A dozen metal barrels lined up in front of the Glenn Avenue fire station sent smoke billowing up in the blue spring sky as bags and pieces of bread were tossed into the flames.
For about five hours Friday morning, Baltimore-area Jewish faithful threw their old bread, half-eaten pasta and boxes of cereal into the barrels, celebrating the ancient tradition of destroying the chametz, or leavened bread, the morning before Passover.
“It?s a tradition thousands of years old,” said Barry Gertz, of Pikesville, who brought his son Jonathan, 4, and daughter Shayna, 7, to the lawn of the fire station in Baltimore City.
The fire station has allowed the ceremony there since 1982, when Bert Miller realized many Jewish faithful had difficulty carrying on the tradition in their own back yards, especially if they lived in apartments.
Miller, of Baltimore, started the event, sponsored by Star-K, a kosher certification company in Baltimore.
Since then, the ceremony has grown to about 5,000 or 6,000 people stopping by to rid themselves of leaven, Miller said.
“The Jews have been burning leaven in tens of thousands of countries over the last 3,000 years,” he said.
Jews are instructed to destroy any leavened products in their houses, and they cannot own any for the eight days of Passover.
They burn the bread, because, as Tzvi Krigman said while standing next to one of the flaming barrels, “Burning is one of the easiest ways to destroy it.”
Although it may seem much-needed food is being charred rather than donated, participants said scraps and stale bread are tossed into the flames, such as the pieces Jews traditionally hide around the house for a ceremony the night before.
Much of the unopened goods have been given away to friends and neighbors, said Morris Goldstein, of Baltimore City, who has been visiting the Glenn Avenue fire station for five or six years.
“It?s a symbolic thing,” he said.
Missing among the droves of people in front of the fire station were Baltimore City firefighters.
“After 25 years, they think we know what we?re doing,” Miller said.
