Saturday, April 15, 2006
Kosher for Passover in Italy
Passover is upon us, and while most Italians are mobbing the stores to do some last-minute Easter shopping before everything closes for the "ponte" (literally, "bridge," but actually "long weekend"), I went hunting for non-bread products to keep me going for the duration of the holiday. For those not in the know, pasta is not kosher for Passover, though every year many of my non-Jewish friends try to convince me otherwise. Trust me on this one, guys. Even though it doesn't look like bread, pasta still counts.
Not being able to eat pasta in Italy presents a bit of a challenge. (I have a newfound appreciation for another of the fellows at the Academy who has a gluten intolerance.) As I wended my way through the aisles of my local grocery store, crammed with enormous overpriced hollow chocolate eggs wrapped in glistening cellophane and riots of ribbons, I tried to plan the next few days of meals. At the bread section, I paused, then went on wheeling my cart, in the odd hope of finding a box of matzah. (My copy-editor at Random House insists it's spelled matzo, but somehow the "o" spelling doesn't look right to me.)
Imagine my surprise to find a box of crackers called "Pane Azymo," imported from Strasbourg. As I looked over the ingredients, water, salt, unleavened flour, it was clear what I was holding: genuine matzah. True, if I were going strictly by the book, the Pane Azymo wouldn't count because though it had a symbol on the box indicating it was kosher, there was no mark that it was kosher for Passover, which is officially a different thing. However, I made a sign of the cross over the box, which in my book is just as good as paying off some ultra-Orthodox rabbi for the kosher-for-Passover stamp, and voila: matzah.
Some of my friends have trouble understanding my pick and choose attitude toward religion, and truly, I'm not sure I get it all either. At one of the Passover seders I went to this year, a debate erupted at the table over whether we're allowed to decide for ourselves the extent to which we keep the rituals and laws of religion. My view is that I'm not willing to run around wearing a yarmulke, only eating pre-approved foods, keeping the lights off on Shabbat (or setting them to go on and off on a timer, which always strikes me as a bit of a cheat). At the same time, I don't want to chuck all of the traditions I grew up with out the window. And so I nod to the past, rather than bow. I'm willing to give up bread, pasta, cookies, and cake for Passover, but I'm not going to chase bread crumbs with a feather and a candle.
This approach leads to some confusion, even hypocrisy it might be argued, on my part. I won't touch bread on Passover, but a slice of sandwich-less non-kosher salami doesn't bother me. "A-ha!" cry both my religious and atheist friends with satisfaction. "Your system of rules has no logic! Why bother keeping it at all?"
Suppose it was your husband's birthday, and you didn't want to take him out to the most expensive restaurant in town and buy him a new Mercedes. Would that mean you shouldn't recognize the occasion at all? Or that it's less valid to celebrate a birthday by baking him a cake and giving him a new tie?
My version of recognizing my Jewish identity connects me with my past in a way that I find satisfying. I don't ask anyone else to do as I do or to approve. It's just that for me, I don't get much out of pondering whether a box has a K stamp or a K for P stamp or a Mickey Mouse stamp on it. There are other questions in life I want to spend my time worrying about. That's not to say that a question of stamps might not prove extremely meaningful and satisfying to someone else. But for me, I'm sticking with my "pane azymo" topped with a few slices of tomato and mozzarella. Or, if I feel like it, some non-kosher salami.
posted by aaron hamburger at 7:54 AM
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