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two fish posted:How is matzo generally eaten during Passover, and are there any particular rituals or significance surrounding them? Matzah is so integrated into Passover that it's unfortunately difficult to answer this question without mostly answering "how does Passover happen." Sorry the post is correspondingly really long for this thread. The name given to Passover in the Bible is "Chag haMatzot" - the festival of matzah. During the holiday (which lasts 7 days in Israel and 8 days outside Israel), you can't eat any leavened grain products. The only grain product allowed to you is unleavened grain aka matzah, which you are commanded to eat. Except there is reason to believe that the "festival of matzah" actually existed as a festival long before the development of what we now associate with the Passover festival - the sacrifice of the Pesach lamb, commemoration of the mythical Exodus from Egypt, etc. Over time they merged into one event. But that would've been thousands of years ago. Passover begins at nightfall with a structured dinner called a "Seder" literally meaning "order." The Seder includes a substantial array of ritual declarations and eating/drinking certain foods - depending on how the Jews are the table want to do it, there are maybe 1 or 2 hours between the start of the seder and actually eating brisket or whatever else they cooked for the night. During that time the table will eat multiple rounds of matzah - both plain matzah shards and matzah as the buns of sandwich with other ritual ingredients. Thoughout the meal, Matzah is ritually covered and uncovered; at one point, a matzah sheet is theatrically split into halves. The dinner will also end with matzah, so that each diner leaves with the taste of matzah on their lips. This matzah is called the "afikomen" (dessert) and it is one of the halves from earlier. Many families hide the afikomen for children to go find it, a way of entertaining them during the long pre-dinner proceedings. Throughout the meal, the book guiding proceedings (called the "Haggadah" meaning "telling") will comment on the symbolism of matzah. quote:That on all other nights we eat both chametz and matzah, on this night, we eat only matzah? Diners also thank God for commanding them to eat matzah. quote:Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us concerning the eating of matzah. Outside Israel, a Seder takes place on the second night, following the exact same script. Within Israel there's only one Seder a year. This is an ancient Babylonian solution to impracticalities in maintaining a centralized lunisolar calendar throughout a broad diaspora - back then it was very possible that some village would be desynchronized from everyone else by a day, the solution was to do 2 seders to make sure. Following the Seder(s), Passover continues for six more days. During this time there is no more ritual/commanded use of Matzah, except that it replaces bread in the contexts where bread would be ritually eaten, like Friday night dinners. But many Jewish homes use this time to use Matzahs as a normal ingredient - matzah ball soup, matzah brei, matzah pizza etc. Some households don't do this because they believe touching matzah to water might cause a small amount of pure flour to touch the water (because the dough wasn't totally kneaded) thus inciting leavening. TL;DR very carefully for 1-2 nights, then mostly ordinarily for 6 nights. Civilized Fishbot fucked around with this message at 15:51 on Apr 24, 2024 |
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Apr 24, 2024 15:18
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| # ¿ May 7, 2024 17:47 |
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