Alsace Matzot

Alsace Matsot (r) made in the town of Wasselonne

We spent last weekend, from Friday, March 30 until Sunday, April 1, in Alsace, where French citizens speak French and a dialect similar to Swiss-Deutsch, where the food has a German influence, and where, once-upon-a-time, Jews resided in the cities and villages until the Holocaust.

We toured Colmar, Strasbourg, and Ribeauville, drove through villages and vineyards (Alsace produces mostly white wines: Sylvaner and Reisling the best known), and wondered how is it that in France people still live in houses that were built in the 14^th century.  On Sunday, before heading back to Ferney-Voltaire, we went to a kosher grocery in Strasbourg, which has a large (and religious) Jewish population.  We bought all kinds of kosher for Pesach food and wine that doesn’t exist at all in Ferney, and in Geneva the same things (if they have them) are twice the price.

The big box of matzoh made in Wasselone, a village we drove to but didn’t know they had a matzoh factory, towers over Manischewitz matzos.

One piece of Wasselone matzoh

And the size and shape of the Alsace matzoh is different from anything I’ve had in the U.S. or Israel – it’s not only much larger, but each piece can be split in the middle.  Manischewitz here is the midget matzoh.

Alsace matzoh with a midget Manischewitz one

Have a Happy and Healthy Pesach.