During Passover, observant Jews aren’t supposed to eat bread. Or pasta. Or cereal. And Marc keeps kosher for Passover, and oddly enough, so do my kids.
I love Passover, it’s one of my favorite Jewish holidays, but I don’t love keeping kosher for Passover. I really don’t like matzoh, which is the staple of our diet this week. I think part of it is that I don’t like being told NOT to do something, and part of it is my own issues around converting to Judaism. It’s critical to me that formally converting to Judaism be an addition to my life, not a subtraction. And forcing myself to give something up just feels WRONG to me. I love the Seders, I enjoy a little matzoh with mexican cheese and salsa. I love me some matzoh ball soup. But I know that left to my own devices, I’d observe Passover by adding matzoh into my diet, and not by subtracting anything with grain.
But I do it, because (and I’m baffled by this) my kids seem to really enjoy it. They love the restrictions, they love the specialness of the whole thing. I honor that – I respect their right to make choices about how observant they want to be. Without ever forcing the issue, they just seem to really enjoy the restrictions. If it was a problem, I’d be yanking out the ramen noodles and mac and cheese and cheerios, but they seem delighted about it.
So I’m keeping kosher for Passover. There’s a whole lot of matzoh going on over here these days, Jessie is taking matzoh and peanut butter to school for lunch, Sam is eating matzoh brie like it’s going out of style and Julie’s go-to snack is matzoh pizza. Meanwhile, I’m just counting the days until it’s over, and making secret plans to sneak out for chinese food by myself.
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