With supermarket shelves bulging with Passover muffins, Passover granola and even Passover breadsticks, it’s hard to grasp that for much of history, this holiday’s fare was limited to the simple and home-made. In the shtetl, Passover preparations began at Chanukah when housewives rendered chicken and goosefat into schmaltz, the...
Author: Carol Green Ungar
From Homemade to Store-bought: the Evolving Passover Diet
The “Hole” Truth About Sufganiyot
There is an Israeli folk tale about how the sufganiya, the ubiquitous Chanukah doughnut, got its name.
The Little-Known Story Behind the Latke
Nobody really knows what the Maccabees ate during that first Chanukah, but one thing is certain—it wasn’t potato latkes. Though the custom of eating oily foods to evoke the miracle of the oil dates back millennia—in a ninth-century letter, Maimon, the Rambam’s father, exhorted his community to take this...
Hold the Knaidlach
Sure, many families observe the minhag of not eating gebrokts on Pesach, but why?
Non-Gebrokts Food: The Newest Trend
What’s Behind the Explosion in Non-Gebrokts Products for Pesach? In recent years, non-gebrokts food has become a major trend. “People are noticing that matzah meal, a long-standing Pesach baking staple, is appearing less and less in packaged kosher-for-Passover products,” observes Rabbi Nachum Rabinowitz, OU senior rabbinic coordinator. The OU,...
Holding God’s Hand
For nearly a year now, Simcha Esther (Shari) Gershan has been looking the Angel of Death in the eye and smiling back at him. She’s also been telling the world about it on her Internet blog, and plans to share more of her story in her forthcoming documentary. The...