I noticed something today that has probably been developing quietly over the past few years and it finally reached the critical point where it became impossible for me to ignore. Here's my epiphany: The longer I live in Israel, the closer to Pesach I begin my holiday preparation and shopping. If things continue at this rate, in the next few years I will probably be getting ready to think about the holiday the week after it ends.
In that event, the upside is that I will really get some good deals on matzah, potato starch, horrible ketchup and cake mixes. And the even better news is that thanks to the disproportionate chemical content in those items, they have a shelf life of at least 10 years. Probably closer to 50, but who's checking?
When I lived in Toronto Pesach food arrived in the grocery stores the day after Purim. And like everyone else in my neighbourhood, I would hurry out and buy everything I could the next day. It was random hoarding without any rational thought. You just grabbed everything you could because once it was gone there wouldn't be another shipment until the following year. I had bags and bags of dry goods lined up on my basement floor just waiting for the big moment when they were moved to the newly cleaned, Pesach-ready kitchen. And as I mentioned above, most of the food stuffs had a ridiculously long shelf life so if you didn't use your Manischewitz Pesach Pizza Mix that year, you could just stick it back in the cupboard with your unused Pesach gelatin and left over gallons of matzah meal until the following year. I guess you could call that a win-win.
The first year we lived in Israel I continued my Pesach preparation based on the same logic that had served me well for the previous 10 years. I didn't realize how unnecessary it was until part way though the holiday I noticed that all the stores were still chock full of Pesach products. At the time I didn't know that it was actually illegal to sell non-Pesach products during the holiday. If you ran out of Pesach milk you simply scooted to absolutely any corner store or market to get another carton. The same was true for everything -- with the possible exception of eggs and maybe some mayonnaise. I guess the Pesach chickens have a production limit. Since this is Israel, they are probably unionized.
So here I am 12 years into my Aliyah and it is a week and a half before Pesach and I am just beginning to get my shopping act together. As I see it now, I need enough food to get through the first 36 hours of the holiday. After that I can do what every other Israeli does -- pick up what you need, as you need it. And if that fails then there is a great Plan B -- restaurants. The list of kosher restaurants that are open on Pesach is huge. If you don't want to cook, then don't cook. If you want kosher l'Pesach pizza, then you can have it and it will taste a thousand times better than those crazy pre-packaged mixes that I used to break my neck to acquire.
The funny thing is that my family has always eaten by a wing and a prayer for Pesach. Small town Canada gets a trickle of Pesach products before the holiday, usually followed by a larger trickle a week after the holiday ends. There is no logic to what arrives -- one year it is cheese and chicken and the next year it might be cereal and butter. You often end up buying things a year in advance because they may not be there in time for the holiday next year. But you just make-do for eight days. Maybe I am just heading back to where I started.
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