the hard and the light...

[bronze_ribbons]

I was hunting for an old diary entry on almori earlier today. Didn't find it (I archived-deleted a lot last spring) but the search also turned up an old batch of quotes I'd forgotten posting, including this Tony Kushner observation:

The matzoh is so formidable that no sooner does it make its appearance at the Passover Seder table than we slather it with a ragout of nuts, apples, honey, cinnamon and Shapiro's Kosher Wine ("So thick you can cut it with a knife!")--because the matzoh reminds us: political success, stability, security; the luxury of time and ingredients needed to bake a lasagna, a play, a rounded identity: These things can and most likely will be stripped away, and you will be faced with hard choices.

from Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness

Speaking of matzoh, the New York Times reports that products with baking soda or baking powder aren't necessarily non-Pasaidic:

Lise Stern, author of "How to Keep Kosher" (Morrow, 2004), said: "Chometz, which means sharp or sour, denotes bread that has a sourness to it caused by fermentation, occurring when liquid is added to any of the five grains mentioned in the Torah. This refers to yeast, not baking powder or baking soda."

Rabbi Soloveichik said: "They're just minerals. What do we care about minerals?"

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Finally finished editing and formatting Rev. Gail's stewardship sermon for the church website. This is the one about the Tarot cards drawn on behalf of the church during social hour the week before ...

Comments

[xanthophyllippa.livejournal.com]

Also speaking of matzoh, JibJab (http://www.jibjab.com/Home.aspx), home of everyone's favorite political parodies, has a rap video on matzoh.

[schemingreader.livejournal.com]

Okay, but, what good does it do Soloveichik's followers that baking soda is mutar if they don't eat gebrachts? Hmmm?

What is the point of kosher for passover baking powder (which I acquired one year in a fit of silly) when every really good traditional recipe calls for leavening your baked goods with beaten eggwhites? (You will just have to imagine the strength of my biceps on Monday afternoon when I unpack my collection of kosher for passover wire whisks.)

No I have not kashered our house yet. We are making a last ditch effort to eat up all the flour. I baked challah on Friday, and made pie out of the frozen organic fruit I had stashed in the freezer. Tomorrow for brunch: pancakes, and then we're going to start kashering. Because I'm mad I tell you! bwa ha ha ha!

[golfwidow.livejournal.com]

If the point of eating matzah is to recall tradition, based on the history that our ancestors fled Egypt without time for the dough to rise, resulting in flat, crunchy bread, then that point is not made by substituting other leavening agents during the observance of Passover.

If, on the other hand, the point is not to remember anything but only to omit fermentation-based leavening for a week, then Lise Stern and Rabbi Soloveichik have made their case very logically.

I think the bottom line is for each person to decide for him or herself why they believe they are observing the Passover, and then to take the course that best serves his or her reasoning.

Hence, I suppose, the parable about the four sons. Which I guess, based on the fundamentalist theory propounded by Lise Stern and Rabbi Soloveichik, would make me the "wicked" child, because I eat matza once during Passover, to remind me of the story, and do not observe Pasaidic kashrut during the following week at all, since I have already paid homage to the tradition as I was taught.

What do we care about chemicals?

[(Anonymous)]

I would have to tell that rabbi -- though he wouldn't listen to me -- that he is simply wordsmithing. If we don't care about chemicals, why should we pay extra for kosher cheese, when we know that the rennet is only a chemical. (So it doesn't matter what kind of animal it came from.) *** I have been suspicious of "kosher" declarations -- with or without a rabbi's signature -- ever since the day I found corn syrup listed as an ingredient on "Kosher l'Pesach" candy. I can only speculate "that money changed hands." *** (I am not on livejournal; I am l-empress@att.net.)

Re: What do we care about chemicals?

[slightlymadmom.livejournal.com]

I am not saying I agree with this, but the idea of corn syrup is that kitniot (sp?) is an addition to the laws, and a modification (corn syrup) of an addition is not something you can make laws about. I think. That's what I've been told, more or less.

Personally, if I agreed with the corn syrup being okay, then I wouldn't get real sugar cane coke for Passover, so forget that!

According to one of the two shuls we belong to, though, apparently peanuts are not true legumes, and we can eat them (and use peanut oil).

I would think that technology would make all this easier...

[ellid.livejournal.com]

And then there was the time a friend of mine who's an accountant did some work for the local Lubavitcher yeshiva. In addition to his fee, they gave him a Passover matzah made by their home ec students...and it was burnt.

Really. It tasted absolutely dreadful. He ended up using the usual box of Streit's or Manischewitz...