How Much Affliction?

Matzo is the "bread of affliction" (Devarim 16:3), also referred to as the "poor bread," and bread of poverty or oppression. But just how much affliction is enough?

The observance of Pesach (Passover) provides for us a different sort of bondage. Those of you who observe Pesach know what I'm talking about. Shouldn't every box of matzo come with a free jar of Metamucil? Or a Fleet enema?

For some of us, it's annoying and potentially embarrassing. For others, such as those coping with IBS, it can cross the line into a health issue. One physician claims it's life-threatening.

So how much affliction is too much? At what point does it cross that line?

There are things one can do to try to offset the symptoms:

• eat high-fiber Pesach-friendly fruits and vegetables such as raspberries (8g fiber/cup), pears (5.1g fiber/med pear), artichokes (10.3g fiber/med artichoke), and broccoli (5.1g fiber/cup) - although brocoli has its own digestive issues. According to the Mayo Clinic, from which these numbers come, "Recommended fiber amounts for women is 21 to 25 grams a day and for men is 30 to 38 grams a day."
  
• drink lots of water
• exercise
• try prune or mulberry juice
• when the symptoms are too severe to treat with food, water, or exercise, try a warm bath or heating pad

Additional fiber content information is available on this fiber chart.

We were meant to understand what it's like to go without luxury foods (like bread) for eight days. We were meant to see ourselves as if we're also leaving Egypt. We were not meant to understand through matzo what it feels like to be disemboweled (IMHO).

Only three more days to go. Meanwhile, those raspberries are looking really good.

Tzedek Hechsher Slammed by Orthodox

"As rabbis of Conservative Judaism begin work on a new, ethically motivated food certification, they are coming under attack from a number of Orthodox kosher authorities."

This from the most recent edition of The Forward, in an article called "Orthodox Slam Effort To Monitor Conditions at Kosher Factories" by Nathaniel Popper.

If you've been following the issue, serious concerns about the treatment of workers in the kosher food processing plant in Postville, IA led the Conservative movement, represented by a task force of rabbis with personal experience at the AgriProcessor plant, to create a supplementary hechsher to attest to the fact that not only were animals treated according to strict halacha in how they were raised and slaughtered, but also that those who work in the plant doing the slaughtering weren't inhumanely treated either.

"Lederman and his committee have been adamant that any new certification would be a supplement, not a replacement, for current kosher certification that looks solely at the process of food preparation. But this argument appears to hold little sway with Orthodox critics." (emphasis mine)

Condemnation of the Conservative movement's insistence that we are morally responsible not only for animal rights but also human rights in the production of the very food we are required by Jewish law to eat (if we eat meat) appeared in both the recent issue of the Jewish Press and also Kosher Today, the industry's trade publication.

The rabbinic administrator for Central Rabbinical Congress (Hisachdus Horabbonim), which is leading the opposition, has told kosher companies not to even let Conservative rabbis into their plants.

The Orthodox Union, the largest kosher supervision organization, has not taken sides, but indicated human or worker's rights issues should be left to the government, not the rabbinate.

Some Orthodox believe this entire issue will serve only to drive a wedge between Orthodox and Conservative Jews, far more than even the recent controversial decision regarding openly gay and lesbian rabbis.

You can read the full article here:

http://www.forward.com/articles/orthodox-slam-effort-to-monitor-conditions-at-kosh/