[Avodah] The Acharonim and Soft Matza

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 03:45:17AM +1100, Meir Rabi wrote:
: Why not be less startled and re-evaluate your assertion that soft Matza
: was almost certainly out of use amongst Ashkenasim for decades before
: they wrote their Halachot. Perhaps, as is suggested by their expression,
: soft Matza was still at least a fresh memory if not an actual fact amongst
: certain groups and it is these that the Poskim address their comments.

I have met too many people from the Lithuania in which the AhS and
MB lived. R' Yechiel Michl Epstein was niftar in 1908, RYMK, in 1933.

If the people I met remembered soft matzos at their seder table,
they never mentioned it. For that matter, that generation's children
and grandchildren are the ones who think that crispy matzah was what
Ashkenazim "always" did.

/Some/ rumor would have persisted.

Other data points... The matzah machine was invented by Isaac Singer in
1838, and in 1888 Dov Behr (who later took the surname Manischewitz),
mass produced machine matzos. In the machloqes that ensued, I do not
recall anyone expressing a problem with their crispiness. So it would seem
crispiness was already the norm by 1888.

And the Jewish Encylopedia (1901-1906)
<http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=305&letter=M>:
    The thickness of the mazzah must not exceed the size of a closed
    fist, four fingers or four inches, which was the thickness of the
    show bread. A later custom was to make mazzah one finger thick
    ("Bet Hillel," Yoreh De'ah, No. 96). In modern times the mazzah is
    much thinner, varying from four to five mazzot to the inch, and is
    made in round form about twelve inches in diameter.

Unless you think they were crepes... Notice also (if you pull up the
article) by 1906, no one in England thought about discussing the subject
of soft vs crispy. I'm convinced it was 50 years in the past by then.

My guess is that the reidel (Eng: docker, the roller with the pins that
make holes) probably enabled the shift.

But again my primary reason is that among the people who think Ashk
matzah /has/ to be crispy are people too close in time to the AhS and
MB to believe so much was forgotten so quickly.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "As long as the candle is still burning,
micha at aishdas.org        it is still possible to accomplish and to
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Fax: (270) 514-1507          - Anonymous shoemaker to R' Yisrael Salanter