Passover has taken quite a hit this year: First Manischewitz announced that it wasn’t going to produce any Tam Tams this year, and then Charlton “Moses” Heston passed on to that great gun range in the sky. Luckily, Jewcy’s here to help you cope. We’ve rounded up everything we’ve ever run on Pesach, then salted the mix liberally with some helpful links from outside sources. Need something you don’t see here? Leave a comment, and our readers just might be able to help you out.

THE BASICS

Not totally solid on the whole no-bread thing? Curious about whether having a Iraqi grandmother means you're allowed to eat rice? My Jewish Learning provides all the background information you could possibly need, while Interfaithfamily.com offers resources for Pesach and Easter.

THE SEDER

• How To: Clean For Passover
• Must Have: Laura Cowan's Space Age Seder Plate
• 5 Alternative Seder Styles for a Personalized Passover
• Must Have: The Passover Box of Questions
  
• Ganja is Off the Seder Plate
  

THE TEXT

• We Rate Ten Haggadahs
• Saying Dayenu to the Maxwell House Haggadah
  

THE FOOD

• Dozens of Recipes from the Jew York Times
• This Passover, Forget Your Bouillon Cubes
• Manischewitz Screwed Up, Passover's Gonna Suck
• Passover with Martha Stewart

THE MEANING

• Passover: The Extra Day is YOUR Day
• Counting the Omer
• Slate Explains Why Easter Doesn't Overshadow Passover
• Slate Looks at What the Passover Seder Reveals About InterfaithCouples

THE REST

• Passover: The Most S&M Jewish Holiday
• Seder Behind Bars
• Hump Day Art: Modern Day Exodus
• Clip of the Week: Jewish Mothers Behaving Badly
• Must Have: Alternative Jewish Grooves for Passover

 

 

Fancy Shmancy: a Martha Stewart Passover table setting, replete with Tiffany-blue Haggadah. Excuuuuse me.A haggadah can make or break your seder. Don't believe me? Read the standard Maxwell House Haggadah, and I promise you'll be bored out of your mind. The good news is, there are alternatives out there. Here are five tips to help you choose one that will keep you awake and asking deep questions long into the night.

1. Know Your Audience: Is your seder going to have countless kids? Numerous boomers? A gaggle of teenagers? Ten vegetarians? Several seniors? Keep this in mind when you’re selecting a haggadah. If you're going kid-friendly, you definitely want something with great pictures, and maybe even activities to keep everyone occupied. If there are mostly seniors at your seder, consider choosing something that emphasizes history, or that’s more academic.
2. Check Out the Illustrations: A haggadah with great text but weird illustrations is kind of a drag to use (the Feast of Freedom, for instance). Often the illustrations are a commentary in their own right, so when you’re rifling through haggadahs in the store, check out the pictures: It's a good way of predicting if the interpretation is going to speak to you.
3. Keep Length in Mind: If you’re looking to be in bed by 10:30, you probably don’t want seventy pages of reading during the Magid section. Of course, you can pick and choose what you’ll read, but you don’t want your guests to be overwhelmed. On the other hand, if you like epic seders, then look for a haggadah that’s got plenty of commentary on every page.
4. Look For Themes: If you’re going to be hosting a crew of vegetarians, mostly women, people of many faiths, or tons of tree-huggers, don’t be afraid to check out haggadahs geared specifically to your guest list. Yesterday we told you about ways to make your whole seder themed, but it really all starts with a haggadah.
5. Feel Free to Mix and Match: There’s no rule that says you have to go around the table taking turns reading paragraphs from the same book. If you can’t decide on one haggadah for everyone to use, get an assortment and let people choose the one they like best. You can also copy specific pages you like from different haggadahs (if you’re on a budget, try your local library, where you can check out haggadahs for free) and assemble your own haggadah made up of different parts from different books.

Related: 5 Alternative Seders

 

Cleaning for Pesach: is a snap! Kind of.It’s the time of year again when some people go apeshit in their attempts to clean all chametz from every last crevice of their homes. You can skip the spring cleaning in favor of a Passover vacation, or you can do the massive purge and give your home the sacred scrubbing it probably needs. If you do the latter, don't go overboard: There are some specific rules about what you need to do in order to fulfill your halachic obligations, and after that it’s just picking up and throwing out however much junk you want to get rid of. Here are some rules and tips:

• There are two requirements for cleaning: Biur chametz, which is the act of getting rid of the chametz, and bedikat chametz, destroying the chametz. The first one is easy. You can actually still have the chametz in your home as long as you consider it to be dust—valueless and without an owner. That said, it’s hard to rationalize Girl Scout cookies as valueless, no matter what you tell yourself. That's why the rabbis instituted bedikat chametz, which is much trickier. In addition to writing off chametz as dust, you also have to search out any chametz you can find, and destroy it.

• The top priority when cleaning for Pesach should be the kitchen. You should clean inside your fridge and freezer, give the stove top and oven a hardcore scrubbing if you don’t have a self-cleaning setting, and get into all of the crevices of your cabinets, pantries, and drawers.

• After the kitchen, the dining room and other eating areas are where you want to focus your energy. These are the places where you’re most likely to have crumbs of old food that’s still edible, and thus technically chametz.

• Chametz is a technical term for anything that has resulted from a grain fermenting. But we only have to get rid of edible chametz, or chametz that would count as food. A bagel crumb that has been sitting on your kitchen floor for a year doesn’t count as edible chametz because you wouldn’t consider it food. So technically, an old bagel crumb is no problem. (Don’t worry about the possibility of a baby eating that bagel crumb—just because a baby eats it doesn’t mean it’s food. Babies try to eat all kinds of things that aren’t really food. The bagel crumb still isn’t chametz). That said, why haven't you swept your floor in a year?

 

• There’s one other category of things that you don’t have to worry about. Anything a dog wouldn’t eat doesn’t have to be removed or destroyed. I don’t know why you’d want to keep it in your kitchen if a dog wouldn’t eat it, but I won’t judge.

 

• Unless You Tend To Eat On It: you don't have to clean the toilet. although it could use a good scrub...Either you’re going to get rid of as much chametz as possible, or you’re going to make sure that any chametz that might be around the house would be considered inedible. Even if you only give the kitchen corners a half hearted attack with some kind of cleaning solution, whatever chametz is in those corners will be tainted by the cleaning solution and is no longer edible, so you don’t have to worry about it anymore.

 

• Though it’s important to be vigilant about cleaning for Pesach, you should be careful with cleaning solutions that could harm you or your family. Every year, Israeli hospitals have a sharp increase in cases of children being poisoned after being exposed to toxic chemicals while their families clean for Pesach. Read labels carefully, and keep the house well ventilated when using strong chemicals. Even better, use a non-toxic "green" product, such as Simple Green.

• Finally, relax! If you’re so stressed out by cleaning that you can’t enjoy the seders, you’re working way too hard. Pesach should be fun, not a yearly peak in blood pressure.

Related: Alternative Jewish Grooves for Passover, Passover Vacations are Becoming a Trend, Manischewitz Screwed Up, Passover's Gonna Suck

During the counting of the Omer we’re supposed to be in a state of mourning, since we haven’t yet received the Torah. Some people don’t go to live entertainment in the weeks between Pesach and Shavuot. Many won’t listen to music made with instruments, because that’s also prohibited during times of mourning. But you can still listen to a cappella music.
Be Honest: You love these guys
I’m not big on all the rules about what you can and cannot do during the Omer, but I do try to listen to some Jewish a cappella, because there’s so many great groups out there. Here are some of my favorites:

Pizmon- college group from Barnard/Columbia/JTS, they’re the pioneers of the Jewish a cappella revival. Coed, cute and funny.

The University of Pennsylvania Shabbatones are almost frighteningly talented. I have their last CD, Challah Back, and it blows my mind with every listen. Best tracks are Darkenu and Gam Ki Elech.

Kaskeset from SUNY Binghamton have gorgeous voices, and gets props from me for their name. Kaskeset is the Hebrew word for fish scales used in the Torah. Get it? Scales?

Manginah from Brandeis. It makes sense that a school with so many Jews would have a great Jewish a cappella group, and they do. I prefer Manginah, but there’s also the all-male group, Jewish Fella A Cappella.

Kol Ish- This is an all-male group from University of Maryland. The name is a pun on a rule about men not being able to hear women sing, which I find kind of obnoxious (the pun, but actually the rule, too). Anyway, even though they kind of make me crazy, they’re really freaking good.

The Vokols from University of Pittsburgh are new and spectacular. I’m totally biased because my sister is a founding member, but whatever. They’re awesome. Check out the video.

There are also a bunch of Best of Jewish A Cappella albums available for purchase online.

And if you really want to rock out to some Jewish a cappella then you should probably get yourself a copy of the Miami Boys Choir Around the Campfire album. Now you’re cool.

(apologies for the possibly bad format as I am transitioning some parts of my private blog to Jewcy for the first time!)

(unfortunately, was no successful in uploading illustration, you may find it there: http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/jws/aboutyizkor.html )

I don’t know why I get into counting the Omer every year. It’s not the kind of thing I’d expect to like, although it does count the days away from Pesach, and we’ve already established that I’m not a big fan Matzah Week. But the Omer is really us counting towards something, not away from something, which is why the numbers go up instead of down.
Bart's In Trouble: He's behind in his Omer Counting
If you’re new to the Omer, here’s the deal:

You shall count for yourselves -- from the day after the shabbat, from the day when you bring the Omer of the waving -- seven shabbats, they shall be complete. Until the day after the seventh sabbath you shall count, fifty days... -Leviticus 23:15-16

You shall count for yourselves seven weeks, from when the sickle is first put to the standing crop shall you begin counting seven weeks. Then you will observe the Festival of Shavu'ot for the LORD, your God -Deuteronomy 16:9-10

Basically, on the second day of Pesach we’re supposed to get an Omer (which is a unit of measurement) of barley and bring it to the Temple. We do this for the 49 days until Shavuot, and then we have a big party and eat cheesecake. While the basis of the mitzvah is agricultural, it also reminds us about how we change in the period between the exodus and when we got the Torah. The seven weeks of Omer counting are considered partial mourning because we don’t have the Torah yet. Haircuts and new clothes are off limits at least until the 33rd day, you can’t get married unless it Rosh Chodesh or a holiday, and many people abstain for going to live entertainment events like concerts and plays (a capella music is okay, though).

What I like about the Omer is that it’s about consistency, and building up to something, which is basic tenet of how I relate to Judaism. Every night you count, and you’re advancing, it feels weirdly productive. If you forget a day you can come back, but you don’t say the blessing anymore, because you’re no longer eligible for fulfilling the whole mitzvah. It’s kind of cool, really.

It’s also really hard to remember to count every day, especially if you’re not davening every day, or if your schedule changes a lot. Happily, there are a bunch of resources to help you make sure you stay on track.

I’m a huge fan of the Omer Buddy, which sends you two text messages a day reminding you to count, and even tells you the number of days (when counting Omer you say, ‘there are three weeks and three days of the Omer' or whatever's apprpriate. It's by weeks and days). It costs seven bucks, but is awesome. Similarly, over at Torah.org they’re running a process called Project Genesis where they’ll e-mail you a reminder every day. And if you’re a Simpsons fan you’ll love Counting the Homer, a website that has Homer leading you through the seven weeks. There are month calendars, week calendars, and day by day options for your printing pleasure. D’oh! And if cell phones and e-mails aren’t your thing, you can always buy an old fashioned Omer counter, with wooden knobs and pretty text.

Starting Tuesday night, get counting!

What is worth a king’s ransom?

According to the musical, "Oliver!," it’s food, glorious food! ... Gulped, swallowed or chewed..

Throw in a Vermont cheese company and two New Yorkers, and you have “Food, Glorious Kosher food.”

At the World Championship Cheese Contest held in Wisconsin, Cabot Creamery’s Cheddar Cheese earned the title of “World’s Best Cheddar.” Now, the “World’s Best Cheddar” has the OU-D kosher for Passover stamp. Cabot’s sharp cheddar, which is aged for five-months, has already received rave reviews.

In a December 2006 press release, Cabot estimated 6 to 8 million Americans eat Kosher products. This prompted the Vermont Cheese Company to seek Kosher certification. “Our Kosher products are in keeping with our commitment to provide our consumers with dairy products that fit their desires and lifestyles,” commented Dr. Rich Stammer, President of Cabot Creamery.

Continue reading...

The Maxwell House Haggadah: Putting generations of Jews to sleep every year since 1922I really hate Pesach. I know every other Jew in the world loves the seders, and thinks matzah is great and gefilte fish is the best gift we’ve gotten from God since Sinai, but frankly I have very little to say about this so-called season of redemption. I think it sucks. And I’m especially irritated by the seders.

I hate the seders for two reasons:
1) There are, inexplicably, TWO of them. What could possibly be accomplished on the second night?? We just finished telling this story. It’s not like there’s a dearth of Jewish texts out there, so why in the name of God are we sitting around reading the same book two days in a row?
2) I find the Haggadah mind-numbingly boring. And yes, my family owns about forty different haggadot, and I’m not particularly fond of any of them. I’m an equal opportunity hater.

But okay, I get that I’m pretty much alone on this issue, and that it’s not particularly practical to say, “Just skip Pesach this year,” so how about I give some wary recommendations of haggadahs that I don’t hate that much, and some tips for running a seder that doesn’t send all of your guests face first into their matzah ball soup, okay?

So yeah, there’s A Different Night, which is a haggadah that is, seriously, fun for the whole family. Even the skeptical, irritable and too-cool-for-school 22-year-old daughter. But the pictures suck. The Haggadah for the Vegetarian Family is a bit too preachy for my taste, but pretty interesting if you’re a veg. I have a slight obsession with Nechama Leibowitz, and her haggadah does not disappoint, but just like her parsha worksheets, sometimes she skips right over an issue that seems pretty huge.

I’m okay with the commentary in the Feast of Freedom, which is the Conservative haggadah, but the pictures are all these abstract ugly ripped paper things that are really distractingly horrendous.

I bought my mom The Katz Haggadah, which has completely awesome pictures and is insanely frum. I wouldn’t use it for it’s commentary, but it’s really fun to look at. My mother doesn’t really like it, which is funny because she’s kind of crazy about haggadahs. But it’s cool. I’m not bitter.

Looking for something a little more alternative? Trying to prove street cred at your seder? You should probably show up with a copy of The So-Called Seder: A Hip Hop Haggadah which has a variety of songs from people like Killah Priest, Theodore Bikel and Matisyahu. Or you can download all kinds of haggadah texts from the web. Here’s an article from USA Today with more info on places to look online, but I’d say you should start with the awesome Open Source Haggadah created by Mobius. Now you’re cool.

If you’re running a seder this year, or are going to a seder that traditionally blows and you want to subtract the suckage, check out a little mini-conversation over at A Simple Jew about how to prep. My Jewish Learning also has some good ideas about ways to keep people interested and engaged all the way through the haggadah.

Or, if you want to take the same route as me, sit in the corner stewing and counting the minutes until pizza is again a viable option.

Was there hemp in the Garden of Eden? Courtesy JPost:

Hemp has increasingly been spotted on the list of kitniyot, or legumes, that Ashkenazi Jews abstain from eating during Pessah, according to several influential rabbinical Web sites, including kashrut.com. But not everyone agrees that hemp qualifies for the ban, and the debate has led many to question the definition of kitniyot

 

The ban on kitniyot during Pessah began because rabbis were concerned that certain legumes would come into contact with the grains forbidden during the holiday. Farmers often grew wheat and rice in adjacent fields, and families frequently stored all of their grains and legumes in the same containers. The kitniyot tradition only applies to Jews of Ashkenazi descent, since Sephardic Jewry never adopted the practice.

Of the dozen rabbis whom The Jerusalem Post questioned on this issue, none offered a conclusive statement about how hemp should be classified for Pessah. As Rabbi Daniel Kohn of Bat Ayin explained, the issue ultimately boils down to an individual decision by each rabbi about whether hemp seeds themselves could be considered edible. If a rabbi decides that the seeds are edible, then hemp - and, by extension, marijuana - would not be considered permissible for Pessah.

Well, at least here's some news that might make this year's Seder more palatable, but this also raises the stakes of eating way more matzah than is good for one sitting. 

For attending a Seder at a hotel: Look as seductive as possible. Don't actually drink the wine.As we all know, come Pesach, we're expected to adorn new clothes to mark our Exodus long ago from Egypt. In this spirit, Ynet has an interesting photo montage of different outfits to wear at the Passover Seder depending on where you are going. Of course, facial expressions and poses also differ depending on environment as the pictures relay.

For example, when going to your in-laws, force a sudued smile, carry some flowers, and dress like you were just plucked off a farm in Scandavia. Similarly, when going to your parents, dump the smile (no one would believe you anways), and dress in a casual long-sleeved shirt and respectably A-line skirt. Then plant yourself on an armchair and hope you can fade into the 70s lime green shag rug the ottoman is situated on. For the Seder at a hotel, dress a bit skanky, with a lace or sheer top over a camisole. You're not fooling anyone here either. Venue trumps dress code here. And lastly, when going to friends for your Passover Seder, dress at your finest because this is the premiere opportunity you have to show off all your new Spring styles to people who might actually notice and hold you accountable in years to come.

That's all for Passover Fashion 101. Etiquette lessons to follow. No one fancies a chicken soup slurper.

Looks like Manischewitz is closing up shop in Jersey City just in time for their busiest season. The good news is the company is relocating to their Newark base. The bad news is after reading this, I'm apathetic to the brand either way.

Pevzner said that in the last 20 years, as production has gotten increasingly automated, the factory payroll has declined to about 55 employees from more than 100.

Pevzner said he expects only about half of the current workers will move to Newark.

That will be difficult for some workers, including Russian Jews from Brooklyn who say the factory has provided more than just a living. One floor includes a small synagogue that hosts the occasional wedding, Pevzner said.

Marton Fromer, a Hungarian Jew who grew up in Russia, has spent 11 years at the company operating mixing kettles under the strict eye of mashgichim, the observant Jews designated to supervise kosher operations.

"To make matzo, it's a privilege for a Jew," he says.

"It's a ritual, it's holy."

But Fromer said that the move is trivial, as long as the matzo remains.

"The building is just bricks and the roof, like any building," he said.

"The matzo, it's the product that's important."

I guess the important thing is that the article ends on a positive note, even if the real life story doesn't quite pan out that way.