Showing posts with label Pesach. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pesach. Show all posts

3/28/10

Why matzah is tasteless

From the Sfas Emes (translated & paraphrased by your host):

How can the wise child ask for the reason behind a Biblically ordained law? It does say in the Bible, "He gives his sayings to Jacob, his laws and ordinances to Israel." There are cases in which one does not understand the reason behind a practice, but by the very practice itself one comes to know the reason nevertheless. Thus is matzah without a taste [טעם]* - so that it can fade into the background, leaving the eating of the matzah itself as the reason. Similarly, the last food eaten at the Seder should be matzah.

*This word can also mean "reason." - ZB

4/18/08

Pesach cleaning: universal and particular

I love driving out the leaven. But when I talk to the third or fourth Spanish-speaking immigrant patient who couldn't visit her doctor (me) for weeks before Pesach -- she works for a Jewish family, who "can't give her much time off"-- then the phrase fiestas judias begins to sound a little funny.

* *

I wanted to go memorialize the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, but it's too close to Pesach. I suppose this should make the historical memory even sharper: in varshever geto iz itst khoydesh nisn ("in the Warsaw Ghetto it's Nisan now" -- Binem Heller).