Abstract
The matzo proved ephemeral; it was soon broken up and distributed. What I found fascinating at the factory's opening (which I attended) was an off-the-cuff remark by Israel's chief rabbi, Yona Metzger, before he blessed the plant. "Who knew," he quipped, "that the world's largest manufacturers of gefilte fish were two Moroccan Jews from Casablanca?" Manischewitz, founded in 1888 in Cincinnati, once symbolized the emergence of Eastern European Jews on American soil. Dov Behr Manischewitz, the company's founder, hailed from Memel in Lithuania and spun gold in the New World by discovering new ways to combine flour and water. The technological innovations introduced by Manischewitz and his sons revolutionized the production of matzo in America and catapulted Manischewitz's company into the world's largest producer of Passover matzo. So it is more than just a curiosity that an Eastern European Jewish firm named Manischewitz is currently headed by two Moroccan Jews from Casablanca; it is a sign that a whole new community of Jews is emerging on the American scene. While the "world's largest matzo" may have been ephemeral, the rise of Mizrahi and other immigrant Jews will change the face - and the tastes - of the 21st-century American Jewish community.