Passover Facts
Passover is the oldest and most celebrated holiday in Jewish history. It commemorates the Israelites fleeing Egypt to gain freedom from slavery.- Passover is celebrated with a meal called the seder. The table is decorated with a seder plate that holds, traditionally, six ceremonial foods that represent the hardships their ancestors faced in Egypt. In the 1980s, a seventh food was added by less traditional families to represent support of LGBTQ+ and other marginalized groups in the Jewish community. The seventh food is an orange to signify fruitfulness and acceptance in the Jewish faith. Spitting out the seeds is a gesture of spitting out hate and discrimination.
- Maxwell Coffee House started printing the Haggadah, a Jewish text that contains prayers and the story of Exodus, as a marketing campaign in 1932 to promote Passover coffee. That version of the English-Hebrew Passover Haggadah has become the most widely distributed in the United States.
- Matzah bread is the only bread that can be eaten during Passover because it does not have any leavening ingredients. Israeli slaves did not have time to wait for their bread to rise before they fled Egypt, and this tradition is still followed to honor their ancestors.
- The wheat in matzah bread cannot encounter water until it is ready to bake. Once combined, the bread only has 18 minutes to be baked. After this, the fermentation process begins, and the matzah becomes inedible during Passover.
- No chametz, or products with a leavening agent, can be owned or sold during Passover. They are supposed to be “sold” to non-Jewish friends for the week but remain sealed out of sight in the corner of the house waiting to be picked up by the buyer. After the Passover, the buyer, per tradition, decides they want the deal annulled. The night before Passover, families “search for the chametz,” which is where you use a candle and feather to search for any bread or leavened products of yours that you may have missed in the pre-Passover cleaning.
- Since no chametz can be owned or possessed during Passover, the state of Israel “sells” whole factories, bakeries, kitchens, and storerooms to Arab Israeli citizens. For the last 20 years, Hussein Jabar has ceremoniously spent a huge sum to purchase everything just to have the deal annulled a week later. The finance manager, chief rabbinate, and Jabar all meet up to sign a contract that transfers ownership of all businesses that handle chametz to Jabar. If individuals do not have friends to sell their leavened products to, they can include theirs with this sale as well. He puts down a deposit and has until the end of the week to come up with $300 million or the deal is null and void. Jabar gets his deposit back and ownership is transferred back to the original owners. He says he is always happy to help with happiness.
- In 2010, the largest matzo ball on record was created at the Jewish Food Festival in Tucson, Arizonia. 1000 eggs, 25 pounds of chicken fat, and 125 pounds of matzo meal came together to create a matzo ball that weighed 488 pounds and was 106 inches in diameter.
- Yellow-capped Coca-Cola bottles that are marked with Hebrew writing are approved for Passover. These Coke products are made with a fermented molasses and cottonseed oil excluding the high-fructose corn syrup. These tweaks to the formula make the Coke kosher and okay to drink during Passover.
—Tiffany Jablonowski