A New Approach to Mid-East Peace

Passover is the time when Jews are not supposed to eat anything with leavening, which means that they omit bread, cake, pastry and a lot of other stuff that we normally enjoy without a second thought. Instead, Jews eat matzoh, the flat unleavened cake that, according to the Passover story, was all that they could carry when they were suddenly released from slavery and ordered to leave Egypt. (It's interesting that Jews have always viewed the Passover story as one of deliverance, not deportation.) Being resourceful, Jews have found ways to leaven (you should excuse the pun) the austerity of the holiday, and not just by downing four cups of wine at the seder table. In fact, if one a good cook--or close enough to benefit from one--he or she can eat better at Passover than the rest of the year.

One of the best Passover treats, no, THE best Passover treat, is chocolate caramel matzoh crunch. I used to say that it's so good that it justifies buying matzoh even when it ISN'T Passover, but that's a gross understatement. Let me put it this way: If Hitler had tasted chocolate caramel matzoh crunch, he would have felt differently about the Jews.

That heretical thought led me to another: Here's a new approach to mid-east peace: The Israelis should offer the Palestinians, yes, even the Hamas-nicks--chocolate caramel matzoh crunch. (They could offer other things as well, like may great-aunt Goldie's chicken soup with the knad'lach [matzoh balls] so light that they floated above the surface of the soup.) The Palestinians, in the Arab tradition of hospitality, would offer some treats of their own. A dialogue would begin and, fueled by the good feelings that good food engenders, maybe peace would break out between two peoples whose problem often seems to be not that they are different, but that they are so much alike.