Lilac Colored Glasses

I’m pretty sure I have mentioned this before, but in case you’re a new reader, I’ll say it again. I was raised Jewish (if you ask me my religion I tend to say I’m an atheistic Buddhist, sorry, can’t say I believe in a god, but I do believe very strongly in many of the ethics taught by Judaism and I do consider myself Jewish in the sense of culture and possibly even ethnicity but that’s a whole separate discussion). Until very recently I followed most holiday requirements, out of respect for my parents more than anything else. This pretty much meant fasting on Yom Kippur and not eating leavened bread products on Passover.

If you don’t know anything about Passover, you can read up on it here, but I’ll give you a brief synopsis: Passover is the celebration of the Hebrew’s exodus from Egypt. If you’ve ever seen The Ten Commandments, The Prince of Egypt, or anything where Moses sends ten plagues down upon Egypt because Pharaoh was being a turd, that’s basically what Passover commemorates. You may notice that Passover tends to fall very close to Easter. This is because The Last Supper was a Passover Seder, so the two holidays are indirectly related. When the Hebrews were finally released by Pharaoh, they were in such a hurry to flee that they did not wait for their bread to rise and the resulting product was unleavened bread that we call matzo. Imagine a very large Saltine only flatter and with no salt. Yeah, I know, what a taste sensation, right? Point is, part of the whole commemoration process is cleaning your house of leavened food products and only eating unleavened bread (this includes most grains although I’ve heard different things about corn meal, potatoes, matzo and matzo meal). Cake, cookies, bread, muffins, noodles…pretty much anything that involves yeast and/or rising dough is forbidden. Which brings us to the next bit of history, which hits a tad closer to home.

My younger brother, Scooter, was born on April 4th; I’d say about 80% of his birthdays have fallen on Passover. Passover birthdays mean no birthday cake. There are some “Passover Cakes” that can be made using matzo meal or potato flour but they fall short of what most kids typically crave in a birthday cake…you know, like taste. Every year while we were growing up, Scooter would always check the calendar, hoping that it would be a birthday friendly year, but more often than not he ended up cakeless on his birthday.

Last November, for my cousin’s third birthday, we had something very common. I don’t particularly like it, but it’s been pretty popular for several years. We had ice cream cake. You know, that block of ice cream and fudgy stuff covered in frosting? I personally don’t like the combination of frosting and ice cream, thus I never requested an ice cream cake nor do I recall ever really having one at my house. That night, however, I noticed my brother taking a sizeable piece of the ice cream cake. And suddenly, it dawned on me…

“Hey, Scoot.”

“Yeah?”

“I didn’t know you liked ice cream cake.”

“So I do, so what?”

“Heh, there’s no actual cake in an ice cream cake, right?”

“No, it’s pretty much ice cream and frosting. What’s your point?”

“Dude…you can totally eat ice cream during Passover…”

Scooter paused mid-bite and I could see 23 birthdays flash behind his eyes (about 15 of which were cakeless). He opened his mouth, hesitated, hopped to his feet, and then,

“Sonofabitch! I…could’ve…you…that whole time…MOM!”