Growing up, Passover was about two things for me—the seder, and not being able to eat sandwiches on bread! I have such strong memories of eating matzah sandwiches in my public elementary school cafeteria, met by confusion from my classmates.
As I’ve gotten older, the nuance of “this is what I can’t eat” has become both more spiritually meaningful and easier to understand.
Spiritually
As with Shabbat, it is less about what I’m not allowed to do, but what I get to do.
Passover is an opportunity. We can lean in, make intentional choices, and—very briefly in the scheme of a year—change the way we eat. We are lucky to eat three meals a day and plenty of snacks. Eating is fundamentally one of the most important things I do all day! Other than sleeping and working, eating and cooking take up the majority of the rest of my day.
Shifting that sometimes-mindless time period into something thoughtful, purposeful, and even more Jewish is a chance to stay connected. Shifting our attention to why we’re eating differently, where we exist in that story, and how I want to teach my children about this time period heightens this time for me.
Also, I love matzah brei and matzah pizza, so I’m having a great time.
Understanding
As a kid, swapping matzah for bread was the major exchange happening in my life. But there is so much nuance about what foods we are and are not allowed to have, and in what way.
There are really four categories here:
- prohibited foods,
- foods that always need a Passover hekhsher,
- foods that never need a hekhsher for Passover, and
- foods that do not need a Passover hekhsher if purchased before Passover
There’s also kitniyot, which we’ll get into down below.
The RA Passover Guide provides a great overview of all of this. It has lists of foods to help you. You can also always reach out to your local rabbi, who can help you find the right items.
A hekhsher, if you don’t know, is the certification mark that identifies a product as having been supervised by a kashrut authority.
Let’s break those down.
Prohibited foods
These are foods made from wheat, barley, oats, spelt, or rye. These are foods that become hametz. No bread, crackers, or pasta! They’re made from these five ingredients. There are a ton of foods other that use these grains in one way or another. Even some matzah isn’t kosher for Passover for this reason!
Foods that always need a Passover hekhsher
There are a bunch of foods that need a Passover heksher because they often use hametz-like ingredients or can be processed with them:
- Baked goods in general need to, since most baked items use the five grains, but also
- candy,
- flavored teas,
- sodas, and
- even some dried fruits!
Every year, I check the RA Passover Guide to review the list because I never quite remember all of the details from year to year.
Foods that never need a hekhsher for Passover
There are a ton of things that intuitively do not seem to need a hekhsher. Fresh fruits and vegetables, eggs, whole nuts and spices, etc., seem like they never contact hametz-like ingredients.
That said, single-ingredient teas also don’t need a hekhsher for Passover, while flavored ones do. It is always good to check the RA Passover Guide if you’re not sure.
Foods that do not need a hekhsher for Passover if purchased before
In the rabbinic worldview, ratios below one-sixtieth are too small to be considered significant, and thus can be ignored. However, for Passover and ON Passover, that doesn’t apply to hametz. So there are a few things you can buy in advance that sneak in between these categories.
As the RA Passover Guide says, “This means that if you can be reasonably sure that Hameitz isn’t used in a product and if it was, it would be less than a ratio of 1:60 (batel b’shishim), you can buy the product before Pesah and eat it ON Pesah.” (Pg 16)
There’s a list of these items in the Guide, and if you’re confused, definitely ask your rabbi.
What about kitniyot?
There’s a lot to say about kitniyot in general, but in the context of allowed to eat or not, it is important to remember that kitniyot is not prohibited like hametz on Passover.
Some people eat it, and some people don’t, and it is totally up to their family and custom. There are a lot of right ways to do it. Exploring Judaism has a couple of great pieces on that subject.
What about medicine?
I know a lot of people get concerned with medicines, and the RA Passover Guide is pretty clear: “All medications that are needed for illnesses and medical conditions that involve possible life-threatening situations are permitted” (pg 19).
There’s also a great article about that here. As for other categories of medicine, you can read more in the Guide.
In the end, we can choose if the nuance about what we can and can’t eat on Passover is a burden or an opportunity. For me, the intentionality and purposefulness brings me meaning and makes mealtime a more thoughtful and spiritual experience.
