Amiram Hayardeny's My China Experience

My Very Own Deliverance - My Personal Passover

Passover is a special holiday for the Jewish people.  It's also a special holiday for me.  Personally.  In this holiday, the Jews remember their days of slavery in Egypt, and celebrate their deliverance followed by the glorious entry to the Promised Land after forty years of wandering around aimless in the desert.  Indeed, it's a powerful story, which unfortunately has no evidence whatsoever in the amazingly well-preserved Egyptian archives.  Nonetheless, it was, and still is, a defining moment in the existence of the Jewish People.  There are a few symbols of the Holiday, but the one signifying the holiday most of all, is the absence of leavened bread, or "hametz", and the existence of its evil twin, the Matzo.  The legend says that the Hebrews had to leave Egypt in a hurry.  There was no time for their dough to rise, so they had to bake the dough before it was ready.  The result was an unappealing type of cardboard, which we call "Matzo".  For diet watchers it's the worst of all worlds: it's as fattening as bread, but not as palatable, and most certainly not as filling.

But very few people know what it means for an observant Jew to prepare for the Holiday of Passover.  In fact, slavery seems quite appealing, if you really want to prepare for the Passover the way some truly observant ultra-orthodox Jews do.

Let's start even before the Holiday.  Long before the holiday.  Many Jews would only eat wheat which was "observed", or "guarded" from last year's crops.  It's called "Matzo Shmura" or "guarded Matzo".  In short it means that no leavened dough came anywhere near this flour, and that it's completely kosher for Passover.  The water used for the making of this "guarded Matzo"" is called "our water", water that are beyond suspicion.  The matzo is then baked under heavy guard, just to make sure that no leavened bread comes near it.  The kosher security alert is raised for passover, and is at the red level, the highest possible.  Everyone is under suspicion.

When the holiday comes close, a month before the middle of Nissan (around late March to mid April), things shift into high gear.  Cows in certain dairies have their diets completely changed, so they can lose all their leavened food the natural way, before the holiday, so they can produce perfectly kosher milk for the holiday.  Shelves in certain supermarkets become inaccessible, secured, covered.  They are loaded with Passover food.  Can't go near.

Observant Jews start the spring cleaning.  This is really an understatement.  A closer definition would be something like: "lets burn everything that's come in contact with leavened bread during the past year".  If you have some bread crumbs in your pocket, you definitely run a high risk of being boiled or incinerated by some ultra orthodox Jew.  Rabbinical committees are formed to decide which medications are to be used during the holiday, and which patients should either look for alternatives or get healthy at once.  Dish washing liquids, laundry detergents, toothpastes, soap bars, are all looked at and disposed of if they are not up on par with the demands of the holiday.  And it gets better every year.

When I was married to my ex-wife, I saw it first hand.  Flamethrowers were used to clean the kitchen before the holiday.  The walls, which initially were to be destroyed, were pardoned and sentenced to be covered with aluminum foil instead.  Dishes were boiled, welded, heated to the point of melting, thrown away or put away.  Special dishes were taken out of the attic, dipped in boiling water.  Readied for the holiday.  I was always willing to bet, that if God was watching this lunacy from wherever he is, he would have said: "guys, please guys, all I meant was for you to stay away from the goddamn bread for a few days, you have taken it way, way too far...".  But God is nowhere to be found these days.  Well, maybe in some caves in Afghanistan...

This wasn't the way Passover was prepared by my family when I was growing up.  Sure, spring cleaning was always performed.  But in a nice way.  Books would be taken out, clothes taken out to air.  We always found stuff we had lost over the year.  But no garment was ever suspicious of malicious infestation of leaven, no book was burnt for being indicted of hosting a concealed bread crumb.  It was more relaxed.  And fun.  As a side note - I always remember Moses and Aaron, the two large carps who were swimming in the bath tub for a couple of days before they became Gefilte Fish - or stuffed fish - for the holiday meal...

The Seder, the festive meal of the evening of the holiday, the highlight of the Holiday, was always a nice thing when I was growing up.  My grandfather on my father's side would read the Haggadah - or the special prayer book recited on the eve of the holiday - in both Hebrew and Spanish, an incredible meal would be served, and the children would get real, real nice gifts for the Holiday.  It would usually be over before midnight, and the kids loved it.  It was fun.  It was a fun way of practicing religion.  True to the original instruction by God - a celebration of freedom.  My grandfather on my mother's side would get drunk, and by the end of the meal was never sure what it was that we were celebrating.  As I said - fun.

But at my ex-in-laws, the Seder was, in my mind anyway, nothing less than a celebration of slavery and misery, and not deliverance.  It would start late, because the men were expected back from the Synagogue.  The women are usually exhausted, and the children are starved.  Bread eating is forbidden from the earlier hours of the day, but Matzo eating is forbidden before the ceremonial prayers.  The prayers are read, and read, and discussed, and re-read, and sung, and recited, and re-recited.  Matzo is not just eaten, it has to be eaten in measure.  A precise measure.  And the eating is done quietly.  No word is spoken.  When you're done eating the measure of Matzo, you're usually covered in crumbs, and your stomach filled with dust.  The bitter herbs come next, and each  man eats a full head of lettuce.  When the ceremonial part is over, the men are stuffed with matzo and lettuce, the kids are sleeping at the table, and then dinner is served.  In paper plates and plastic utensils.  What a site.

The next day, the show runs precisely the same only an hour later.  If it was up to me - I'd go back to Egypt.  Building pyramids never hurt anyone...

So Passover is the holiday when I feel my personal liberation.  I feel that I won my freedom, again.  Not out of Egypt, but out of Brooklyn...  The Red Sea didn't part for me, and I didn't wander around in the desert for forty years.  But I was freed all the same.  I celebrate Passover now, with my new family, in a relaxed way, closer probably to the original meaning of God.  Don't get me wrong, I'm still an atheist, but God and I have an understanding.

Posted at 08:24AM Apr 20, 2008 by Amiram Hayardeny in Personal  |  Comments[3]