Passover

This holiday begins on the fourteenth day of Nissan, usually in April, and lasts eight days. It celebrates the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, which occurred in such haste that their bread dough did not have time to rise. To commemorate this event, no leavened foods (hametz) may be eaten. Matzoh is the main bread product served, but it is made with a special wheat flour ground just before baking so that it will not have time to ferment. Originally, matzoh were round, but in 1875 a square matzoh press was invented in England and it has been in use ever since. Joelle Bahloul in her book The Architecture of Memory describes the preparation of the matzoh before they went to communal ovens. “We’d make our own Passover matzoh. Each family would make six or seven kilos. We’d make them round and flat. So we’d have to help each other. We’d go down into the courtyard . . . . We’d have to wait until it rained . . . the water had to spend a night under the stars to be kosher . . . the next day we’d prepare the dough. We’d moisten it gradually, adding water, salt.” Each day they’d bake a batch for one family. One woman was in charge of the dough; because it wasn’t supposed to rise, she would keep it wet. Another rolled out the dough, and yet another baked it on the kanoun using a tahona, a large three-legged brazier used for making Arab flat bread.