I'll Pass

This week marks the time when Jews remember our exodus from Egypt, celebrating with the holiday of Passover. Huge Seders, forty family members around one table, and more matzo than anyone knows how to eat is the way we Jews commemorate our freedom.

The most notable custom of observance, however, is the avoidance of bread, and other leavened products. It doesn't stop at bread, though, on the list of banned foods. Pasta, corn, anything with corn syrup, and anything that, oh, I don't know, tastes even remotely edible.

My brother hates Passover. Really, who can blame him? All of his favorite foods are banned. He has to go to three Seders, each lasting quite some time. He has to explain to his non-Jewish friends why he has to eat that flat, tasteless sheet of cardboard.

Passover is a holiday that is met with more complaining than I've ever heard. If God had heard the kvetching that the Jews would put up, God might not have passed over the opportunity to shut us up.

From a selfish, narrow-minded perspective, Passover sucks. But in the greater picture, it is probably one of the most meaningful holidays on the calendar. In our avoidance of leavened products, we are being more mindful about what enters our mouths, rather than just stuffing it with anything that crosses our path. By being aware of our own dissatisfaction with our food opportunities, we are better able to empathize with those who are hungry and who have no choice at all in what they eat. And by taking this one element out of our diet, we are able to form a connection, from generation to generation, ledor vador, between all of the thousands of generations before us who have had to fast in kind.

I am especially saddened when someone gives up fasting, after years of practice. I have friends who have kept Passover for many years, but decided this year that it just wasn't worth it, so they are chowing down on their sandwiches and other bread-filled treats. How can someone so simply abandon something that has been a fixture of our faith for, literally, five thousand plus years?

A week is a long time to change something so habitual as eating. You can't eat what you want at restaurants, can't have the freedom to blindly fill your mouth. Yet a week, in the grand sceme of things, really isn't a big deal. Gam Ze Yaavor, this too shall pass. Our ancestors were able to attain their freedom, something that we take for granted today. They wandered for forty years in the desert. We can't suffer for eight days?