By the time you read this article, I will not have eaten bread for at least five days. You see, I am a member of a tribe of people who throw great Sunday brunches and periodically starve themselves. And if you’re a Penn student, you’re either one of us, or you’re wishing that you were so you could tell those awesome jokes without feeling like an anti-Semite. Yes, I’m talking about the Jews.

We are in the midst of Passover, which, in a nutshell, was when G-d brought the Jews out from slavery in Egypt, almost 3,000 years ago. It was quite the spectacle, and every year, we get together with our families, and have this really long and ritualized meal called a Seder, where we re-tell the story, eat a lot of Matzah and bitter herbs, and drink a lot of wine. It’s a good time, let me tell you.

But I’m not here to give you a lesson in Jewish history. Rather, I’m interested in what the implications of this holiday are for us today, as Jews, as people, and as college students.

Passover and Yom Kippur. That’s today’s secular Jew in a nutshell. Even if you are entirely unobservant throughout the entire year and fully enjoy your lobster sandwiches with pork sprinkled on top, you’ll go a whole day without eating food in the fall, and you’ll go a whole eight days without eating bread in the spring.

But why? You grew up that way, right? Your parents did it every year, and you just figure, why not? It’s a nice thing, to hold on to something from your heritage and your history. But to be perfectly honest, I don’t fully understand what it is about Passover that has such an impact on people.

See, I grew up pretty religious. My family kept everything – Passover wasn’t even a question. And when I say we don’t eat bread, I mean we don’t eat bread. Nothing leavened – that includes cereal, pastries, pasta, and anything else with flour in it. That means an entirely new set of dishes and silverware for those eight days, scrubbing down the kitchen and cupboards and closets and bathrooms, cleaning out the pockets of your jackets for crumbs, getting a new toothbrush, and doing everything you possibly can to rid yourself of the leavened menace. Spring cleaning to the max.

The only explanation we ever got for this insanity was that when the Jews were leaving Egypt, they didn’t have enough time to finish baking their bread, so it never got to rise. Hence, cardboard! It’s a nice enough story, but to think that all that work and deprivation could come from a silly little thing like not having an EZ-Bake oven seems like a bit much,  I’d say. Has anyone ever really stopped to ask themselves about that? I know I hadn’t, which is sad, really. Why follow a tradition you have no real understanding of? I’ll get back to that question in a moment. First, the explanation.

The truth is, G-d commanded the Jews to eat Matzah before they left Egypt. In fact, they had a whole Seder before they left. It wasn’t some arbitrary event that forced future generations to have to subject themselves to this sorry excuse for a food source – it was The Man Himself who told us to do so. The question remains: why, G-d, why?? I recently learned a beautiful answer. What is Matzah? It is the basic essentials of nourishment: flour and water, and nothing more. Bread, on the other hand, is about 80% air. It is pretending to be something else, something more. It puffs itself up to look nice and appealing, to taste good and to please others. Matzah does none of this. What you see is what you get, and nothing more. When you get right down to it, you get the exact same sustenance from it as you do from its leavened counterpart. On Passover, we’re supposed to take that lesson from Matzah, and get down to the basics. We think about where we came from, and what our essential characteristics and values are, as opposed to that which we pretend to be and believe.

So with that in mind, I ask you: how many people do you know who have hardly any connection to Judaism whatsoever, but who still will not touch a slice of pizza on Passover? Even more than that, I know people who go all out, with the scrubbing and the new dishes and everything, and then the second the holiday ends, they’re off to Red Lobster for dinner. I don’t get it.  I don’t mean to be accusatory or anything, I just find it amusingly ironic that people spend all this time eating Matzah, the bread of truth so to speak, without any real idea of why they’re doing it.

I asked a few friends why they keep Passover. I got a few stock responses, and actually I got a few people to really think about it for the first time. One of my close friends even told me that he’s decided to stop keeping the holiday this year for these very reasons – he doesn’t see why he should do something he himself doesn’t wholeheartedly feel, and I agree with him completely. I think it’s great that people want to do something to connect to their heritage, but when it’s done with no understanding of it, and with no belief or even real desire to keep the traditions, then what’s the point? I am a huge believer in tradition, but not when it’s only kept up to make your parents happy or to make yourself feel like you’re doing your part.

True to form, I am being a huge hypocrite here. I too am a shopper in the proverbial Judaism supermarket, basically picking and choosing which practices and observances work for me and which don’t. Sure, I keep kosher, but I don’t keep Shabbat, I don’t wear skirts all the time, and I hug boys…occasionally. I know I’m not one to talk.

I just really wonder: Of all the holidays secular Jews could keep alive, why pick the one that’s the most annoying to observe? I asked this question at the Seder on the first night. It was the perfect focus group; almost everyone at the table keeps Passover very strictly but does not keep kosher throughout the year. One response was that they like the family element. When I asked why keep all eight days even when family isn’t around, I got some blank stares, and I got the “because it’s easier to keep something for eight days than for a whole year” thing. I also asked my brother why he’s stopped keeping Passover after doing it all those years growing up, and he said because he doesn’t feel he can observe some things and not others.

After speaking to all these people, and questioning all these practices and traditions, I am left feeling like I need to play devil’s advocate for a moment. While I wonder why Passover, at the same time, it almost seems obvious to me. It’s the one that stands out. It’s the one that makes you painfully obviously Jewish, without having to deal with a year-long sacrifice. When you see someone eating Matzah while you eat your Philly cheese-steak, there’s no question he’s of the tribe.

Matzah’s our “essence” these days. It has become the ultimate fake-out: the bread that hides nothing is what so many of us hide behind. And while I would rather the traditions be kept than lost to the annals of history, I have a feeling that without actual introspection and belief in the practices you uphold, you’re bound to lose touch with them eventually anyway.

This Passover, take a lesson from the unleavened food you’re begrudgingly swallowing. Be true to who you are, and to who your people are. If you’re keeping the traditions up, figure out what they’re all about before you walk around complaining about how much you miss cereal. Basically, if you’re going to go shopping, at least be an informed consumer. Happy Passover.