Man Can’t Fathom How Ancestors Survived Without Kosher-For-Passover Breakfast Cereal

“What did they even eat?”

Great Neck, March 21 – A resident of this town on Long Island’s north shore voiced bewilderment today upon discovering that the kosher-for-Passover versions of popular breakfast cereals were unavailable in ancient Israel, medieval Europe, eighteenth-century Persia, or even Manhattan’s Lower East Side until the last decade.

Mehrdad Ebrani, a 42-year-old father of three, admitted his amazement this afternoon that his ancient ancestors, and many more recent ancestors, had no access to kosher-for-Passover versions of cocoa puffs, frosted flakes, Rice Krispies, and other staples of the breakfast table.

“So apparently these Passover versions of cereal weren’t around when my grandparents were children,” observed Ebrani on Twitter, attaching a photo of the kosher-for-Passover breakfast cereal aisle at the supermarket. “What did they even eat?”

Ebrani’s followers then engaged in a lively speculation about the breakfast menu in ancestral Iraq, Persia, Morocco, Poland, and other places where Jews lived in large numbers during the millennia following the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE. Several expressed similar surprise that no kosher-for-Passover imitation-Cheerios, even the horrible version they knew in their 1980’s youth, was available to the Jews of, for example, medieval North Africa, Kurdistan, or the Rhine Valley of present-day France and Germany.

“What the heck did they EAT?” wondered Daniel Koren, who attended high school with Mr. Ebrani.

One participant in the discussion recalled his deprived youth, when her mother prepared a product called “Matzo Cereal,” consisting of ground up matza mixed with boiling water and some salt or sugar, to produce a sort of porridge. “They might even still sell the stuff,” she added. Others who recalled the product insisted it tasted better when one added cold milk instead of hot water, as well as cinnamon. “It was several steps above cement, culinarily, and probably about as nutritious,” remembered another user. “Maybe that’s what the Jews of Saadia Gaon’s community had for breakfast. I bet they even had the same orange-and-green cardboard box with the metal ‘spout’ that I remember growing up. I guess, theoretically, they could have crushed the matza themselves, but it would have to be the hard, Ashkenazi matza, not the pita-like stuff we Mizrahim eat. I wonder who imported it to Persia then? I mean, my family’s been in import-export for years, so it could have been one of us.”

The online conversation then departed from Passover-related matters and proceeded to debate what Netflix programs were most likely popular among the Jews of thirteenth-century Turkey.

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