Passover And Bread

The whole idea of matzoh is that the Hebrews fleeing Egypt didn’t have time to let the bread rise, so it came out flat. See, they were baking in preparation for their exodus, which took them forty years.

Supposedly, they did eat along the way. Considering that they managed to bake bread while enslaved, it’s not a stretch to think that they figured out a way to do it again while wandering in the desert. Plus, if you’re fleeing your home, the last thing you’d want to do is start baking break from scratch. That’s still true today, and we have much better bread-baking equipment now.

Not that I have any problem with contradictions that are inevitably built into myths. But the convolutions of this one in particular are interesting to me, because:

- Bread can actually be prepared over the course of centuries, so

using its fast preparation in a symbolic way, in a tradition that is itself mostly focused on being a tradition, has a fun kind of recursiveness to it.

- I’ve made bread from scratch myself on multiple occasions. It’s a sort of primal experience that makes you think about the nature of food, and money, and how you could really just make everything from scratch all the time, and it really doesn’t take that long, and how basically you’ve been getting ripped off your whole life every time you paid anyone else to make you food that wasn’t delicious beyond belief. At least, that’s what I end up thinking about.

- The matzoh tradition is ostensibly about deprivation, but really, there is no deprivation. In terms of consuming starches, Passover is an occasion to look forward to. Making desserts that technically conform to the rules of Passover kosher-ness is an art. Structure sets you free, and all that.

maccaroon image by somethingstartedcrazy

sidewalk sign image by miconian, taken outside The Chocolate Room in Cobble Hill