Matzah Is and Will Always Be Bad

Stop pretending.

It’s bad! (Timothy A. Clary/AFP/GettyImages)

Tonight marks the first night of Passover, the annual holiday where Jews the world over gather with friends and loved ones to recount the biblical story of the exodus from Egyptian bondage, complete with props, theatrics, and literature from your favorite brand of instant coffee.

But if there’s one Passover tradition that supersedes the others—one time-honored ritual to rule them all—it’s the concerted effort to convince an unsuspecting public that matzah is Good Actually.™ This is a lie. A pernicious falsehood perpetuated by Big Matzah in collusion with the fake news media and coastal elites.

Every honest person knows the truth: matzah is bad, has always been bad, and will always be bad. The sooner people admit that, the happier—or at least less burdened by cognitive dissonance—we’ll all be.

Like clockwork, though, the Liberal Media is trying to pull the wool over our eyes this year.

Look at this New York Times snow job:

Twitter

In what world is this “hypnotically delicious”? This is “hide the pill in the peanut butter so the dumb dog doesn’t know what’s happening”—and we’re the dumb dog.

Matzah is, definitionally, the “bread of affliction.” That’s the whole point of matzah. It exists solely to be bad. To taste like shit. To have the mouthfeel of paving gravel, but none of the nutrients. Every time I see some recipe or testimonial for the “best matzah pizza” or “easy, delicious, and seriously beautiful” matzah bark, my brain immediately goes to the same place it does when YouTube serves me some shitty add for “Kachava” or “MUD/WTR” or whatever brown gloop people are slurping down this week. None of this is real food. It’s just a panacea for people who can’t own up to the truth of their own defective palates.

Take, for instance, a certain colleague of mine who I won’t name. Just the other day Jack Mirkinson told me he not only enjoys matzah brei—a dubious combination of eggs and soaked-then-redried matzah—but that he’s “never eaten it at Passover.” This is 100% sicko behavior. It’s unbecoming. It disgusts me down to every molecule in my body.

“Oh, but Rafi, it’s just like a giant cracker!” WRONG. Crackers are crackers, and matzah is matzah. These are different things, and if you can’t get the basic concept of “things can be superficially similar but fundamentally alien” through your matzah-addled skull, than I don’t know what to tell you, bud. You’re too far gone. Hell, even if matzah was a giant cracker, you’d never in one million years think to yourself “I know, I’m gonna soak this enormous shitty saltine and then cover it in marinara and shredded cheese and call it a ‘hypnotically delicious.’” You moron, you rube. You probably enjoy cauliflower pizza crust. You probably shovel forkfuls of zoodles into your mouth. And don’t come at me with “but what about matzah ball soup!” like I haven’t already thought about it. That’s matzah meal. It’s different and delicious. I don’t make the rules.

I understand the urge to gussy up matzah into something even marginally palatable for those people who are studiously refraining from bread products during Passover. I’m not saying you shouldn’t try it with jam or cream cheese or, hell, chocolate and caramel, if only as a momentary distraction from the gritty roofing shingle you’re about to ingest. But let’s not actually pretend it’s good. Have some dignity, for chrissakes. Show some self respect. Just admit that matzah is bad by design, and make your peace with it.