Bless This Bread Substitute

מַצָּה

Nothing goes with Manichewitz quite like Matzah. And it's time to give thanks for that mixed blessing:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יי אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם הַמּוֹצִיא לֶחֶם מִן הָאָרֶץ

( . . . hamotzi lechem min ha'aretz)

We praise you, Adonai our God, Ruler of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יי אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו וְצִוָּנוּ עַל אֲכִילַת מַצָּה

( . . . al achilat matzah)

We praise you, Adonio our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has made us holy with mitzvot and commands us to eat matzah.


The first day or so, I enjoy the matzah, particularly with charoset and horseradish, but after eight days -- ya basta. It's crazy, we don't eat it all year, then nothing but matzah for eight days. And do not let anyone tell you that matazah brei is better than scrambled eggs, which you can eat anyway, so what's the point.

Les enfants juifs reminded me that traditional hand-rolled matzah was irregularly round. Nineteenth century matzah baking machines produced the novel concept of square matzah.

Can't Stop Washing

רַחַץ



Call me crazy, but I think it's time to wash hands again. This one is called Rochtzah, and it reminds me of a great little blessing:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יי אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, אֲשֶׁר קִדְשָׁנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתָיו וְצִוָּנוּ עַל נְטִילַת יָדַיִם



( . . . al n'tilat yadayim)



We praise you, Adonai our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has made us holy with mitzvot and commands us to wash our hands.



Since he commands us to wash our hands, we should do it right. Most of us miss critical spots.

Farewell, Pharoah

So did I tell you what happened with Pharoah? Eventually he got freaked out and let the Isaelites go. We left super-quick, not wanting to chance anything - and didn't even have time to bake bread for our journey. Instead, we put raw dough on our backs and the sun turned it into the crunchy goodness we call Matzoh.

It's a good thing we hurried because sure enough, the Pharoah regretted his decision and sent his army after us. Next thing we know, we're standing along the bank of the Sea of Reeds and the army is hot on our heels! Thank God -- literally, THANK HIM - he parted the sea so we could go across. The army didn't have any such luck and once the water rushed back over them, we knew we were good to go.

Thinking back to that day, I think God deserves a shout out. He did so many things to help set the Israelites free -- any one of them would have been enough.

That actually reminds me of a song --

Ilu ho-tsi, ho-tsi-o-nu, Ho-tsi-onu mi-Mitz-ra-yimHo-tsi-onu mi-Mitz-ra-yimDa-ye-nu

CHORUS: Da-da-ye-nu,Da-da-ye-nu,Da-da-ye-nu,Da-ye-nu,Da-ye-nu,
Da-da-ye-nu,Da-da-ye-nu,Da-da-ye-nu,Da-ye-nu,Da-ye-nu

Ilu na-tan, na-tan-la-nu, Na-tan-la-nu To-rat e-met,To-rat e-met na-tan-la-nu,Da-ye-nu

(repeat)

(CHORUS)

I love this picture. Most pictures of the red sea parting are based on the assumption that the laws of physics still applied. But this was God's work -- although this is the God that had his people paint blood on their houses so he'd know where they lived.



If anyone is up for a second cup of wine, now's a good time to knock it back while again remembering that we should not oppress anyone else the way we were kept down in Egypt.

About Those Plagues

That is all very interesting, but shouldn't we be a bit troubled that the plagues are the most memorable part of our seder? Pharoah and his gang were certainly bad guys and I wasn't ashamed of my Shadenfreude when I heard about the locusts. The boils didn't even bother me, as long as I didn't have to see them. But killing the first born? That doesn't really fit with the remember-how-it-felt-so-don't-do-it-to-others spirit of Passover. Maybe it was just meant metaphorically.

Anyway, some of my best friends are Egyptians.

Don't Mess With Moses

מכות מצרים, which means "plagues of Egypt"

So more gossip to add about the whole slavery story -- when Pharoah wouldn't let the Israelites go, God hit the Egyptians with 10 plagues -- read them with me and dip your fingers in your wine if you have any nearby:

Blood (dam) דָם

Frogs (Tz'fardea) צְּפַרְדֵּעַ

Lice (Kinim) כִנִּים

Wild Beasts (Arov) עָרֹב

Cattle Disease (Dever) דֶּבֶר

Boils (Sh'chin) שְׁחִין

Hail (Barad) בָּרָד

Locusts (Arbeh) אַרְבֶּה

Darkness (Cho-shech) חֹשֶׁךְ

Slaying of the Firstborn (makat b'chorot) מַכַּת בְּכוֹרוֹת

The BBC website provides a bit more detail about the plagues.

The Plague of Blood: God turned the water of the River Nile into blood so that
the fish died and the water stank. All the water in Egypt was turned into blood.

The Plague of Frogs: Egypt was overrun with frogs - there were frogs in the
beds, frogs in the ovens, and frogs jumping on the people.

The Plague of Lice: Dust was turned into lice which crawled on people
and animals. (The Bible calls this The Plague of Gnats, but in Judaism the
accepted translation of the Hebrew word Kinim is lice).

The Plague of Flies: Swarms of flies arrived in Egypt and poured into
Pharaoh's palace, the houses of his officials, and all over the land. (The
Hebrew word here is "Orov" meaning mixture and in Jewish tradition this refers
to a mixture of wild animals.)

The Plague on Livestock: All animals belonging to the Egyptians died -
horses, donkeys, camels, cattle, sheep and goats.

The Plague of Boils: Festering boils broke out on the Egyptian people
and their livestock.

The Plague of Hail: The worst hailstorm ever to hit Egypt struck,
beating down crops growing in the fields and even killing people and animals
caught in it.

The Plague of Locusts: A swarm of locusts settled in Egypt and devoured
anything left growing after the hail.

The Plague of Darkness: Egypt became totally dark for three days.

. . . .

. . . .The Plague on the firstborn: An avenging angel would go from house to house
killing every first-born son, including the first-born son of livestock.
Israelite children would not be killed and thus God would show that they were
his chosen people.

So that the angel would know which houses were Israelite homes, the
Children of Israel were to follow very specific instructions:

Each household was to take an unblemished, male lamb, look after it,
and slaughter it at twilight four days later.

Blood from the lamb was to be brushed on the door frames. This would
tell the avenging angel that it was an Israelite home and to 'pass over'.

Then the families were to roast the lamb and eat it with bitter herbs
and unleavened bread. Every bit of the lamb had to be eaten and any remaining
bones burned.

The Israelites were to perform this ritual dressed for a journey.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/judaism/holydays/passover_1.shtml (Interpretive color coding not provided by the BBC). One would think that God wouldn't have needed a roadmap to figure out who his people were, but apparently God did not want to take any chances.

Hogwarts Haggadah

One of les enfants juifs looks a lot like Harry Potter. That got me thinking about Passover at Hogwarts, so I googled "Hogwarts Haggadah." No direct hit, but I did discover that amazon.com sells a book called Harry Potter and Torah, which is currently Amazon's 447,843rd best seller. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1847532373?ie=UTF8&tag=hpt-20

The author is identified as Dov Krulwich, but the name is almost certainly a J.K. Rowling invention. Like me, Dov Krulwich maintains a Blogspot blog, and his March 15, 2007, post is titled "A Passover thought related to Harry Potter: The importance of Jewish unity," in which he leaps from the fact that Dumbledore counseled unity against Voldemort to the lesson that Jews should stick together.

I see a similar connection between the fact that there are four questions at Passover and the fact that there are at least four questions that need to be resolved in HP VII, in particular whether Snape is a good guy or a bad guy.

Let me know your nominations for the four most urgent questions to be resolved in HP VII.

Let My People Go

It turns out that the Pharoah didn't like the song, but it really inspired the Israelites. This may be the greatest Passover song other than Dayenu:

When Israel was in Egypt’s land,
Let My people go!
Oppressed so hard they could not stand,
Let My people go!

Refrain:Go down, Moses,
Way down in Egypt’s land;
Tell old Pharaoh
To let My people go!

So the God seyeth: go down, moses
Way down in egypt land
Tell all pharaoes to
Let my people go!

So moses went to egypt land...
Let my people go!
He made all pharaoes understand...
Let my people go!

Thus spoke the lord, bold moses said:
Let my people go!
if not Ill smite, your firstborns dead
Let my people go!

This could go on and on. It turns out there are many variations on the lyrics, and some of them aren't too Jewish, like the one that ends with, "A Christian has a right to shout, Let my people Go!"

The essential Jewishness of the concept is preserved in Let My People Go, the nation's biggest Jewish singles event since 1995.