Matzah Anyone?

Before Passover starts, I tell myself the same lies every year: I’m not going to overeat at the first or second night seder, I’m going to check every food item carefully to make sure that I’m not eating anything forbidden, and I’m going to throw away all of the boxes of unfinished matzah after the holiday week is over. I don’t even make it to Day Three without violating at least two of these delusions.

I always liked Passover, not because you get to have two huge meals, gather with friends, and share whispers about who in your social circle has gained the most weight this year, it’s more than that. Passover is cool, because it is the only holiday that commemorates keeping a 2,000 year old grudge. Jews could, as a people, put it behind us and move on, but we prefer to grimace about Egyptians while trying to chomp down parsley dipped in salt water. Why parsley in salt water; to remind us of the bitterness that we suffered during our years of slavery. See, what I mean! A 2,000 year old grudge, and what could be more of a “fuck you” than that.

There’s a popular joke amongst us who practice this type of faith that says something like “here’s a synopsis of every Jewish holiday: they tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat.” Funny, thoughtful, and true. We re-tell the story of release from oppression, celebrate the fact that we are prosperous now, and strap on the feedbag stuffing our faces like the one mammal we are forbidden to eat. I always end up eating way too much at the seders on both nights, and on the third day try to figure out a way I can workout like a fiend for the rest of the week to minimize the damage. However, I knew this would happen despite the lie that I told myself before baking up that first kugel, and dishing more than three ounces of brisket onto my plate.

The first and second night seders are always a lot of fun, but the rest of Passover week tends to be a bit of a bitch to deal with, which is why my second lie never works either. On Friday afternoon, I decided to forego my usual salad, because it was rainy and miserable, and I wanted something more substantial than the McDonalds California Cobb with grilled chicken. My first thought was to stop at Subway. Although their sandwiches are far from deli delicious, they are very conducive to my diet regime. I stopped in my tracks realizing that, because of Passover, bread was off limits, and I didn’t feel like wolfing down a few puny coldcuts and calling it a meal. All of the sudden, tacos came to mind, but again, the tortillas are forbidden until Thursday at sundown. I had to run errands by the mall, so I thought the Food Court would be the best place for me to find something in compliance.

I had forgotten it was Spring Break, which meant that I had to weed through a sea of teenage guys with their baseball caps on backwards and pants hanging down around their asses (when the hell is that trend going to die). Just as one of them asked me for the time, and called me “ma’am”, I looked around at all of the fine dining options, and settled with one of the staples of the mainstream Jewish diet: Chinese food. Conversely, Jeff went out for fish and chips that day, and gave me some bullshit line about how he forgot that the breading on the fish wasn’t Passover-friendly. Neither was the rice I had with my Chinese food, but again, I knew this was going to happen.
Then there’s the matzah. There’s nothing like biting into a crunchy board of the tasteless, cracker-like food known as matzah. Matzah, made of wheat flour, water, and absolutely nothing else, is supposed to replicate the food that G-d gave Jews while they wandered in the desert for 40 years. Once a year, Jews are commanded to go on an Atkins-esque diet and give up any sort of bread for Passover.

I set the box of matzah out at every meal that I prepare that week, because it doesn’t taste that bad if you top it with jam or butter or both, and because I can only hope that this year we actually finish the entire box instead of stuffing it in the back of the pantry until next Passover when I ask myself why I bothered keeping it. Every year we go through the same ordeal. I want to throw the remainder of the matzah out, and Jeff convinces me that we will eat it at some point in the year. We never do, it just sits there like that food dehydrator we were going to use to make our own beef jerky, and the breadmaker that we used for the first three months we owned it until we both gained five pounds from carb overdose.

Since Passover ends the day after tomorrow at sundown, I guess I’ll have to wait until next year to actually make an attempt at keeping the holiday commandments a little better. I never do any major violations, but I’m not exactly the most observant either. However, I give up my Tuesday night pizza, and don’t think twice about it, so that should count for something, damn it!