• Latest
  • Trending
  • All
  • News
  • Lifestyle

After millennia, Jewish Passover is still a living feast

1st April 2021
There's been a major breakthrough with South African citrus containers that have been contained at European ports. Photo: Supplied/Food For Mzansi

Relief! Govt convinces EU to save SA citrus

11th August 2022
Willem Booise (left) is a trustee and has won the industry’s Specialist Agricultural Worker of the Year award in 2018. Photo: Supplied/Hortgro

Fruit farm shows there’s power in transformation

11th August 2022
ADVERTISEMENT
Many people love avocados, but did you know that the introduction of just one of these fruits per day can improve the overall quality of your diet? Photo: Pixabay

An avocado a day can keep the doctor away

10th August 2022
Davidzo Chizhengeni, animal scientist, founder of KvD livestock, Ika Cronje, farmer and participant in the Corteva Women Agripreneur 2022 programme, Vuyokazi Makapela, a Director at Afrivet, and permaculture farmer, Stephanie Mullins. Photo: Supplied/Food For Mzansi

Podcast: Prevent rabies with vaccination

10th August 2022
Control and prevent downy mildew on crops

Control and prevent downy mildew on crops

11th August 2022
The value of South Africa’s informal farming sector is understated, experts say, and many farmers say that they prefer trading to this segment of the economy. Photo: Supplied/Food For Mzansi

New farmer? Informal markets ‘the way to go’

10th August 2022
Gauteng police recovered and confiscated sheep and goats in Sedibeng this week. Photo: Supplied/SAPS

ICYMI: Police recover stolen livestock

10th August 2022
Ecological farming the answer to food insecurity

Ecological farming the answer to food insecurity

9th August 2022
Setting up a regenerative smallholding

Setting up a regenerative smallholding

9th August 2022
Determination drives this #SoilSista to succeed

Determination drives this #SoilSista to succeed

9th August 2022
The women who dared to start farming in Mzansi when few others would. Photo: Food For Mzansi

She bosses: ‘We see farming changing for good’

9th August 2022
Refiloe Molefe has vowed to build a new urban farm after the City of Johannesburg bulldozed the site she built in Bertrams. Photo: Supplied/GroundUp

ICYMI: Mama Fifi determined to rise again

9th August 2022
  • Home
  • News
  • Changemakers
  • Lifestyle
  • Farmer’s Inside Track
  • Food for Thought
11 GLOBAL MEDIA AWARDS
Thursday, August 11, 2022
Food For Mzansi
  • Home
  • News
  • Changemakers
    • All
    • AgriCareers
    • Entrepreneurs
    • Farmers
    • Groundbreakers
    • Innovators
    • Inspiration
    • It Takes a Village
    • Mentors
    • Movers and Shakers
    • Partnerships
    Agripreneur 101: Creating a beauty brand

    Agripreneur 101: Creating a beauty brand

    Claire and Martin Joubert have sacrificed and struggled to become top breeders of Ankole cattle in South Africa. But giving up was never an option, because they wanted to offer only the very best Ankole genetics in the country. Photo: Supplied/Food For Mzansi

    Farming couple lives and breathes Ankole cattle

    Tackling climate change, one tree at a time

    Agricareers: Veterinary science not for the timid

    Agricareers: Veterinary science not for the timid

    Once struggling farm now a family heirloom

    Optimal yields now at farmers’ finger tips

    Some of the children with the ECD practitioner Yolanda Shabalala. Zero2Five Trust promotes holistic Early Childhood Development in formerly disadvantaged areas by improving learners’ health and education outcomes with nutrition and education programmes. Photo: Supplied/Zero2Five Trust

    Zero2Five: Giving hope to KZN flood victims

    Agripreneur 101: Kupisa Sauce is going places

    Agripreneur 101: Kupisa Sauce is going places

    Ncumisa Mkabile, is a farmer, community activist that has won numerous awards for her work in agriculture. Photo: Supplied/Food For Mzansi

    Farmer, influencer, go-getter – Ncumisa’s all that

  • Lifestyle
  • Farmer’s Inside Track
  • Food for Thought
No Result
View All Result
Food For Mzansi

After millennia, Jewish Passover is still a living feast

by Noluthando Ngcakani
1st April 2021
in Cookbook, Mzansi Flavour
Reading Time: 6 mins read
A A

As Jewish people across the globe celebrate Passover, The Kosher Butcher's Wife, Sharon Lurie shares her fondest memories of the annual festival and a few secrets to master the art of Jewish cuisine. Photo: Supplied/ Food For Mzansi

Celebrating Passover, millions of observing Jewish people have gone to great lengths to put out their mouth-watering spreads on the Seder table during the eight-day festival.

Jewish Passover, an annual festival of the faith, commemorates Moses leading thousands of Jewish people out of Egypt to the “promised land” of Canaan, following years of slavery.

Recipe: Make Scotch fillet and Pesachdikke cake

Pesach
The Kosher Butcher’s Wife, Sharon Lurie has penned three cookbooks, celebrating, Jewish South African cuisine. Photo: Instagram

This year the Jewish festival of Passover, or Pesach as it is known in Hebrew, started on the evening of 27 March and is set to end at sunset on 4 April. The last day of Passover celebrates the deliverance of Jewish people from slavery in Egypt and is marked with a feast.

ADVERTISEMENT

Jewish South African culinary queen and renowned cookbook author Sharon Lurie tells Food For Mzansi that every year Jewish families celebrate the first two nights of the festival by sitting around the Seder table, eating foods that symbolise the plight of their ancestors.

This includes Matzah or Matzo which represents unleavened bread the Jewish people took with them as they embarked on a 40-year journey through the desert. 

“We start celebrating Pesach with the Seder meal where Matzo makes its debut and our own home-grown vintage wine takes centre stage,” says Lurie.

‘Pesach is anything but eight days. It is an intense five weeks of hard labour, scrubbing and cleaning like an obsessive maniac!’

“Year after year we come together at the Seder table where we tell the story of our Exodus from Egypt, and lively songs and beautiful thoughts are shared.

“Times such as these, in which we connect to our past, keep us united so that we may continue to celebrate from generation to generation.”

The calm before, after and during the storm

When Lurie married husband Ian, a fourth-generation Johannesburg-based kosher butcher, she embarked on a mission to prove meats from the forequarter of the animal do not always have to be tough, dry, or boring.

Her mission inspired a series of books, with her first, Cooking with the Kosher Butcher’s Wife in 2006, becoming a go-to guide for Jewish South African cooking.

Seder means “order”, which Lurie adds is ironic that on this particular night of freedom, “We still have to follow an ordered, 15-step Seder! Thank God it has an order, otherwise we would still be arguing at the Red Sea,” she quips.

While Pesach is celebrated as an eight-day festival, Lurie has a different perspective.

ADVERTISEMENT
https://www.instagram.com/p/B2yqxasnWJ6/

“Pesach is anything but eight days. It is an intense five weeks of hard labour, scrubbing and cleaning like an obsessive maniac! When I start scrubbing those curtains and carpets, believe me I am one with the matriarchs. I might also have worked at the Pharoah’s Palace!”

Lurie does admit that there is a sense of peace that follows the chaos. “When I sit at the Seder table, I breathe a sigh of relief, because mind, body and home have come out of a spiritual cleansing like no other and I am ready to face the year with a certain amount of positivity; wiping a slate clean.”

Lurie likens childhood Seders to a surgical scrub that would unfold every year. Some of her warmest childhood memories she says were borne out of strict preparations for Pesach.

“Every pot, pan and teaspoon used during the year had been packed away in cupboards and sealed, not even Houdini’s plates could attempt to escape when you bring down Pesach kitchenware.

“Up would go the ladder and down from the cupboards would come the crockery and cutlery, unpacked to the beat of a military drum. All this just for eight days of the year. And the cooking hadn’t even begun…

“No wonder we called it, ‘Meshugas (crazy) impossible.’

“The observation of these meticulous laws and customs which have been observed for thousands of years is still happening in our homes today and hopefully will continue in our children and grandchildren’s lives too.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/BzVuFDMHFXq/

Recipe: Make Scotch fillet and Pesachdikke cake

So, what is on the Seder plate?

Fundamental to the Seder table is the Seder plate, which has on it the following items:

  • Zeroah, a lamb’s shank bone symbolises the ancient Passover sacrifice.
  • Beitzah, a roasted egg symbolising the temple sacrifice and the continuing cycle of life.
  • Haroset, a paste of fruit and nuts symbolising the mortar used to build the pyramid of the pharaohs.
  • Mar’or, a bitter herb (like horseradish) to represent the bitterness of slavery.
  • Karpas, a green vegetable (usually parsley) representing spring.
  • A bowl of salt water to dip the karpas, symbolising the slaves’ tears.
  • Matzah/Matzo or unleavened bread which is symbolic of the haste in flight of slaves from Egypt.
The Passover Seder plate is a special plate containing symbolic foods eaten or displayed at the Passover Seder. Photo: Wikipedia

Tags: Jewish cuisineKosher Butcher’s WifeMatzahPassoverPesachSederSharon Lurie
Previous Post

Recipe: Make Scotch fillet and Pesachdikke cake

Next Post

New farmers: Start off small and gradually grow

Noluthando Ngcakani

Noluthando Ngcakani

With roots in the Northern Cape, this Kimberley Diamond has had a passion for telling human interest stories since she could speak her first words. A foodie by heart, she began her journalistic career as an intern at the SABC where she discovered her love for telling agricultural, community and nature related stories. Not a stranger to a challenge Ngcakani will go above and beyond to tell your truth.

Related Posts

passover

Recipe: Make Scotch fillet and Pesachdikke cake

by Noluthando Ngcakani
1st April 2021
0

The last days of the Jewish festival of Passover are coming up. Cookbook author and Johannesburg kosher foodie Sharon Lurie...

Next Post
new farmers production plan

New farmers: Start off small and gradually grow

Davidzo Chizhengeni, animal scientist, founder of KvD livestock, Ika Cronje, farmer and participant in the Corteva Women Agripreneur 2022 programme, Vuyokazi Makapela, a Director at Afrivet, and permaculture farmer, Stephanie Mullins. Photo: Supplied/Food For Mzansi
Farmer's Inside Track

Podcast: Prevent rabies with vaccination

by Vateka Halile
10th August 2022
0

Rabies regularly occurs in wildlife, but it can easily spill over to domestic animals in urban areas, says an Afrivet...

Read more
Control and prevent downy mildew on crops

Control and prevent downy mildew on crops

11th August 2022
The value of South Africa’s informal farming sector is understated, experts say, and many farmers say that they prefer trading to this segment of the economy. Photo: Supplied/Food For Mzansi

New farmer? Informal markets ‘the way to go’

10th August 2022
Gauteng police recovered and confiscated sheep and goats in Sedibeng this week. Photo: Supplied/SAPS

ICYMI: Police recover stolen livestock

10th August 2022
Ecological farming the answer to food insecurity

Ecological farming the answer to food insecurity

9th August 2022

Control and prevent downy mildew on crops

She bosses: ‘We see farming changing for good’

Farming couple lives and breathes Ankole cattle

Podcast: Prevent rabies with vaccination

Fuel rebates should expand to other businesses

An avocado a day can keep the doctor away

THE NEW FACE OF SOUTH AFRICAN AGRICULTURE

With 12 global awards in the first three years of its existence, Food For Mzansi is much more than an agriculture publication. It is a movement, unashamedly saluting the unsung heroes of South African agriculture. We believe in the power of agriculture to promote nation building and social cohesion by telling stories that are often overlooked by broader society.

Relief! Govt convinces EU to save SA citrus

Fruit farm shows there’s power in transformation

An avocado a day can keep the doctor away

Podcast: Prevent rabies with vaccination

Control and prevent downy mildew on crops

New farmer? Informal markets ‘the way to go’

  • Our Story
  • Contact Us
  • Cookie Policy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Copyright

Contact us
Office: +27 21 879 1824
News: info@foodformzansi.co.za
Advertising: sales@foodformzansi.co.za

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
  • Changemakers
  • Lifestyle
  • Farmer’s Inside Track
  • Food for Thought

Copyright © 2021 Food for Mzansi

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.