Sydney Life

The smell of Easter holidays is tantalizingly close as it lingers in our nostrils. And whilst you will probably be stuffing your face with Easter eggs and hot cross buns, I’ll be stuffing my face with hard crisp like bread that makes you constipated!!

Why? Because I am Jewish and it’s that time of year again – time for Passover. There’s an old Jewish adage that goes something like this: ‘They tried to kill us, we survived…. let’s eat!’. That phrase pretty much sums up just about every festival we have, especially Passover. The story: Passover is a festival that involves telling and remembering the story when Jews were slaves in Egypt a long long long long time ago and then Moses came and saved the Jews from Pharoah (well actually, he saved them from slavery so they could wander in a desert for 40 years.) Remember ever hearing about the 10 plagues, and the miraculous splitting of the Red Sea?? Well, this is the story which we tell and sing about (and the ceremony even includes 4 compulsory glasses of wine! It’s true!!) It’s also the story that Jesus would have been telling at his last supper. The food: The festival lasts for 8 days, during which eating any wheat products is prohibited. So think bread, cereal, pasta, pizza, pancakes, cakes and even rice and imagine giving those up for a week! Upon writing this last paragraph, I was trying to think of an explanation as to why we abstain from wheat products. Slightly puzzled, I asked my trusty mother. Mum shrugs and says ‘I just do what I’m told’. So there you go, I can’t really explain why – it’s just something that was written down and has henceforth been passed on from generation to generation and has become part of the tradition and culture. So what do we eat? Well some people prefer to kick start their diets from this festival. But for the rest of us, that leaves us with eggs, vegetables (especially potato) and meat - and we have discovered a million and one ways to find different ways to combine these products. The Matzah: There is also the ‘matzah’ – aka “bread of affliction” and I feel that that definition is pretty apt! Matzah is basically bread that hasn’t risen. This tradition I do know about! It stems from when Moses was leading the Jews out of Egypt in a hurry in case Pharaoh changed his mind again and made them stay. They had to pack everything up really quickly including the bread which hadn’t yet risen. Hence the Matzah. A crispy hard cracker. Ok – it’s not all bad. The first few times you have it is quite nice. Then the constipation kicks in (can’t scientifically explain this phenomenon) followed by the boredom as it is all you can really eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Here is a cute little animation that might give you more of an idea about what Matzah is - http://americancomedynetwork.com/FLASH/matzo_man.htm Many of you will return to uni and complain about the amount of crap you ate during the holidays at the Easter show, or all the chocolate eggs your granny gave you. I on the other hand will be complaining about the constipation……