Passover, 5770

[PrinceMyshkin]

“Ou sonts les neiges d’antan?”
(Where are the snows of yesteryear?)
François Villons

And where is the matso
of yesteryear
that was so crisp
and always novel?

“Kosher for Pesach”
would be printed on each box
over the rabbinical seal
and no one would have thought
of eating it any other time.

It separated a holy week and a day
from the time that merely went along
hum-drumming our minds
into familiar pulp.

But then, like sex and joy
and sanity and sanctity,
we took to demanding it all year round,
day after day after day.

[Virgil]

I like this one Prince. It opens up into insight stanza by stanza. By the way, I wasn't aware that matzo was an alternate spelling/pronounciation. We've always referred to it as matza.

I must say I'm one of the few people that loves matza. I usually can't wait for passover to get a box or two. I like putting butter or jelly or both on top. :D

Happy Passover. :)

[qimissung]

I agree. What a beautiful, sad, unsettling insight. The only problem is that I don't know that much about the way Passover is celebrated, then and now, to completely understand your references.

[lallison]

eloquent. Reading Virgil's post helped since I had no idea what Matso was. Like much of your poetry, it is already quite refined and leaves me thinking of the extended meaning well after the second reading. It causes me to wonder what it is that makes something sacred or even special, and how easily it is to destroy that. All your gears seem to be meshing.

"And where is the matso/of yesteryear" This line comes off as comical which is not the mood of the poem.

Not sure what the 5770 is all about either

But mostly its rich and flavorful, thanks for sharing.

[Hawkman]

Hi Prince,

This is a really good poem.

Consumer demand and the commercialisation of religious practice seems to be becoming a constant in the Western world. Take for example Hot Cross buns. These were originally a penitential food for Good Friday. They weren’t supposed to be nice. These days you can eat them all year round and they are flavoured with currents and saffron and glazed with sugar. Easter Eggs are also available for at least a quarter of the year and shops seem to celebrate Christmas almost from September.

As Jesus was reputed to have thrown the money changers out of the temple, one can’t help wondering what he’d have made of it all, especially TV Evangelists.

I have no idea whether Islamic festivals are similarly plagued by commercial exploitation, so if there are any Muslims out there who can enlighten me I’d be interested to know.

Lallison, I think you’ll find that the 5770 refers to the year count from the Passover before the Jews fled Egypt.

H

[PrinceMyshkin]

Hi Prince,

This is a really good poem.

Consumer demand and the commercialisation of religious practice seems to be becoming a constant in the Western world. Take for example Hot Cross buns. These were originally a penitential food for Good Friday. They weren’t supposed to be nice. These days you can eat them all year round and they are flavoured with currents and saffron and glazed with sugar. Easter Eggs are also available for at least a quarter of the year and shops seem to celebrate Christmas almost from September.

As Jesus was reputed to have thrown the money changers out of the temple, one can’t help wondering what he’d have made of it all, especially TV Evangelists.

I have no idea whether Islamic festivals are similarly plagued by commercial exploitation, so if there are any Muslims out there who can enlighten me I’d be interested to know.

Lallison, I think you’ll find that the 5770 refers to the year count from the Passover before the Jews fled Egypt.

H

It is indeed painfull or at least darkly comic to imagine Jesus confronted with contemporary life!

[lallison]

Thanks Hawk. I think the date continues to add to the meaning as it relates to how things become more mundane with the passing of time. I guess the poem also romanticizes the past, which is sometimes a fallacy. "Back when I was a kid we use to read our poems together at the cafe, not share 'em on that dang blasted internet contraption."

I'm not Muslim, but I've lived in Indonesia for the past three years, which is the world's most populous Islamic country. Islamic holidays are definitely commercialized here in the sense that plane tickets double during Idul Fitri (the last day of Ramadan and the start of the Muslim year) and book stores fill with cards and Selemat Tahun Baru banners. You see commercials for packaged deals to Mecca. Ramadan, of course, is a month of fasting, and lots of restaurants and night spots close during this time, so in that sense, everything is less commercialized, although you still see lots of adds in papers, and on billboards and TVs using the holidays to try and hawk their goods.

We celebrate a number of Christian and Hindu holidays here too and they're typically commercialized in some way or another. Which reminds me, I've got tomorrow off work for good Friday, which is a national holiday, yea!

[Pendragon]

Good job as always, mon ami!

[PrinceMyshkin]

Thanks, Qimissung, Lallison, Pendragon and Hawkman


I like this one Prince. It opens up into insight stanza by stanza. By the way, I wasn't aware that matzo was an alternate spelling/pronounciation. We've always referred to it as matza.

I must say I'm one of the few people that loves matza. I usually can't wait for passover to get a box or two. I like putting butter or jelly or both on top. :D

Happy Passover. :)

Virgil: There are many variant transliterations of מַצָּה‎, since that word and other Hebrew and Yiddish words are written in a Semitic alphabet, the transliteration into English is in the ear of the beholder. Have you tried egg-matza, which is to the regular kind as Challeh is to ordinary white or rye bread?

But surely, as here, you can get matza/matso all year round, though not certified as being Kosher for Passover?

[Virgil]

Virgil: There are many variant transliterations of מַצָּה‎, since that word and other Hebrew and Yiddish words are written in a Semitic alphabet, the transliteration into English is in the ear of the beholder. Have you tried egg-matza, which is to the regular kind as Challeh is to ordinary white or rye bread?

But surely, as here, you can get matza/matso all year round, though not certified as being Kosher for Passover?
Yes, I believe it's on the supermarket shelves, but I forget about until passover. Actually I never buy it myself. My mother-in-law gives us a couple of boxes. She just did tonight. We celebrated the Seder this evening instead of earlier in the week.


I agree. What a beautiful, dad, unsettling insight. The only problem is that I don't know that much about the way Passover is celebrated, then and now, to completely understand your references.
You must watch The Ten Commandments with Charton Heston. :wink5:
This is helpful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r9w3df2WIU&feature=related.

[Dr. Cambridge]

I have a box of Solomon's Matzo right here. On one end of the box are the words in both Hebrew and English, Kosher For Passover, and similarly on the other end , Parve Kosher.

Definition: Parve is a Hebrew term (pareve is the Yiddish term) that describes food without any meat or dairy ingredients.

Jewish dietary laws considers pareve food to be neutral; Pareve food can be eaten with both meat and milk dishes.

Fish, eggs, fruits and vegetables are parve.

As for losing the novelty of matzo by eating it more often, rather that than eating non-kosher leavened bread at the Passover Seder.

Your poem is especially appreciated, PrinceM, as I have today, participated in Holy Communion using unleavened bread, it being our so-called Good Friday which recognises the death of Christ as our Passover Lamb, while the following Scripture reminds us how to keep the feast as a constant duty.

1Corinthians 5:7-8 KJV "Purge out therefore the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: (8) Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."

[PrinceMyshkin]

I have a box of Solomon's Matzo right here. On one end of the box are the words in both Hebrew and English, Kosher For Passover, and similarly on the other end , Parve Kosher.

Definition: Parve is a Hebrew term (pareve is the Yiddish term) that describes food without any meat or dairy ingredients.

Jewish dietary laws considers pareve food to be neutral; Pareve food can be eaten with both meat and milk dishes.

Fish, eggs, fruits and vegetables are parve.

As for losing the novelty of matzo by eating it more often, rather that than eating non-kosher leavened bread at the Passover Seder.

Your poem is especially appreciated, PrinceM, as I have today, participated in Holy Communion using unleavened bread, it being our so-called Good Friday which recognises the death of Christ as our Passover Lamb, while the following Scripture reminds us how to keep the feast as a constant duty.

1Corinthians 5:7-8 KJV "Purge out therefore the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: (8) Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."

Thank you. The excerpt from Corinthians beautifully describes the ceremony among Jews (without the reference to Christ), and the metaphor of the leaven of "malice and wickedness" is wonderfully apt, as it causes our daily bread to rise to unhealthful proportions.

[Virgil]

I just noticed on my Matza box and it's spelled Matzo. I can be so oblivious. :lol:

[PrinceMyshkin]

I just noticed on my Matza box and it's spelled Matzo. I can be so oblivious. :lol:

I shall write a sharp letter to the Rabbinical authority, as the second letter in the Hebrew spelling is a "tsadi," most commonly pronounced "ts"


Tsade (also spelled Ṣādē or Tzadi or Sadhe or Tzaddik) is the eighteenth letter in many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician, Aramaic, Hebrew Tsadi צ and Arabic Ṣād ﺹ. Its oldest sound value is probably IPA: [sˤ], although there is a variety of pronunciation in different modern Semitic languages and their dialects. It represents the coalescence of three Proto-Semitic "emphatic consonants" in Canaanite. Arabic, which kept the phonemes separate, introduced variants of ṣād and ṭāʼ to express the three (see ḍād, ẓāʼ). In Aramaic, these emphatic consonants coalesced instead with ʻayin and ṭēt, respectively, thus Hebrew ereẓ ארץ (earth) is arʻāʼ ארע in Aramaic.



But if you preferred to skip the foregoing, happy noshing!

[Virgil]

That's very informative. Thanks. :)

[AuntShecky]

This little ditty is just as funny as "The Pajama Diaries "comic strip in today's paper which deals with the same subject matter. I looked all over to see if I could find it online, but alas, no. I'll keep looking.

By the bye, is there a typo in one of "year" concluding lines?

[PrinceMyshkin]

This little ditty is just as funny as "The Pajama Diaries "comic strip in today's paper which deals with the same subject matter. I looked all over to see if I could find it online, but alas, no. I'll keep looking.

By the bye, is there a typo in one of "year" concluding lines?

"ditty" as in
an especially simple and unaffected song per Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary?

As to the typo, year right, thanks.

[AuntShecky]

Okay, the gist of the dialogue from yesterday's "Pajama Diaries" by Terri Libenson: A little girl and her mother are discussing whether their family's Seder dinner is really "holy" or merely "symbolic."

The Mother: Well, sure. . .it isa symbolic holiday. But it can be holy, too.
Daughter: But it's not like it's bad if we don't follow all the rules, right? They're just symbols, right?
Mother: Ohh. You're tired of the matzah aren't you?
Daughter: (holding her stomach.)I haven't gone to the
bathroom in three days.

re: "ditty" -- that's the term I use for my own "stuff," whether or not it's funny (intentionally or not.) For you,
I didn't use the term to diminish or trivialize your work in any way, but affectionately.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Okay, the gist of the dialogue from yesterday's "Pajama Diaries" by Terri Libenson: A little girl and her mother are discussing whether their family's Seder dinner is really "holy" or merely "symbolic."

The Mother: Well, sure. . .it isa symbolic holiday. But it can be holy, too.
Daughter: But it's not like it's bad if we don't follow all the rules, right? They're just symbols, right?
Mother: Ohh. You're tired of the matzah aren't you?
Daughter: (holding her stomach.)I haven't gone to the
bathroom in three days.

re: "ditty" -- that's the term I use for my own "stuff," whether or not it's funny (intentionally or not.) For you,
I didn't use the term to diminish or trivialize your work in any way, but affectionately.

Is there perhaps some other thread where we can discuss or report on our BMs? Because I have been eating matso as if the whole of the Pharaoh's army were close upon me, and I have NO problems to report of the kind you allude to!

As for your reference to my poem as a "ditty," yeah, it did hurt a bit, but I absolutely understood that it was not meant to demean me or the poem in question.