Sourdough, Fences, Triggers, Amendments: Reduction to Absurdity
The parallel evolution of non-gebrokt, political correctness, trigger warnings, and originalism versus textualism
Motzee Matzah*
Ex. XII:8 “And they shall eat the flesh [of the Paschal lamb] in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; with bitter herbs they shall eat it.”
Commercial yeast as we know it is a relatively recent phenomenon; however, we know that Egyptians of the Pharaonic periods had advanced command of wild and cultivated yeasts. They were masters of brewery and of baking; there was no reason a priori to believe that the Children of Israel were incapable of baking either leavened flat breads (like pita and naan) or lofty leavened breads like the sourdoughs of today — and every reason to believe that they used some sort of pre-ferment (partially-risen dough from the previous day’s bread) to leaven each day’s baking. The teachings I received were split between the belief that the Israelites chose to omit the pre-ferment in baking this bread, and the belief that it was baked before the dough had sufficient time to rise higher than a flatbread.
Ex. XII:15 “Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread; howbeit the first day ye shall put away leaven out of your houses; for whosoever eateth leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from Israel.”
What constitutes leavened bread? Is it the addition of yeast cultures (or chemical leavening agents such as baking soda and baking powder), or the potential for wild yeast to enter a mixture of flour and water, and leaven it that way, or both?
* “Motzee Matzah” is the combination of prayers said before the consumption of matzoh at the Passover seder, hamotzi (the prayer over bread) and al n’tilath matzoh (the prayer commanding us to eat unleavened bread).
A Fence Around the Torah
Rabbis have historically leaned on the side of caution. Given the harsh Biblical punishments for even the smallest of infractions, they created a corpus of additional laws and practices to made it difficult — if not impossible — for the average Israelite to accidentally or mindlessly break any of the Biblical laws. Rabbis call this “putting a fence around the Torah”. In this manner, unleavened bread has morphed
· From a flatbread made without any yeast or leavening, to
· A flatbread that had to be kneaded and baked quickly enough (and at a hot enough temperature) that it would be completely baked within eighteen minutes* of the second water hit the flour, to
· A flatbread that follows all the above requirements, but is also “docked” (perforated) to make sure every single grain of dough has been fully baked
Note that these requirements are most strictly observed in the making of hand-made shmurah matzoh, matzoh that has been “watched” from the moment of harvest (must be done several days after the most recent rainstorm/watering so the grain is perfectly dry), to the processes of threshing and milling, even before the bakers have the flour available for the under-eighteen-minute baking process.
*Eighteen minutes is the allotted time based on the Kabbalistic meaning of numbers. In Hebrew, numbers are indicated by letters of the aleph-bet (alphabet). The numerical value of the letters making up the word chai (life) is eighteen; therefore, there are eighteen minutes between life and death, twilight and sunset… and flour and leavened bread — even though it takes several days for a flour-and-water mixture to attract enough wild yeast to create de novo a sourdough starter strong enough to create a leavened bread, and hours or days for a dough to rise enough to become what we modernly think of as “bread”…
What is Non-Gebrokt and What Does It Mean?
As shown in the above section, a single “fence around the Torah” isn’t necessarily enough. There are at least two concentric fences around the commandment to avoid leaven during Passover.
In recent years, the strictest observers of the Law have added another custom: non-gebrokt (“unbroken”). The reasoning is that while an extremely small amount of flour that didn’t get baked properly (per custom, less than one part in a thousand) can be ignored (ritually nullified), once a matzoh is broken, that 1/1000 may become 1/500 — which cannot be ignored, and if (Deity forbid!) that single grain should be dampened (or even the matzoh itself), there’s a chance that it could become leavened, and the person eating it might “be cut off from Israel”. A whole bunch of behaviors has risen around this concern, ranging from only eating matzoh when wrapped in something to avoid that unleavened crumb falling somewhere it might contaminate the leaven-free environment to not eating the sort of matzoh-based foods other Passover-observing Jews might enjoy (such as matzoh balls, matzoh brei, or matzoh meal pancakes), because there’s no way to definitively prove that every single grain of matzoh, matzoh meal, or cake meal has been properly baked into something that cannot be accidentally leavened.
For those of us who are fine with the idea of “once you’ve ignored or neutralized that original thousandth part, you’re good to go”, non-gebrokt seems a bit of reductio ad absurdum, reduction to absurdity.
Political Correctness Breeds Intolerance
The “PC” movement of the 1990s was based on the idea that removing denigrating epithets from the English language would remove the systemic hatreds and intolerances of one group of people towards another. It was in some ways an extension of the “anti-sexist” language movement of the 1970s, in which many occupation names ending in “-man” or “-woman”, “-er” or “-ess”, were changed to terms that were meant to be indifferent to the gender of the person performing that job. “Policemen” and “policewomen” became “police officers”; “firemen” became “fire fighters”; “garbage men” became “sanitation workers” or “garbage collectors”. Some occupations resisted the changes, so we still have teachers, nurses, and lawyers, regardless of the genders of people in those occupations.
Political correctness went a bit further. Suddenly, the “ethnic jokes” and idiomatic phrases that were popular as late as the 1970s and 80s — based either on stereotypes such as the “(low-intellect) person of Polish descent” or the “stingy [Jew, Japanese person, or Rom]” or on derogatory epithets (e.g., “Without Papers” for people of Italian extraction) — were no longer acceptable, nor were those epithets.
This is not a bad thing in itself. Nobody likes to be called “an epithet”, or stereotyped by their name, appearance, or heritage. The problems become
· When someone doesn’t know that an idiom arises from an epithet and uses it, unintentionally denigrating an entire group of people (“I’ve been [shortchanged]”, using terms that denigrate Japanese persons and Roma);
· When someone doesn’t know that a word used casually in other situations is also a racist epithet (a “g” word used for an often-sticky or -greasy something that has fouled a surface, is also an anti-Korean epithet), and uses it;
· That replacement terms, used with the same intents of racism, ableism, and anti-ethnicism, are — or can become — equally fraught;
· When physical descriptions and nuances (descriptions of anyone who isn’t White or White-passing and able or able-passing) become disallowed under the banners of “inclusion”
It’s another reductio ad absurdum when a cashier isn’t allowed to report a person who has just walked out of the store without paying for a cartload of expensive merchandise because that person is of a different race or obvious nationality from them — or when the victim of a violent crime is similarly restricted.
Who Triggered My Warning?
One goal of the Political Correctness movement was that of replacing “offensive” language with “neutral” and “positive” language. As mentioned above, we became almost paranoid about offending anyone (except, perhaps, people with diseases society believes — despite medical evidence to the contrary — to be self-imposed). One offshoot of this is the demand of several patient and parent communities to issue “trigger warnings” as a preamble to content they might find dangerous to their physical health (e.g., flashing lights for people with epilepsy or other seizure conditions) or their mental health (e.g., descriptions or images of violence, suicidal ideation, drug abuse), or which they deem unsuitable for children and teens. Some of this is based on the history of movie ratings (G, PG, R, X/NR) and their associated television content warnings (sex, violence, “strong language”, “mature content”/“mature audiences”), but some trigger warnings are so specific as to cause the very anxieties they were meant to allay by allowing the consumer to opt out of consuming that content. (See The Argumentative Penguin, “The Results Are In: Trigger Warnings Make Life Worse”.)
More Politics: Originalism and Textualism
The United States Supreme Court has been in the news more than usual these past few years — often not because of what their decisions have been, but because of the thought processes that go into their decisions. In the United States government, it is the job of the courts to interpret the laws that the legislatures have written, and the appropriate executives have enacted. Methods of interpreting laws, and the debate surrounding their interpretation and enforcement, have been around at least since the time of the Talmud (starting around 70 BCE). While the rabbis came up with thirteen different methods of interpreting a snippet of Scripture, justices have two general methods of interpretation: originalism (trying to understand what the legislators meant) and textualism (looking at only the surface meaning of the text). Both methods are then extrapolated from the time the law was written through today, taking into account case law (lower court rulings in which that law was cited as a cause for a complaint) — sometimes called precedence — with the justices’ written opinions explaining how they arrived at the current interpretation(s).
As an example, “freedom of religion”:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
Based on the idea that all (or most) people ascribe to one or another theology, this suggests that there should be no preference towards any religious faith in how our governments spend taxpayer money, nor any compulsion for a citizen or resident to either observe or eschew a particular religion, nor to identify as a member of a subgroup of any religion. (During the period in which this was written, many countries required their inhabitants to observe the religion of their monarch. To refuse, or to be seen observing the rituals of a different religion or religious denomination, could be punished by anything from a fine to death.)
Today, we often view this question through the lens of townspeople looking to fund or display religious Christmas decorations (such as crèches) in front of their municipal buildings, or the requirement that schoolchildren recite the Pledge of Allegiance (with the phrase, “under God”). The argument against the first is that the Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and atheists of a town should not be required to spend their money (local taxes) to support Christianity, nor should public land be used to show tacit support for it; the argument against the second is that not all religions are deist (believing in one or more gods), not all religions’ deities are called “God”, and atheists should not have to swear an oath to a deity they believe does not exist.
The flip side of this argument is the one where an ordinance or regulation forbids the display of any religious or religious-seeming decorations — even on one’s private property — for fear of offending neighbors and passersby of a different (or no) religion. One might argue that this replaces freedom of religion with a de facto imposition of a State “religion” of atheism, or with a State religion of nationalism (patriotism). The debate then becomes whether the Founding Fathers — some of whom were “spiritualists” rather than adherents of a particular religious denomination — intended that all may observe their own, varying religions, in whatever manner they thought best, or whether the public display of religious belief abridged another’s ability to observe a different belief. “Freedom from religion” is, in many ways, the reductio ad absurdum of this argument.
Of course, between any two bodies there are at least three opinions, so I must add a third view of “religious freedom”. Note the exact phrase: “Congress shall make no law…” That leaves it up to the various states, counties, and smaller polities to make their own laws regarding religion and religious beliefs. (For those keeping score, this is one of the functional consequences of the Dobbs decision.)
Give Me A Second
The two spaces where absurd extremes are currently bouncing around the realm of “textualism, originalism, and States’ rights” are firearms ownership and women’s health.
The imposition of abortion bans even when the pregnancy endangers the life of the pregnant person reduces that person — usually a cisgender woman (and I will use that generalization here as a verbal shortcut) — to nothing more than a walking womb. Most people considering medical abortion don’t make that consideration lightly; meanwhile, many desired pregnancies end in miscarriage, which carries the medical designation “spontaneous abortion”. The more stringent restrictions bring the potential to prosecute a woman who very much wanted a baby, but whose fetus died before it was viable, compounding her sorrow and anguish instead of consoling her, treating her grief, and preparing her for her next steps.
The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution states that
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Popular concerns about the use of firearms (guns) in the commission of crime have our nation falling into two general camps:
· Every able-bodied citizen should own, and know how to operate, a firearm, and should be able to use its presence as a deterrent to crime; or, in the worst case, use it to defend their — and others’ — lives and property
· No person should be allowed to own, carry, or operate a firearm unless that person is a dutifully-sworn officer of the peace (aka police officer, certain court officers, etc.) or the armed forces — and then, only when on duty and in the commission of that duty
These are perhaps the extremes of the positions, but they are in many ways informative of how to disenfranchise the middle, including:
· People who hunt for sustenance, either as a sport or as a way of life;
· People who participate in various target-shooting sports (e.g. skeet and trap, pistol range, etc.);
· People who see firearms as pieces of art as well as function, and either customize or collect them;
· People who are physically capable of handling firearms, but who choose not to own, carry, or operate them
“If guns are made illegal, only criminals will have guns.”
“Never bring a knife to a gun-fight.”
Both aphorisms suggest that widespread restrictions on firearms ownership have the result of reducing law-abiding citizens to helpless victims of crime. In the event of a threat, calling the police is likely not an option: even if you have, and are in, a panic room, it will take too long for an operator to get the relevant information and get the police on-site, and — as some Medium readers of color have mentioned — the police will too often assume that all non-White (or non-White-passing) persons are equally guilty, and may gun down everyone…
And speaking of the police…
It has been said that the reason the Founding Fathers adopted the Second Amendment was less the fear of England attacking the United States* than fear of the government becoming tyrannical — in which case an armed citizenry might be necessary to return it to the democratic republic they envisioned.
*As they did in 1812, and arguably in the 1863–1865 period, when they bankrolled the Confederacy.
Neither the Letter nor the Spirit of the Law…
At the end of Passover, I ran a couple of experiments to see if it was possible to create a de novo sourdough starter from matzoh. This would tell me if gebrokt could be a potential issue between the first and last days of Passover. The first experiment used shmurah matzoh crushed to about ¼” pieces and water; the second used matzoh meal (machine matzohs, ground and crushed to the consistency of cornmeal.)
The shmurah matzoh did not ferment, but about two weeks later, it did grow green (penicillium) mold — but I might not have crushed the matzoh enough, and I think it was underhydrated. (I might give it another try, just for science.)
The matzoh meal did leaven — but it took two weeks, rather than seven days. Also, it didn’t smell like yeast (it smelled like mucilage). I fed it more matzoh meal, and it rose the same way a sourdough starter would rise if fed — but it still smelled like mucilage (with a very mild undertone of alcohol, which would be an expected yeast byproduct). I’m looking to “prove” (pun intended) that I have a matzoh meal sourdough starter by feeding some of it some all-purpose flour.
Either way, it’s not going to affect my own Passover observance.
In any case, the extremes tell us how far we can go if we don’t step back, take a deep breath, and accept some leniency, lest we turn belief, inclusion, and freedom into tyrannies of intolerance.