By Rabbi Rachel Esserman

During Passover last year, a friend said she couldn’t wait for the holiday to be over so she could stop eating matzah and get it out of her house. That struck me as odd, so I asked her, “You only have matzah in the house on Passover?” She said yes and thought it was odd that anyone would eat matzah at any time other than Passover. I’m not sure how many people agree with her, but I felt compelled to note that my family has always had matzah in the house all year round. 
While we never made holiday dishes like matzah brei any other time than Passover, matzah (at least, whole wheat matzah) could be found in our cupboard all year long. Since we rarely had dessert in the house (my mom didn’t bake often and I’ve never been interested in baking), for dessert, my father would get a piece of matzah and eat it with butter and jam. I like to break off part of a sheet for a small snack when I need a carbohydrate and want something without salt or sugar. It is correct: I often eat my matzah plain. 
I couldn’t resist seeing whether eating matzah throughout the year was unusual or not, so I did what almost anyone interested in trivia does: I asked Google. Google’s AI noted that some people do eat it matzah all year round and noted that “matzah is a versatile food that can be eaten in many ways.” That’s true during Passover, but I take it straight the rest of the year. 
The City Journal of New York City (www.city-journal.org/article/why-we-dont-eat-matzah-all-year-long) feels very differently: It noted that matzah is supposed to be the “bread of affliction” (Deuteronomy 16:3), so eating it is not supposed to be a pleasant experience. It also notes that “we Jews eat this unleavened bread during the ritual and throughout the ensuing week to remember ancestral slavery. Then we stop.” Hmm, well, not everyone, but that is an interesting idea to consider. 
I also found several forums that debated the issue. One quoted from the Four Questions, which says, “On all other nights we eat leavened or unleavened bread. Why on this night do we only eat unleavened bread?” That makes it sound as if people were eating matzah throughout the year, meaning it is not uncommon. Another noted a halachic issue: in order for us to appreciate the taste of matzah at the seder, some suggest that we don’t eat matzah the month before the seder. Others say two weeks before the seder, while even others say only the day of the seder. I once attended a women’s seder that used matzah crackers because the women wanted to save the taste of the traditional matzah for the first night of Passover.
The bottom line is that, if you like matzah, you might keep a box in your cupboard all year long. I wrote this article the last week of February, just after I used the last of my box of whole wheat matzah. I was unhappy to discover that, while my local grocery store had four other types of matzah, it didn’t have whole wheat. So, for the first time in decades, my house does not have any matzah in it. I can live without it (that means eating brown rice cakes or some other carbohydrate when I need one), but I’m hoping it won’t be a permanent situation. I feel more secure when I have that box of matzah sitting in my cupboard.