{"id":235,"date":"2009-04-01T17:00:42","date_gmt":"2009-04-01T17:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/windowsanddoors\/2009\/04\/the-joys-of-being-sephardic-on.html"},"modified":"2009-04-01T17:00:42","modified_gmt":"2009-04-01T17:00:42","slug":"the-joys-of-being-sephardic-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/2009\/04\/the-joys-of-being-sephardic-on.html","title":{"rendered":"The Joys of Being Sephardic on Passover"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t know the joy of peanut butter on matzah, pop corn on passover or rice alongside the matzah balls in my soup.  And that&#8217;s just a few of the foods that will not be on my table for eight days starting Wednesday.  But Sephardic Jews (those of Iberian, Arabian, or central Asian descent), including the most strictly observant, enjoy them all freely.  It&#8217;s one of the secret, or not so secret jealosies harbared by Ashkenazic Jews (those from central and eastern Europe).<br \/>\nThe reason for the distinction is the way in which the legumes and legume-like products from which Ashkenazim abstain, can be milled into flour.  Because part of the passover experience is not only about what we do and don&#8217;t eat, but about the conciousness we bring to it, Eropean rabbis said no to such products.  In this case, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, even though it&#8217;s not a duck, we still treat it like one.<br \/>\nThe other possible reason for this practice is that,<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nin Europe at least, beans, peas, rice and corn were often stored along with grain.  Because on passover, even the tiniest amount of leavened grain is prohibited, the rabbis declared all legumes a no-no.<br \/>\nWhatever the reason, it makes articles like this one about the best places to eat <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/04\/01\/dining\/reviews\/01unde.html\">Hummus<\/a> (which my Sephardic brothers and sisters can also enjoy on passover) in New York, especially tempting.  Well, not so tempting that I will change my practice, but worthy of mention.  While not all the places are kosher, I can personally vouch for the ones that are, and rely on friends as committed to hummus as I am, to reccomend the others.<br \/>\nEnjoy!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t know the joy of peanut butter on matzah, pop corn on passover or rice alongside the matzah balls in my soup. And that&#8217;s just a few of the foods that will not be on my table for eight days starting Wednesday. But Sephardic Jews (those of Iberian, Arabian, or central Asian descent), including&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,5,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-jewish-holidays","category-judaism","category-pop-culture","category-religion"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Joys of Being Sephardic on Passover - Windows and Doors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/2009\/04\/the-joys-of-being-sephardic-on.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Joys of Being Sephardic on Passover - Windows and Doors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I don&#8217;t know the joy of peanut butter on matzah, pop corn on passover or rice alongside the matzah balls in my soup. And that&#8217;s just a few of the foods that will not be on my table for eight days starting Wednesday. But Sephardic Jews (those of Iberian, Arabian, or central Asian descent), including&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/2009\/04\/the-joys-of-being-sephardic-on.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Windows and Doors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-04-01T17:00:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Brad Hirschfield\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Joys of Being Sephardic on Passover - Windows and Doors","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/2009\/04\/the-joys-of-being-sephardic-on.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Joys of Being Sephardic on Passover - Windows and Doors","og_description":"I don&#8217;t know the joy of peanut butter on matzah, pop corn on passover or rice alongside the matzah balls in my soup. And that&#8217;s just a few of the foods that will not be on my table for eight days starting Wednesday. But Sephardic Jews (those of Iberian, Arabian, or central Asian descent), including&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/2009\/04\/the-joys-of-being-sephardic-on.html","og_site_name":"Windows and Doors","article_published_time":"2009-04-01T17:00:42+00:00","author":"Brad Hirschfield","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/2009\/04\/the-joys-of-being-sephardic-on.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/2009\/04\/the-joys-of-being-sephardic-on.html","name":"The Joys of Being Sephardic on Passover - Windows and Doors","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-04-01T17:00:42+00:00","dateModified":"2009-04-01T17:00:42+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/#\/schema\/person\/dec8532a46bb6f29d8866269e398424d"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/2009\/04\/the-joys-of-being-sephardic-on.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/2009\/04\/the-joys-of-being-sephardic-on.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/2009\/04\/the-joys-of-being-sephardic-on.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The Joys of Being Sephardic on Passover"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/","name":"Windows and Doors","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Rabbi Brad Hirschfield","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/#\/schema\/person\/dec8532a46bb6f29d8866269e398424d","name":"Brad Hirschfield","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/612\/612c840fab7383fcd474af006f999c1fx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/612\/612c840fab7383fcd474af006f999c1fx96.jpg","caption":"Brad Hirschfield"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/author\/brad_hirschfield"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/windowsanddoors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}