THINGS YOU NEVER KNEW YOU NEVER KNEW
THE MAXWELL HOUSE HAGGADAH
SHECHEM
SHILOH
Shiloh is situated on the road between Ramallah and
Shechem. Established and made famous after the exodus
from Egypt, Shiloh housed the Mishkan (Tabernacle) for 369
years between 1260 and 891 BCE. The Book of Samuel begins
with mention of the Mishkan of Shiloh. By then, it had become
a place of frequent pilgrimage and Torah learning, and differed from the Mishkan in the Wilderness of Sinai as it was now
a stone building, whose roof consisted of a covering of sheets.
Its semi-permanent structure symbolised its intermediary status between the wandering Mishkan of the Wilderness and
the First and Second Temples, both built of stone.
Remnants of houses found on the tel (hill) indicated that
Shiloh was a fairly large and wealthy community in the period of the Judges. The story of Chana praying for a son took
place there. She later gave birth to the prophet Samuel, who
developed under the tutelage of the High Priest Eli, the
Kohen Gadol. The Ark of the Covenant, housed in the
Mishkan, was subsequently captured during the battle with
the Philistines in 891 BCE.
At the time of the prophetic ministry of Jeremiah, over 300
years later, Shiloh had been reduced to ruins. Jeremiah used
the example of Shiloh to warn the inhabitants of Jerusalem
that the ir holy city could also fall, under Divine judgment.
The Maxwell House Haggadah owes its existence to Joseph
Jacobs, a former advertising manager for the Forverts, who
started the Joseph Jacobs Advertising agency in 1919, which
specialised in selling ads for Jewish publications. In 1923,
Jacobs convinced Maxwell House Coffee, then owned by the
Cheek Neal Coffee Co, out of Tennessee, to invest in an advertising campaign targeting Jewish consumers.
Until then, the coffee bean had been seen as a legume, a bean
not kosher for Passover. Jewish grocery stores would put away
coffee with the chametz under the incorrect assumption that
coffee beans were kitniyot, when in fact they are technically a
fruit, not a bean. To spread the word, Jacobs had an Orthodox
Lower East Side rabbi certify that coffee beans were an acceptable post-Seder treat. To drive the point home, he placed an ad
in the New York Yiddish newspaper, Forverts, announcing to all
its readers that Maxwell House Coffee was Kosher L’Pesach, or
kosher for Passover.
Nearly 10 years later, in 1932, the Maxwell House Haggadah
was born. It was given away in supermarkets with each tin of
Maxwell House Coffee, and has been printed continuously
since that time.
“Over 50 million Maxwell House Haggadahs have been published since the 1930s,” says Elie Rosenfeld, chief executive of
Joseph Jacobs Advertising in Manhattan, an agency that specialises in marketing Jewish products and which arranges for the
Maxwell House Haggadah’s publication. One million of the 58page Haggadahs are printed, and on the first night of Passover,
which this year falls on 3 April, many of the more than five million American Jews will be reading the revised Haggadah,
though many copies wind up in Israel and other countries.
Even President Obama has used the Maxwell House
Haggadah to conduct “Seders” in the White House.
MESHUGAH MATZAH FACTS THE WONDER POT
480 degrees
Celsius – the
approximate
temperature at
which machine
matzah is
baked
1 minute and
20 seconds
– the baking
time for a
machineproduced
matzah
540 degrees
Celsius – the
approximate
temperature at
which handproduced matzah is baked
15 seconds
– the baking
time for a
hand-produced
matzah
45 – the
number of
countries to
which Israel
exported
matzah in
2013
1838 – the year
Frenchman,
Isaac Singer,
invented the
first matzahdough-rolling
machine that
made mass
production
possible.
1912 – the year
Manischewitz
produced the
first square
matzahs for
mass distribution. Originally,
matzahs were
only round or
oval.
2008 – the
year competitive-eating
champion Joey
Chestnut ate 78
matzah balls in
eight minutes,
for a $1 500
prize.
8 JEWISH LIFE
ISSUE 82
The Wonder Pot is an Israeli invention for baking on top of a gas stove
rather than in an oven. It consists
of three parts: an aluminium pot, a
hooded cover perforated with venting holes, and a thick, round, slightly domed metal disc with a centre
hole that is placed between the pot
and the flame.
The Wonder Pot gained popularity during Israel’s era of national
austerity in the 1950s, when most
citizens did not own an oven; though, later, with the advent
of the microwave oven, it became viewed as somewhat archaic. However, given the fact that correctly kashering an oven
for Pesach is such an involved procedure, the Wonder Pot has
retained its popularity with the religious who do not have a
Pesach kitchen, and who use it to bake cakes, casseroles, rice,
potatoes, apples, and even meat and chicken.
TEXT: LIZ SAMUELS; PHOTOGRAPH: WIKIPEDIA.ORG
ANCIENT TOWNS OF ISRAEL
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