that is not up to their standards, some families have a custom not to eat
outside of their own home. Since they don’t want to insult anyone by refusing
an invitation, they make it a blanket rule. A person who has this custom will
say, “We don’t ‘mish.’”
Others don’t buy
any prepared foods and make everything from scratch at home, even things like
mayonnaise and fruit juice. When I was a child, my parents peeled all fruits
and vegetables. They also washed all the eggs before cracking them to make sure
there was nothing stuck to the outside.
Rabbi Shmuel Kaplan,
the regional director of Chabad, told me about some Chabad customs: “We don’t
eat sugar unless it’s been cooked and sifted before Pesach. Some people don’t
eat milchig because of the proximity
of the grain-eating cows to the milk they produce. We also break the afikoman
into five pieces, to symbolize the five aspects of gevurah. And we don’t eat anything unless it’s peeled.”
Mrs. Tirzah Arieh, the American
wife of Rabbi Rouben Arieh of Baltimore’s Ohr Hamizrach Congregation,
shared some customs of Iranian Jews. “The women would get together and bake matzos.
The matzos did not look like matzos here in America. Like the Teimani (Yemenite) matzos, they were
much thicker – similar in look and texture to pita bread,” says Rebbetzin
Arieh. Now the Arieh family eats mainly Ashkenazi matzah, but they get a box of
Yemenite matzah just to remember the old ways.
“All kinds of rice are permitted,”
says Mrs. Arieh, “as long as it is un-enriched, natural rice. According to the
halacha, Iranians can also eat beans, corn, peas, and peanuts on Pesach,
although the mesorah in Shiraz was to eat only black-eyed beans. And,
interestingly enough, some people don’t eat chickpeas, because chickpeas form
the main ingredient of chummus, which sounds so much like the word chometz.”
Temima, who left Shiraz when she
was a teenager, 30 years ago, affirmed that her family ate rice and black-eyed
beans on Pesach. “All the rice and beans had to be checked three times before
Pesach to make sure that no wheat kernels or other foreign substances had
gotten into them,” she says. “We also checked all the spices before Pesach and
ground them ourselves. In many households, the women prepared all the Pesach
foods together.”
When Minhagim Clash
One of the earliest minhagim is that
of not eating kitniyos, mentioned by halachic authorities at the
time of the Rishonim, during the Middle Ages, which is binding on Ashkenazi
Jews – those ancestors originated in the countries of Central and Eastern
Europe. Someone who is Sefardi – i.e., whose ancestry is from the Jews of North
Africa or Middle Eastern countries – is not bound by this minhag.
Kitniyos
include corn, rice, peas, millet, beans, soybeans, chickpeas, sesame, and
mustard. Two reasons are given for this custom: One is the similarity of the kitniyos grains to the five grains that
can become chometz, both in their
appearance and their use. (These grains can also be made into bread, cakes,
cereal, and flour.) The second reason is that, often, wheat or grain
products grew near kitniyos and would
get mixed into kitniyos.
The halachic authorities explain that it was difficult to separate the
grain kernels from the kitniyos kernels.
Another minhag, which started even later than kitniyos, is
that of not eating gebrokts. This minhag is mentioned by the Achronim,
those halachic authorities who lived after the Middle Ages. Gebrokts means
not eating any matzah that has come into contact with water. The concern is that
some unbaked flour remained on the surface of the matzah after it was baked.
When the matzah comes in contact with water, that flour would become chometz. The minhag of gebrokts
is not as widely accepted as that of kitniyos;
even among Ashkenazim, not everyone is stringent with gebrokts. Those
who do practice it often have chasidic ancestry.
(Heard from Rabbi Yossi Rosenfeld.)
When couples marry, the wife
usually takes on the minhagim of her husband. Not eating gebrokts
can sometimes cause problems. As Dovid explained, “My wife Tova was not happy
to keep the chumrah of gebrokts. Her favorite Pesach foods were matzah
pizza and matzah lasagna. These foods are made with matzah and liquid, so they
were gebrokts, and it was a big hardship for her to stop eating them. My
parents kept gebrokts because my father’s family kept that custom. But
they only kept the custom because my grandmother, my father’s mother, saw that
custom in her home. My grandfather was brought up in a non-religious family and
did not have the custom of not eating gebrokts. When I asked a rabbi for
his advice, I was told that I could be matir neder, nullify my custom of
not eating gebrokts to make it easier for my wife because the custom
came through my father’s mother and not through his father. Ironically,” Dovid concluded,
“the whole question became irrelevant because some of our children are gluten
free, so we don’t eat gebrokts all year around!”
Sometimes problems work the other
way, when a new son-in-law who is careful about gebrokts, joins a family that is not. Then the mother-in-law might
have to cook special food in special pots for this new family member
Food Is Not Only for Eating
On Pesach, not only do we consume food
to eat but also use it for dramatizing the Seder. My son-in-law told me that
one of his favorite parts of the Seder was hitting each other with scallions
when they sang Dayeinu. This is actually a custom that comes from Iran.
Mrs. Arieh tells me that this is the highlight of their Seder because it is so
much fun. Often the scallions are not edible after being used to hit others so
enthusiastically.
Another custom is hiding small pieces
of bread for bedikas chometz, the night before Pesach. After scurrying
around for weeks getting rid of chometz
in every corner, the night before Pesach we hide this bread all over the house.
The reason for this custom is to make sure that some chometz is found so
that the bracha about looking for chometz can be made. It is ironic to be dealing with bread after all
that cleaning, and of course, it causes a lot of stress if the bedikah
does not turn up all the pieces of bread. That is why it is a good idea to keep
a list of where the little pieces were put.
The laws of Pesach – the matzah and the
special foods – have sustained us and brought us to this day. We thank Hashem
for the bounty that is ours, and we hope to create memories for our children to
cherish in years to come. Wishing all my readers a chag kosher vesame’ach – with lots of delicious food!
Sidebar
Pesach in Teiman
by Devora Schor
I have a nephew
who is a descendent of the Yemenite community, and he described some of the customs
of that ancient community. It was fascinating to hear about the care that was
taken with every detail. Today there are very few Jews left in Teiman (Yemen).
Interestingly, I just read in the Mishpacha
last week that only six Jews and one sefer
Torah are left. The last few families were rescued from Yemen by the government
of Abu Dhabi in the UAE and are living there now.
The Yemenite
community in Israel tries to keep their ancient customs as much as possible. My
nephew’s family is very careful to keep the minhagim of Yemen, even
though his family left Yemen about 120 years ago. They learned the minhagim
from rabbanim and families that left Yemen later.
In Yemen, as early
as the month of Tishrei, the
harvest season, a man would buy a piece of a wheat field from a peasant. He
would wait for a very warm bright day to go to the field after noon, when the
dew had already dried, and cut the wheat himself. He would carry the wheat in
sacks to his home, where it was stored in jars so that no worms could get into
it, and where it was watched carefully.
Before Purim, a
special storeroom was prepared for the wheat. In this room, the kernels were
cleaned from any foreign elements. The women were especially careful to do this
work in silence so that no saliva would get onto the wheat. The women were
eager to have the mitzvah of grinding the wheat for matzah, with competition
over who got to do that job.
At sunset of the
13th of Nissan, the children began to compete over who would win the
mitzvah of pumping the water. The housewives put pottery jugs in front of the
well, and the children drew water from the well, bucket by bucket, until the jugs
were filled. The water was then kept in a special cold place.
On the 14th
of Nissan, after noon, the women prepared to bake the matzahs. Each woman stood
and prayed before beginning the process. My nephew explained that the matzah was
soft, like pita, and was prepared fresh every day. Without freezers, there was
no way to keep soft matzah fresh. When matzahs started to be produced in
factories, they were produced as hard matzahs like we eat today because they
had to last longer.
During the Seder,
people sat on the floor around a low table. In Yemen this used to be the custom
all year around. Instead of using a Seder plate, the table itself was decorated
with leaves and branches from the maror
and carpas. The Haggadah was read all together with a special melody.
I asked my nephew
which minhagim they keep today in Israel. “We don’t sit on the floor
for the Seder,” he said, “but we say the story of going out of Mitzraim in Arabic, even though we don’t really understand the words. There is a special script with questions and
answers.We don’t use a Seder plate, rather decorate the table the way it was
done in Yemen. We also eat the soft matzah, which is produced in factories
with a hechsher.”
