It's still kind of Passover right now, which means, technically, I'm not supposed to be eating bread right now. I am eating bread right now. I am a big fan of bread and bread-by-products.

The reason why we're not supposed to have bread is because the ancient Israelites supposedly packed up in such a rush that they didn't have time to make bread before they left to go forth into the desert. Instead they could only make matzo. They must have made a lot matzo, though, considering they were in the fricking desert for 40 years, but that's another matter. So, anyways, just because the Israelites supposedly didn't have leavened bread when they were running loose in the desert, we too, several thousand years later, are supposed to forgo eating leavened bread. Why? Who knows. Something to do with symbolism and suffering and because of the destruction of the Jewish temple. Seems to me we should be pigging out on bread this week to celebrate the fact that we can eat bread now that we've been freed from bondage, but that's just me. Either way, we're supposed to be bread-free for eight days.

And not just bread free, but anything "leavened" which means anything involving grains or oats being somehow "raised" or cooked is bad. No cereal, no bagels, not even beer. Things get really complicated after that, though, because in this modern world of ours, there's a lot of things that are considered "leavened." Like corn syrup. Anything that has corn syrup, including say candy or ketchup or even cat food, is bad (this caused problems last year because you're supposed to get rid out of all the bad food from your house before Passover, kind of a purifying thing, and we had a long discussion about whether or not to leave the cat food for the cat- in other words, be fully observant good Jews and let the cat starve or be bad Jews and let the cat eat). And rice is bad too, although nobody's sure why and it's totally kosher for Sephardic Jews to eat it, but not Ashkenazi Jews.

All of this is way too complicated and kind of silly and leads to way too many instances where somebody is at a restaurant trying to figure out what'll work and won't work. If I could figure out a way of coming up with a 1-800 number for Jews to call in case they were confused as to what they could eat, I would, but haven't yet.

During my vacation, I was racking my brain trying to think of something to snack on besides matzo during the long eight days and I came up with nacho's. They're definitely not bread-like and they're even made with corn. Hell, most Mexican food should probably work because there's also corn tortilla's. Turns out, however, it's not good. Corn doesn't work (unless it's eaten off the cobb because, well, the ancient Rabbi's had way too much time on their hands) so that's out and tortilla has been deemed as "leavened."

My argument to my dad, though, is why wouldn't it be good for Passover? So what if it technically doesn't conform to the laws, it's not like there's anything in the Talmud that says you can't have Mexican food. Not that I'm an expert, but I'm pretty sure that nowhere does it say you can't have Mexican food. And so what if the Israelite's didn't know about Mexican food back then, if they did, they'd have eaten it. And besides, just because they didn't know about Mexican food back then doesn't mean I have to suffer for it.