Jews In Space

First of all, let me say that it’s so cold that I’m considering snuggling up to my computer for warmth.

Okay, moving on.

Well folks, Passover is approaching here in Israel. And everywhere in the world, for that matter. Already the supermarkets have removed the normal cereal from their shelves and have replaced it with kosher for Passover products. Yesterday I tried to get Cheerios since I was out, and instead found that all the boxes of cereal had simply vanished. At first it didn’t dawn on me that this was because of Passover, so I had this very sad and desperate search through the supermarket thinking that some kind of horrible trick was being played on me. And today….I can’t even say it……today….

….today I didn’t have breakfast.

As I’ve mentioned on this blog, I consider breakfast to be not only the most important part of my day, but my favorite part. I used to lecture my Australian roommate on why she needs to eat breakfast. When I (G-d willing!) have children of my own (All named Hank Avi Rumpelstiltskin III), family dinner will be optional, but family breakfast will be compulsory. This is just how I feel about breakfast.

Anyway, so today I walked up to a mini market to see if they had Cheerios. I was thrilled to find that they have cereal in general, though not Cheerios. But then I saw the words “KOSHER FOR PASSOVER!” on the boxes in Hebrew, which made me think, “What the hell is kosher for Passover cereal?” Is that like matza crumbs that you put in a bowl of milk?

So I ended up getting this piece of shit cereal and walking back to the apartment. In the apartment I’m confronted by my roommate who starts talking about how we have to get rid of all our bread products and how we have to sell xyz to Christians over Passover and blablablah halakha. She pointed to my newly purchased box of kosher for Passover cereal and said I had to finish it before Passover or we would have to sell it. Knowing how much I like cereal, that shouldn’t be a problem. Actually, making it last through the weekend is a more likely problem. But anyway, I said, “Oh no, don’t worry, it’s kosher for Passover,” pointing at the label on the box. She then said that because it was open before Passover when we still have bread in the house, it was now NOT kosher for Passover so we can’t have it in the house during Passover.

I don’t know…times like this, I feel like how I imagine my dad must feel all the time, who since 1980 (when my parents married) has been living among people of a bizarre and different religion, and he has to keep a straight face and pretend that it’s not all a load of total bullshit.

Obviously though I don’t want my roommate to feel like she’s breaking any religious rules, and I don’t want her to be ill at ease in our apartment, so obviously I’ll cooperate to the best of my ability.

All lot of this though is, unfortunately, a foreign topic for me. The idea of selling or burning hametz was completely unknown to me until I got to college. In my family, if we felt like keeping Passover that year, we simply didn’t eat the cereal in the pantry. It never occurred to us to sell it or get rid of it, which would be a ridiculous waste of time. My family is a pretty logical and practical family, so our response to someone telling us that we HAVE to sell our non-kosher cereal (as my Jewish brother will probably do this year…) because we can’t eat bread products over Passover would be something like, “How come we can’t just…oh, I don’t know…not eat it?”


And of course, we didn’t always avoid bread on Passover. And during the random years that we kept Passover, I clearly remember eating a ham and cheese sandwich on matza, so obviously you can see how Jewish my family is…

Sometimes though when I hear about Jewish law and about how one lives Jewishly, I feel almost like how I felt when I went to Catholic mass on Christmas Eve in downtown LA, which can only be described as like watching particularly amusing and bizarrely-dressed extraterrestrials moving a large candle around a table. Except when it’s Jewish law instead of a Catholic mass, there’s no Christmas music and it’s a bit like if at the end the extraterrestrials were to tell you that you’re one of them.



Sigh….this is the part where, if I were at home, my dad and I would shake our heads and exchange knowing looks, and he’d sing (either loudly or under his breath, depending on the situation), “TRADITIOOOOOOOON!”



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