God Forgive Us for the Whole Schmear

With Passover less than a week away, many observant Jews, like their ancestors before them, will be tossing all their cakes, muffins, cookies, pies and breads and switching to matzo, the unleavened bread that symbolizes what the Hebrews ate when they were enslaved in Egypt, or what the Israelites ate when they were fleeing Egypt and had no time for their bread to rise, or something like that. Thousands of years later in 2014 (a.k.a. The Year of the Fat Pig), we tend to dress up our matzo.

Take, for example, the recipe for 18 Layer No Bake Matzo S'more Cake on the back of this year's Manischewitz package, in which you are directed to "shmear a layer of melted chocolate" onto each square of matzo. Of course the correct word is smear, but in a nod to the old Jews in Florida and Queens, New York who still talk funny, they went with schmear (although spelled incorrectly), like one does with cream cheese on a bagel. How very German/Jewish of them.

Based on that unholy mess which for some reason seems sacrilegious, at our house we are nixing the matzo in favor of some high-fiber, whole grain bread, and asking God's forgiveness for all of it.