The Mossad of Festivals

I may have said it before, but I’m not a fan of a lot of aspects of Orthodox Judaism. It’s a long story with quite a lot of post-trauma mixed in, but for me, festivals in Israel are tantamount to national chaos. And I’ve had quite enough of chaos, thank you.

A case in point: My husband and I left the country to escape the loud drunkenness of Purim, only to learn that war had broken out less than twenty-four hours after our plane had touched down in Budapest. You might call it Divine justice.

So even though we’d happily escaped a somewhat muted Purim. By the time we were back,  costumes and snacks had been either consumed or tucked away for next year. We did not, however, escape a war that refuses to end. And to add insult to misery, Israel is in the throes of getting ready for another season of madness: Pesach.

Missiles or not, endless trucks are shipping boxloads of matzot and constipation-inducing but completely tasteless other goods. You take out the flour, you take out the joy. I dare anyone to tell me otherwise. Occasionally new “kosher for Pesach” products arrive on the shelves, one more tasteless than the next, but nobody is making a fool out of me.

Then there’s the mad Pesach cleaning that defies rhyme or reason. God told us to avoid leavened bread for seven days, but said nothing about scrubbing corners of our bathroom with bleach. Pesach is a festival that is as thorough as the Mossad in Tehran—it takes no hostages. If you are less than enthusiastic about checking the Pesach rabbinical approval on all of your groceries, you might, like me, feel a little left out.

Finding bread in Jerusalem during Pesach is mission impossible. You might be temporarily distracted by what looks like bread rolls in restaurants or cafes, but one bite and the offensive item instantly reveals its true colors as a rubbery, gluten-free roll. And then, after the buying frenzy is over, the stockpiles of matzot and glutinous products become mysteriously depleted. By the time the chag is over, you’ll be fortunate to find little more than a sad horseradish or some crumbled-up “kosher for Pesach” chips on the forlorn store shelves. The madness has left a desolate form of devastation in its wake. It’s time to go to the neighbors with a begging bowl. It was probably them who cleared the shelves in the first place; “panic buying” is an understatement.

A few years back, there was an egg crisis. Eggs are the staple of our Pesach kitchen; it’s almost as bad as running out of Arrow warheads. Eggs had to be airlifted from Ukraine to save Israeli households from imminent starvation.

Performing the Ritual

And then it’s all over, as fast as it began. Israeli women everywhere call their doctors for sick notes as they need four days to recover from the invasion of families and the devastation inflicted on their sacrosanct space: the kitchen. Untouched boxes of matzot, overbought to an........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)