The Matzo Box
I have several boxes of matzos sitting on my floor in my apartment. One day I went to visit my parents, who live in the Bronx. My parents tend to buy things in bulk and store them in the dining room. Anyway, I come home and I see what appeared to be about a hundred boxes of matzos in the dining room. That surprised me because I didn’t know my parents liked matzos (or even knew what they were). My mother explained that the local Pathmark was giving them away for free. So she took as much as she could. My mother thrives on bargains; free is even better. When I left, she urged me to take some.
So let’s analyze what these Hebrew words on this box is saying.
The word with the funny-looking letters in red is written in script. Written Hebrew comes in two varieties, block format, which is what we have been dealing with until now, and script. We shall leave that one aside for now.
Below that, we see a four letter word: מצות
mem - tsadi - vav - tav
mem maps to “m”
tsadi maps to “ts” or “tz”
vav is either a vowel helper or maps to a “v”
tav maps to “t”
Hence, m - ts - v? - t. Since this happens to be a box of matzos, it is fairly certain that this word is the Hebrew for matzos. Makes sense. If that is the case, then the vav is likely a vowel helper, rather than a consonant “v”, since it doesn’t make any sense otherwise. Since there is a long “o” sound in “matzos” between the tsadi and the tav, it must be a vowel helper with the digesh on the top (for the “o” sound).
Now for the two word phrase underneath that. It’s a bit blurry, small. and hard to make out in the picture, but it is:
כשר לפםח
The first word is kaf - shin/sin - resh
kaf maps to “ch” (if there is no digesh) or “k” (if the digesh is present inside the kaf)
shin/sin maps to “sh” or “s” (depending on the position of the digesh)
resh maps to “r”
There are 2 * 2 * 1 = 4 different possibilities of what this word could be.
K SH R
CH SH R
K S R
CH S R
They are seem to point to the well-known kosher. Hence, the kaf is a “k”, with a digesh, and the shin/sin is a shin.
Now the other word is lamed - pey/fey - final mem - chet
lamed maps to “l”
pey/fey maps to “p” (digesh present) or “f” (digesh not present)
final mem maps to “m”
chet maps to “ch”
Now this word has me totally mystified. That is because of the final mem and its position within the word. During the class, we were taught that certain letters in the Hebrew alphabet have final forms. They are called final forms because they appear at the end of the word. But here, obviously, the final mem does not appear at the end of this word, but rather second to last. Well, I find this rather strange and confusing. I considered the possibility that it might be a samech (ס) instead of the final mem (ם), since they do closely resemble each other. But looking at the picture, it has to be the final mem because the letter does not have a rounded bottom, like the samech, but is flat and square.
But anyway,
L P M CH
L F M CH
I have no idea what this word is. It’s probably a reference to passover. Why do I think that? Well because on the other side of this box, I see this:
I
I will have to keep that strange word in mind for future inquiry.
The first time I have ever had matzos was when I was in Mrs Gerwirtz’s history class during my junior year at the Bronx High School of Science. She brought in matzos and butter for the whole class and we ate it during class. It was cool. I must admit that I had heard of the Israelites and the unleavened bread as well as the accompanying story, so matzos was not an unfamiliar term to me at the time, but it was my first time seeing it and eating it. The experience was rather anti-climactic. I’d admit the stuff does taste like cardboard when eating it raw. Someone told me the Jews have devised all kinds of ways to make it taste better. Personally, I have one also. I like to eat my matzos with sardines on them. Now I know some of you might be thinking “ohh, nasty”. But it’s quite good. Try it. I got this idea from the movie “The Burbs” with Tom Hanks. There is a scene where the Tom Hanks character is offered some pretzels with sardines. He eats it with a grim look on his face, but as he chews, his face changes as if to suggest “hey, not bad”.
Yummy.
