World's Fastest Matzah Eating
Jeremy Moses of MyJewishLearning just took it upon himself to break the world record for matzah eating. (Disclaimer: before he tried, there was no world record for matzah eating.)
Every year at seder, we’re supposed to eat the entire 2/3 of a piece of matzah (okay, that’s if you’re eating shmura matzah — 1 entire sheet, if you go by the machine-made *ahem* cheating *ahem* kind) in one action, without swallowing. Add that to the fact that you’re not supposed to have eaten matzah at all in the past 30 days…Well, if you can get it down in one gulp, you’re kind of a hero.
(Jeremy also wants me to add that, when he was practicing, he did it much faster than he did on the video. So there.)
Can anyone break it?
re: shiurim, i really have a problem with the way “k’beitzah” and “k’zayit” have become so fundamentally translated to mean “2/3 of shmurah matzah” or “1 whole sheet of regular.” this transference to a mass-based measure only happened after the hazon ish.
i really think that the measurements of “like an olive” and “like an egg” refer to size more than mass, which makes way more sense if you look at the whole range of rabbinic literature that uses such demarcations. thus, a bite or a big bite are more operative measurements and far less obtrusive / more enjoyable.
Shmura Matza has nothing to do with whether it’s made by hand or by machine. You can have hand made non-shmura and machine made shmura. A kezayit is reckoned by even the nuttiest rabbis as being 1/2 of the machine matza or 1/3 of the regular one. You’re supposed to eat *two* zeitim on pesach (one for motzi, one for matza), making the whole matza the recommended amount in most shabbat hagadol sermons.
RE: the original sizes, I wish it were true but it’s not: they’re measurements of *volume*.
“you’re not supposed to have eaten matzah at all in the past 30 days”
Not true!! That’s a humra. The only real time to abstain is Erev Pesah (i.e. the night before). Exceptions are made if Yom Tov falls on Motzaei Shabbat – THEN you’re allowed to eat egg matzah.
Think about it – it’s just like blowing the Shofar on Elul, in preparation for RH. No harm done.
A real humra would be if we defined “matzah” as “not chameitz” (which seems to be the operative meaning in “Halailah hazeh kulo matzah”), and then insisted that you can’t eat anything during the 30 days before Pesach unless it’s from one of the 5 grains and has come into contact with water.
@B.B.: Like a gabillion other things in Judaism, depends who you ask! A Sephardic posek I asked says you should *only* eat egg matzah in the situation you gave. An Ashkenazic posek I asked says you definitely *shouldn’t,* because some people have to eat egg matzah on Passover, so you don’t want to de-matzah-fy it for them.
I think BZ has the real solution: We should just starve ourselves for 30 days. Then, over the next 8 days, everything will taste good, no matter what it is 🙂
Jeremy wouldn’t last a minute at my Rabbi’s seder table. Two friggin minutes for a single machined matzah?!