DISCOVER CULTURES + TRADITIONS FROM AROUND THE GLOBE
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• Matzo – also spelled matzah – is a thin, crisp unleavened bread, traditionally eaten by Jewish people during the spring Passover (Pesach) observance.
• Pesach or Passover (Festival of Freedom) is the spring holiday that commemorates the liberation of the Israelites (the Jewish people) from Egyptian slavery. It is celebrated with a Seder meal where each item is symbolic of the journey of the ancient Jewish people out of Egypt to freedom.
• In the Jewish tradition, matzo symbolizes faith and humility. In contrast to leavened bread, matzo is not enriched with oil, honey or other ingredients. It consists only of flour and water, and is not allowed to rise, which commemorates the haste with which the Israelites had to flee bondage.
For more information about Passover:
www.chabad.org/holidays/passover/default_cdo/jewish/Passover.htm
UNLEAVENED BREAD
MATZO
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ISRAEL
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THE SEDER PLATE
We love collecting images of Seder plates and have gone into our archives to share some traditional and wonderfully creative examples.
Click or tap on the black box to check out the collection, and to hear Dayenu, a traditional Jewish Passover song. Dayenu means "It would have been enough" in Hebrew.
Music : Dayenu sing by the Maccabeats
To discover the meaning of the items on the Seder plate, go to https://youtu.be/r37_hNy9A1A
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MATZO FOR PASSOVER
18 MINUTES!
THE TRADITION
Only EIGHTEEN minutes from when the water hits the flour! The whole process of making matzo must be completed in 18 minutes, symbolizing the Jews’ rushing out of Egypt too quickly for the bread to rise. The flour and water — nothing else — are combined, the dough rolled, perforations made and, poof! . . . after a brief trip through a 1,000 degree oven, the matzo is done.
Every piece is the same, round and about twelve inches in diameter, and yet every piece is unique, too, because it is formed by hand. This rounded by hand matzo is the most traditional. It is called shmurah (watched or guarded) matzo.
At the Charedim Shmurah Matzah Bakery in Brooklyn, New York, roughly 65,000 pounds of matzo is made this way in a four-month scramble leading up to Passover. Everything is done by hand; nothing is done by machine. Every 18 minutes, everything gets cleaned. New papers, hands get washed, new bowls, new sticks.
See shmurah matzo being made by hand: https://youtu.be/iCr5pC9C4qI
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