An article about matzoh making in Brooklyn in the People’s Daily China. Thanks Brownstoner for the tip.
In a Brooklyn bakery, each fresh batch of Passover matzoh was timed from the moment the flour touched water till the unleavened bread left the oven dough worked fast to keep it from rising.
It must stay flat "to remind us of when the Jews went out of Egypt and they didn’t have time to let the bread rise," said Chana Drizin, a 10-year-old bakery volunteer perched atop a woodpile.
With Passover arriving tomorrow at sundown, producing enough matzoh for the holiday meal without breaking tradition is a deadline met with religious fervour at this Brooklyn business.
Behind a windowless front, the boisterous, crowded bakery has churned out more than 80 tons of matzoh in the seven months leading to Passover. At US$33 a kilogram, the matzoh is shipped or hand-delivered to about 70 countries, from France, England and Greece to Congo, Viet Nam and India.
On a recent visit during the last week of production, one room in the bakery was alive with the chatter of women sitting around a long table, rolling out dough and announcing "Matzoh!" in Hebrew as they handed off the matzoh rounds ready for the oven.
Their voices, in Hebrew, Yiddish, Russian and English, mixed with the sound of clattering rolling pins in the frenzy to get as many matzohs out as possible in 18 minutes, when the dough starts to rise.
Eating leavened bread during Passover is forbidden by Jewish law, which is strictly followed in an Orthodox Jewish movement called Chabad Lubavitch that started in 18th-century Russia and spread worldwide.
Under the late Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, their leader in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighbourhood, the Lubavitchers became the most outward-looking of ultra-religious Jews, displaying giant menorahs in public places and building Chabad centres from Sao Paulo to Bangkok.
The more than 200,000 faithful use satellite and Internet technology to communicate their beliefs; even the matzoh can be ordered via the Chabad website, with recipes included.
"It’s been done the same way for 3,000 years," said Rabbi Mendel Feller, who was bringing the matzohs back to St. Paul, Minnesota