Kosher for Passover matzo must be made in 18 minutes or less, from start to finish. The result is the basic matzah you know and either love or hate—flat, dry, and reminiscent of cardboard. Shmurah matzah, or matzah that has been guarded, is made the same way that regular matzah is made—except that it's watched from the day the grains are planted in the field to the moment it comes out of the oven. And while there’s certainly a long tradition of eating this kind of matzo, it’s not what is described in the Bible as the Jews left Egypt.
Manischewitz: not the original matzah
First of all, bread made in ancient Egypt would almost certainly have been something like the sourdough bread of today. A starter piece of bread was kept from an old loaf and used to make the dough for new loaves. (For more information and instructions on how to make your own bread this way, click here.) This process did take a reasonable amount of time—certainly a few days—but if you bake sourdough bread before it’s fully risen it will just be denser and sourer. The result would likely be something like a heavy pita, not shmurah matzah.

This isn’t the only discrepancy between the story we’re told and the particulars we can deduce. If you look closely at the text of the Exodus story, the Jews had a full two weeks to prepare for their departure. They didn’t eat unleavened bread because they had to get out quickly, they ate unleavened bread because it’s commanded in Exodus 12:8: And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it. This eating of matzo happened well before the Jews actually left Egypt. It’s part of the eating of the pascal sacrifice, which comes before the final plague, the killing of the firstborn sons. This implies that the Jews were specifically told to make matzah, it wasn’t just an accidental result of their flight. Later in Exodus 12:34, and again in Deuteronomy 16:3, the Torah explains that we eat matzah to remind us of how quickly we went out of Egypt, but the actual eating of matzah happened before the Exodus.

I haven’t been able to find much on the history of matzo, so I don’t know when the matzo we know today became the standard unleavened bread for Passover, but what you pull out of your Manischewitz box probably has very little resemblance to what was eaten in the desert as the Jews fled Egypt.

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Tam Tam Troubles: manischewitz leaves us in a lurchWith Passover less than two months away, matzo aficionados are getting psyched to indulge in some serious unleavened products! Okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but many of us have come to depend on and even enjoy Passover products like the Manischewitz Tam Tam cracker. Sadly, fans of the beloved Tam Tam may well be denied this Exodus season.

In the biggest Passover food setback since the Jews fleeing Egypt before their bread could rise, chosen food company Manischewitz announced today that due to an unforeseen construction delay it will not be producing several of its regular matzo products this year, including Tam Tams, Shmura Matzo, and Yolk Free Egg Matzo. Quality since 1888, my tuchus.

After last Passover, Manischewitz began construction on a new, $15 million facility that it expected would be completed in time for normal operation this season. Things did not go according to plan. Upon being asked whether the company expects a decrease in profits because of this situation, Manischewitz V.P. David Rossi replied, “Sometimes you take one step back to take two steps forward.” Sounds like he’s been listening to too much Paula Abdul.

Somewhere out there, a Jewish bubbe is saying, “When I was your age, we didn’t have any of this fancy shmancy matzo. We ate regular, no-nonsense matzo that tasted like cardboard, and it was enough, damn it.” Dayenu!

Kars 4 Kids: The ubiquitious posters don't say where the money's goingIn Brooklyn, 150 residents were evicted from an illegally converted loft building after the fire department discovered an "illegal matzo factory" in the basement. Apparently, the grain used in baking matzo is a threat because it's potentially combustible. The residents have no idea when they'll be allowed to return.

Meanwhile, Kars 4 Kids, a nonprofit that advertises heavily in the New York area, says it uses car donations to "provide food, clothing, education and guidance to children," but it doesn't mention that all the money is channeled into Oorah, Inc., which provides religious education to children of non-observant Jews. On Oorah's website, the Post reports, the charity brags that it has an "'80 percent success rate' teaching its clients 'to keep themselves apart from the gentiles.'"