Skip to main content

"Do you really eat that for Passover?"

At synagogue recently, someone commented that gentiles must get some very strange ideas about Passover when they look at the Passover aisle in the grocery stores. In the average grocery store, you will see three-foot-long packages of matzah, jars gefilte fish and borscht, and shelf after shelf of cookies, cake mixes and candies... and very little else. Do Jews really eat that stuff and nothing else all eight days of Passover? I thought perhaps a little explanation might be in order.

Keep in mind that, for the most part, we can eat the same meats, fruits and vegetables, eggs, milk and cheese during Passover that we eat year round. We're not just eating borscht and gefilte fish with matzah; we're eating steak and potatoes, roasted chicken or turkey, beef stew, cheese omlettes, egg salad, tuna fish and so forth, but you don't see that sort of thing in the Passover aisle because for the most part, we buy that the same way we do every day. Those who are strict about Passover have more hoops to jump through, avoiding most prepared foods because those foods are likely to contain oils, syrups, or trace amounts of other ingredients that might be forbidden. People who are that strict generally do their Passover shopping at stores with a more extensive Passover selection, not your basic local grocery store. I go to specialty stores to seek out Passover-certified items that are ingredients in my Passover recipes. And some Passover-certified items are found right in the regular aisles of the store: you'll see Passover certification labels on cottage cheese and yogurt in the dairy section, or on olive oil on the oil aisle, for example.

But let's address a few of the oddities in the Passover aisle at your local grocer:

Five-Pound Boxes of Matzah

Do we really eat all that matzah? Well, some do and some don't. In many stores, the 5-pound boxes of matzah are like the 20-pound turkeys that your family gets at Thanksgiving: you don't finish it, but you buy it anyway because the stores sell it very cheap (or even give it away free) to draw in people who will spend a fortune on the other trimmings. Of course, a family of four with no other bread options for 8 days might well work their way through five pounds of matzah. But for most of us, Michelle Citrin and William Levin's video, 20 Things to Do With [leftover] Matzah, sums it up pretty well.

Gefilte Fish

Do people really eat that? Hmn... well, I don't care for it, but I'm not a fish eater. It's made of ground up fish (carp, whitefish, pike) with some vegetables, eggs and matzah meal, and formed into oval-shaped patties (to suggest the shape of a fish) and boiled in fish broth. Many consider it to be a delicacy, and it's traditionally the first course at a seder (after the matzah ball soup, of course). When I was in college, our dining hall served it every day during Passover, and the Jewish students ate it eagerly (the gentiles were terrified of it, except for one fellow from mainland China -- see Passover College Memories). But I don't think most people eat much of it after seder.

Borscht

Borscht is a traditional Eastern European soup made with beets. I honestly have no idea why so much of it is available on the Passover aisle every year.

Cookies, Cakes, Macaroons and Candies

Do we really eat all that junk food? Hmn ... Well, you have to understand, regular cookies and cakes are obviously forbidden during Passover as leavened grain products. Most candies are less obviously forbidden because they contain corn syrup, which is also forbidden under Askenazic rules (the rules for Jews from Germany and Eastern Europe). And these are not the sorts of things that are easily made from scratch during Passover, like the main courses are. So what is a person to nibble on during Passover? I confess, I eat more junk food during Passover than year round, wolfing down fruit slice jellies whenever the urge to eat something non-Passover strikes me.

I hope that sheds some light on the oddities you find in the Passover aisle of your grocery store.

For more information about Passover dining, including several recipes or links to recipes, see Judaism 101's Pesach (Passover) Cooking Tips.

Comments

morningstar said…
Hi, Just a note to thank you for your posts, and for the great website. I've learned a lot from it, and I enjoy every update. Shalom, and carry on!
force10 said…
Are you planning to finish your YouTube video?
Also, I have finished reading your whole site, and nowhere do you mention Hebrew names for the days of the week (unless I missed it). (Have I tipped my hand that I am goy?) Do Jews simply refer to the days of the week by number?

Popular posts from this blog

Did Moses know he was a Hebrew?

It seems to be a common notion, perpetuated by movies like Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments  and Disney's Prince of Egypt , that Moses grew up as a high-level member of Pharaoh's household with no idea that he was a Hebrew. But does that notion fit in with what it says in the Bible, or what Jewish tradition teaches about Moses? This week's Torah portion is Shemot, the beginning of the book of Exodus, so it's a good time to examine this question. We actually know very little about Moses' childhood from the Bible. Pharaoh had ordered all male children to be thrown into the Nile River at birth (Ex. 1:22). While that order was in effect, a boy was born to a man of the tribe of Levi and his wife, also of that tribe (Ex. 2:1-2). The parents are later identified (Num. 26:59) as Amram an Yocheved (that "ch" is pronounced like a throat-clearing noise). Yocheved could not bear to throw her beautiful new son to his death, so she hid him away for three mont

Being Jewish at Christmas

Last March, I heard a DJ talking about March Madness, the annual insanity surrounding a college basketball tournament. She wasn't interested in it, but everyone in her office was obsessed with it. They had an office pool, a constant barrage of emails and parties to watch every game on TV. The DJ didn't want to be a part of it, but her co-workers pressured her to get involved. They tried to get her to participate in the pool, but she insisted that she didn't even know the names of the teams. Her co-workers assured her that it didn't matter who she bet on, it would be fun to play. They wouldn't take no for an answer. She wasn't trying to spoil their fun, but she wanted to be left alone. As I heard her talk about her frustration, I thought, "Now you know how it feels to be Jewish at Christmas." Think of something that you're not interested in but that everybody else seems to be talking about. Maybe it's a sporting event: March Madness, the Superbo

Afterthoughts about the Blessing of the Sun

I know it's a bit after the fact, and it won't really be relevant again for another 28 years, but this recently came up in a newsletter I received, and I simply had to say something about it. The Blessing of the Sun (Birkat Hachamah) is a blessing recited once every 28 years, commemorating the work of Creation, and specifically the creation of the sun. It was observed this year, 5769, on the morning of April 8, 2009. Now, many have noticed that the year number 5769 is not evenly divisible by 28. Dividing 5769 by 28 leaves a remainder of 1. One explanation that has been offered for the discrepancy, which appears to be a traditional explanation, says: The Sages have already explained to us that during the year of the Flood, the natural order of the world was suspended. That may be so, but it has absolutely nothing to do with why the division leaves a remainder of one. A better explanation is simple mathematics, and should be familiar to anyone who remembers the whole