This is the last day of Pesach and what a better day to write about it than today? Except for, maybe, the day it started… But anyways. I’m about to be able to eat waffles in an hour and I just can’t wait.
There’s two sides of Passover I want to write about: the cooking and the experience. I think I’m going to leave the cooking for another post. It has the special recipe I invented for charoset 🙂 It was a SUCCESS!!
Our seder table in the process
Oh, Passover! My favorite holiday. Except for the matzah-digestive-syndrome. If you don’t know about it, keep on reading.
Pesach, or Passover, is what you could call the Jewish Easter, although the word Easter comes from the old English and refers to the name of Eostre, the dawn goddess, so it is only used by Anglo-Saxon languages like English and German. The original word for Easter is really Pascal (Pascua in Spanish), which derives from the Hebrew word Pesach and refers to the lamb or goat used for a sacrifice. It also means that “He passed over” our houses not killing the first-borns during the tenth plague and only killing the Egyptian’s, who didn’t mark their door posts with lamb’s blood as God told the Jews to do.
“Why is this night different from other nights?”
Part of the seder, with one of the cups of wine (you are supposed to have 4 🙂 ). This was actually grape use, hehe!
Pesach is known in the Bible as the Festival of Matzot. Matzah (singular; matzot – plural) is the unleavened bread our ancestors ate because they had to leave Egypt in a great hurry before the Pharaoh could change his mind (as he did). Imagine preparing bread and baking it right after you finish mixing. It’s flat and hard! And that is why, for 8 days, we cannot eat any fermented grains (specifically barley, rye, oats, wheat or spelt). We can’t even own any of that stuff! So, the days before, you need to clean all your house, deep cleaning, to get rid of any chametz (word that refers to the forbidden grains), and if you have chametz in your possesion (Mac & cheese boxes, oatmeal, pasta, etc.) you need to “sell” it to a non-Jew friend. It’s a symbolic deal, the person pays like 5 cents and after the holiday you pay him back and he returns you your stuff. Yeah, I know, you never get bored when you are a Jew!
So you can imagine how crazy it can get! You need to buy matzot and food with no chametz to be able to survive that week (there’s fake cake and pasta made of potato and things like that) and get rid of everything else, and that’s not very easy. The good part is that you get to really clean your house at least once a year. I got rid of scary things that were buried in the back of the fridge. Eww.
Matzah, cream cheese and microgreens sandwich. This kind of things were my lunch and breakfast many of the 8 days.
The main thing about Pesach, besides the matzah thing (which can really constipate you, why do you think Moses kept on asking “Let my people go”?) is the seder. There’s a dinner, all elaborated with steps and structure, in which you are commanded to retell the story of Exodus so all generations know and remember that they were taken out of the land of Egypt by God. It’s full of songs and lectures and it’s very fun, I love it, but it can also be veeery long, and considering dinner is served AFTER the story, some people get very anxious. The Passover seder is the famous “Last dinner” Jesus had with his disciples.
I’ve always know that there is something powerful on controlling what you eat. If you don’t understand what I say, just think about diets: almost no one can complete them. Your cravings always win, your body always voids your will. That is why I believe that if you are able to control what you eat, you can control everything else. Not eating bread for a whole week, or pasta and oatmeal and pancakes and those delicious things of our daily life, is a very difficult task, almost painful.
Our seder table
I remember the first year I really celebrated Passover and didn’t eat any chametz the whole week. I was dying. Oh, dear, the bread! The 8th day, the last day, just a few hours before the holiday was over, I went for lunch with my co-workers to our favorite sandwich place. The bread looked absolutely delicious in everyone’s plate, I was salivating! And when the time to order came… I ordered the salad. I must tell you I felt like the most powerful person in the whole world, I have no words for it. I didn’t give up, I didn’t let my instinct and desires overcome my spiritual resolutions. I had, almost literally, conquered the world.
Going back to this year, we had a very nice seder the first night with a big group, almost half Jewish and half Christian (I love teaching people of other religions our traditions) at a friend’s house, and the second night we celebrated a very very small seder at our house. Just 4 people, but there was enough food for like 10. I just don’t know how to cook for less I think 😦 Seders are usually full of people so having just 4 (including David and me – well, 5 if you count Bruno, our cat) was really unusual. I was nervous that it was going to be kind of sad but it was actually a great experience. We got to make comments, discuss things, pick the tunes for the songs… And the company was great.
Also, we have been eating the seder’s food the whole week.
Bruno playing Moses in the basket of the beautiful gift our friends brought for us the second night of Pesach
Well, since I’m only about 20 minutes away from going back to waffles, I think I’m going to leave you here and get ready to go out. Just remember that Freedom is such a fragile thing… We take it for granted. We are slaves of many things in this modern life or ours and we must set ourselves free from all the narrow thinking going on out there. You must be free to be yourself, no matter what other think. And you must let others be themselves, without labeling and judging. Do not be a slave but do not be a slaver either (does that word even exist?).
WE ARE FREE! Now let’s eat some waffles!!!!
Sweet Meadowsweet 