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Jewish Food

• Barley and its Religious Meaning

  Posted By Mike Rosenthal on April 15, 2010 | Leave a Comment

  

  You’d never guess it, but barley, that lowest of all grains that you can’t even make challah out of, much less cut with a challah knife, has tremendous religious and dietary significance to the land of Israel and the Jewish people. On the second day of Passover, a strange ceremony takes place. It is called the cutting and the waving of the Omer, which is a measure of barley that is a tenth of an Ephah, which if you don’t know what it is, then you probably didn’t live 3,000 years ago, which is normal.

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• Matzah Baking at Home

  Posted By Mike Rosenthal on March 23, 2010 | Leave a Comment

  

  Last night, for the first time in my life, I baked kosher Matzah that I can actually put on my Passover Seder Plate and use for the Pessach Seder for real. Not only was it fun, it tastes better and is a lot cheaper than buying handmade stuff from the supermarket. I did it with a Rabbi friend of mine who showed me how it’s done. What I learned, besides the actual process of doing the actual matzah baking, is that despite how daunting it is because there’s so much that can go wrong, there really is nothing to fear as long as you’re quick and mentally focused. Things like this are among the last genuine oral Torah or Torah Shebe’al Peh, that we have left.

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• Uniquely Jewish Food

  Posted By Mike Rosenthal on March 18, 2010 | Leave a Comment

  

  If you read about the preparation of the Passover sacrifice, the Paschal lamb, there is no mitzvah, or commandment, more delicious sounding. Of course, if you’re a vegetarian, you might be slightly irked. Unlike matzah or maror, it is not simply flour and water or a vegetable. But it is actually the central food of the Passover Holiday – not Matzah. The Bible is very clear about this when it talks about the Passover sacrifice in saying that it should be eaten “with matzot and bitter herbs”. In other words, matzah, what we are used to front and center on our Passover Seder plate on our little matzah plate inside its little matzah cover, is merely a condiment for the main course – the Paschal lamb.

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• Matzah History

  Posted By Mike Rosenthal on March 04, 2010 | Leave a Comment

  

  Passover is not the first time that matzah is mentioned in the Bible. Generally speaking, what happens to the Jewish people from Pharaoh and on (Exodus etc.) is reflected in the stories of the Patriarchs (Genesis). For example, the Jews’ enslavement in Egypt is reflected by Sarah’s capture by Pharaoh in the same country several generations before. The exile in Babylon is reflected in Jacob’s exile from home to the land of Aram, which became Babylonia. The exodus from Egypt and return with an abundance of wealth is mirrored by Jacob’s escape from his uncle Lavan back to the Holy Land.

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• Gefilte Fish

  Posted By Mike Rosenthal on February 25, 2010 | Leave a Comment

  

  In tenth grade, I was assigned a rather interesting project to do for my Jewish history class. We were to interview a grandparent, have her tell her life story, in so many words, and then research the Jewish history of the country she came from. In my case, I chose to interview my grandmother, whose family hailed from Warsaw, Poland.

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