Every Matzah is a Policy Failure
Plus, readings for your Passover seder
Jews, like everyone else, have a complex relationship to technology, and like everyone else they don’t always respond to it correctly. Sometimes they embrace new tech and everything goes well—and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes they reject new tech and everything goes badly—and sometimes it doesn’t.
Here’s a little cheat sheet I put together with examples of all of these.
I’ve about Torah scrolls and menorahs previously, and you can listen to an interview I did with Sara Wolkenfeld at Sefaria.
The matzah completes the grid. It is an example, I believe, of a decision to embrace the industrial revolution that made matzah cheap and readily available at the price of leaving almost all Jews alienated from this most important food.
In a just-published piece for JTA, I argued that this mistake bears a striking resemblance to what we are currently seeing with the rise of AI systems. I think you’ll like it.
More readings for Passover
I Love Bread: A Passover Tragedy is a kids book that I wrote with my kids. Remember when I wrote that Jewish kids books should be weirder? This is putting my money where my mouth is.
Back in 2016 I wrote an article about Passover fruit jelly slices, which the Forward has republished several years in a row.
The Four Sons is a short imagines the conversation that happens between different “types” of children when their father leaves the room. (Note: Contains descriptions of abuse. Strong language.) One of the better things I’ve written.
Chag Sameach!
A great practical step would be to create and promote a how-to guide for at home matzah making. I have often googled around before Pesach for some kind of contemporary halachic guide but nothing seems to exist. Even if there are many recipes, folks online usual insist that you can't actually do it because "it's complicated" and "you might make mistakes", as if such similar concerns stop millions of Jews from keeping kosher! I assume that such a guide would not be challenging to create, if produced by a group of folks who collectively have knowledge of the relevant halacha and practical baking experience.
This is an interesting article, but I strongly disagree with this: "across the religious spectrum the era of locally made matzah is over." In the modern orthodox circles and beyond (leaning right), hand-made matzah still reigns supreme for the Seder nights, and typically even after the Seder as well. Personal anecdote but my family eats more hand-made matzah than machine made matzah over the course of any Pesach. I don't know anyone who uses machine-made matzah at their Seder.
I do think this is interesting to think about by AI. As more and more creative tasks are taken over by AI, I think we will see a slow reversal to putting higher value on in-person encounters and experiences.