Passing Thoughts on Passover

It brings tears to my eyes. The sad Passover story? No. It’s that horseradish I am allergic to.

When I was an eight-year-old kid my father, who was the sweetest human being on the earth, said you want to find out what horseradish smells like?  Being a gutsy kid I never backed away from anything. I don’t know what he was thinking but he liked stuff like that and I took a whiff.  It brought tears to my eyes and I’ve been crying ever since.

My dad, who lived to only 82, even ate a raw onion the week he died. Turns out I am allergic to raw onions too.

Speaking of crying, how about preparing a dinner for 15 to 18 people at my age? Now that’s enough to for an extra-large bucket of tears.

A dinner this size requires a ton of plates. One for the fish, which you would not want to serve with anything else. Another one for the Seder plate, which has the nut, apple thing, and Passover wine mixture. A third for the soup, which I am proud to say is made by my son. It has won awards and it’s really good. Then there is a fourth plate for the main course. So now you are getting the drift. I have used paper plates in the past but I won’t use them for the matzo ball soup. Paper soup bowls are even beyond my lack of etiquette.

I must not be a true Jew. I think I’m the only one that doesn’t like matzo. I’ve never tasted wallpaper but I’m sure the tastes are similar. Of course, you can add salt, pepper and butter, but it still tastes like wallpaper paste. When I make fried matzo I use more butter and more egg with just a sprinkling of the actual matzo sheet.

Matzo rolls you say? Matzo balls in the soup? Matzo meal pancakes? Matzo meal desserts? It all tastes the same to me. Lots of sugar can help make it go down a little better. Like they say a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, medicine go down, medicine go down, in my case it’s the matzo go down.

I’ve never seen anything in my life that can make crumbs that last from one Passover to the next like a piece of matzo. The crumbs show up under the tables, under the couches, on the floor and blah, blah, blah.

Let’s talk about charoset. People love that stuff. It’s cut up nuts and apples but it certainly doesn’t taste like apple pie. And it has a sprinkle of grape wine in it. Passover grape wine tastes like what the kids used to drink for a cheap “high”. I know we are supposed to suffer during Passover and believe me I have suffered plenty.

In the presence of good taste I won’t discuss with you what matzo does to the stomach. It’s not pretty, let me tell you. Everybody has their own way of suffering from matzo. I don’t know anybody that doesn’t and if they say they don’t they’re a liar.

And as they say, next year we will celebrate in Israel. And believe me I won’t be doing the cooking.