Was Benjamin Netanyahu’s handcrafted shmura matzah thrown out after he so publicly rolled it, patted it and put it in the oven this week?
That’s what several Israeli media outlets are claiming, with some speculating that the Kfar Chabad matzah bakery that hosted the prime minister’s videotaped baking spree trashed his unleavened bread because is not Orthodox.
Not true, say Chabad officials. A New York-based spokesman for Chabad told JTA that not only were Netanyahu’s matzahs not disposed of, but that they are perfectly kosher and are in a box bound for some lucky person’s seder table. (They’re unmarked, so don’t bother searching for it so you can auction it on eBay.) “One of the guys at the bakery told me, ‘I’d be happy to bring the matzah he baked into my home for Pesach,’” the spokesman, who did not want his name used, said.
The reason for the matzah misinformation?
According to Haaretz, one non-Chabad haredi Orthodox media outlet, Kikar Shabbat, wrote that “matzo is supposed to be made by people who follow the way of Torah.” That site, in writing about Netanyahu’s matzah factory visit, referred to him as “the architect of criminal sanctions,” a reference to his support for drafting haredi Orthodox Jews into the Israel Defense Forces.
Adding to the confusion is that according to the Chabad spokesman, some other matzahs from the batch made during Netanyahu’s visit did end up in the garbage can because, what with large number of journalists and photographers crowding around, not all the matzahs met the shmura matzah standard, which requires “that you could account for everything it came into contact with, from harvest to baking.”
That’s the way the matzah crumbles.
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