The Eternal spoke to Moses:
(רש"י.) “Tell the Children of Israel that the manna will last throughout the forty years of their wandering in the wilderness; therefore declare the following law: As soon as you enter the land whither I will bring you, even before you take full possession of it,
(רש"י.) when there will be no more manna, so that when you eat of the bread of the land, you must contribute a portion from it in the Name of the Eternal.
(רש"י.) When you mix the water with the flour containing your present portion of three quarts of manna per person you shall make the hallah contribution. Even as you are obligated to contribute an offering of grain from the threshing flour of the annual harvest, so shall it be done from the bread of your home. Of the first of your dough you will give to the kohen as gifts for his service to the Eternal. But during those times when the kohen will not serve in the Sanctuary you shall throw the piece of halhh into the fire, in order that this law may never be forgotten throughout your generations.
If you are led astray to idol worship which is comparable to breaking all the commandments of the Torah...if this decision to worship idols was made by the High Court of the community in error and it was followed by the entire community, each of the tribes of the community will then offer one young bullock for a burnt-offering, to be acceptable to the Eternal, with its cereal offering and its wine-offering, according to their prescription; also one he-goat for a sin-offering.(א"ע, רשב"ם.)
הַאֵינְךָ֣ רֹאֶ֔ה מָ֛ה הֵ֥מָּה עֹשִׂ֖ים בְּעָרֵ֣י יְהוּדָ֑ה וּבְחֻצ֖וֹת יְרֽוּשָׁלָֽ͏ִם׃ הַבָּנִ֞ים מְלַקְּטִ֣ים עֵצִ֗ים וְהָאָבוֹת֙ מְבַעֲרִ֣ים אֶת־הָאֵ֔שׁ וְהַנָּשִׁ֖ים לָשׁ֣וֹת בָּצֵ֑ק לַעֲשׂ֨וֹת כַּוָּנִ֜ים לִמְלֶ֣כֶת הַשָּׁמַ֗יִם וְהַסֵּ֤ךְ נְסָכִים֙ לֵאלֹהִ֣ים אֲחֵרִ֔ים לְמַ֖עַן הַכְעִסֵֽנִי׃
Don’t you see what they are doing in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather sticks, the fathers build the fire, and the mothers knead dough, to make cakes for the Queen of Heaven, and they pour libations to other gods, to vex Me.
Susan Ackerman, “The Women Knead Dough”: Women and Ancient Israelite Household Religion, II
From the book Women and the Religion of Ancient Israel by Susan Ackerman, Yale 2022
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.12987/9780300264883-006/html?lang=en
Jeremiah 7:16–20 is part of a long diatribe (Jer 7:1–8:3) attributed to the prophet Jeremiah and set in Jerusalem during the waning years of the pre-exilic period (ca. 609–586 BCE).1 In it, Jeremiah condemns Jerusalem’s late seventh- and early sixth-century BCE inhabitants for all sorts of behaviors he considers religiously misguided. In some cases, the acts in question are, in Jeremiah’s opinion, theologically misinformed (such as the people’s con-viction that Yahweh will not allow the foreign powers to which the South-ern Kingdom of Judah has become vassal—Egypt and then the Babylonian Empire—to destroy their national temple in Jerusalem). In other cases, Jeremiah deems the people’s deeds to be ritually apostate (such as their worship of the sun, the moon, and the host of heaven). Included in this latter harangue is Jeremiah’s censure of Judahites who participate in the cult of a goddess known only as the Queen of Heaven. In Jer 44:15–19, 25, Jeremiah similarly denounces his fellow Judahites for their worship of the Queen of Heaven, both the worship of the Queen of Heaven in which these particular Judahites, who were part of a group that had fled to Egypt in the aftermath of the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE, were currently engaging and the worship of the Queen of Heaven by these same Judahites, and others, in their homeland during the decades before their nation’s fall.
Tyler Dawn, "WWIE (What Would Ishtar Eat?) Baking Cakes for the Queen of Heaven: Jeremiah 7 in Context, Part 2" The Ancient Bridge. Biblical Context Studies Apr 24, 2016
https://theancientbridge.com/2016/04/wwie-what-would-ishtar-eat-baking-cakes-for-the-queen-of-heaven-jeremiah-7-in-context-part-2/
“Oh Istar, merciful goddess, I have come to visit you. I have prepared for you an offering, pure milk, a pure cake baked in ashes (kamanu tumri), I stood up for you a vessel for libations, hear me and act favorably towards me.” –A hymn of Ishtar (there have been many different hymns preserved), quoted in Ackerman
What is kamanu tumri? It is a thin unleavened loaf of fine flour baked in ashes – literally called an “ash cake” (as opposed to bread made in a formal oven, tumru bread is made on the go, in haste). In fact it is still made by Arabs to this day. (1) What is a pure cake? I believe that calling it a “pure cake” would probably be a reflection of the fact that it hasn’t had time to become leavened.
Not immediately a game changer until you look at Jeremiah 7:18:
The children gather wood, the fathers kindle fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes (kawwanim) for the queen of heaven. And they pour out drink offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger. (2)
Kawwanim is a loan word derived from the Akkadian kamanu ) and the only other place we see it in scripture is Jer 44:19.
Excerpted from Raphael Patai, The Hebrew Goddess, 1990
David Geffen, Matza: A Modern History of Unleavened Bread, Jerusalem Post, April 18, 2011 https://www.jpost.com/israel/matza-a-modern-history-of-unleavened-bread
Early matzot were often decorated, adorned with the shapes of doves, animals and flowers, with some even baked in the form of chains to evoke the Egyptian bondage. This was ended by the rabbis of Talmud times. The ornamentation and extra thickness could delay the baking process, they judged, thus allowing fermentation which would make the matza hametz.
Susan Schnur, From Prehistoric Cave Art to Your Cookie Pan, Lilith, Spring 1998. pp. 22-24
...lots of religious rites once involved "vulva
cakes" in various suggestive shapes and sizes: round with pricked dots, or replicas of great pudenda placed on altars, or barley-shaped (or filled with barley, or figs and honey), or
generative triangles, or "bread goddesses," or, in ancient Greece (according to scholar Ross Kraemer), baked "phalli"and "cunni" (genitals fashioned out of pastry) that may
have been eaten as part of fertility rites. Of course. the worship of Ishtar (from whom Esther is derived) included ritual offerings of "baked cakes" (cooked "under the ashes"), against which Jeremiah,7:17-18, famously
rails. ("Don't you see what they're doing? The women knead dough to make cakes for the Queen of Heaven?") Sarah, at a sacred grove (Genesis 18:6), makes cakes as a fertility offering (see Savina Teubal's Hagar the Egyptian) right before the text tells us that she "will have a son."
So . . . . can I prove that hamantaschen are contemporary sacred vulva cakes? No. But it certainly makes academic and gut sense to me: that parthenogenetic (self-fertilizing) hamantaschen—pubic triangles traditionally filled with black seeds—are pre-spring, full-moon fertility cookies, suggesting the potency of female generative power, and heralding women's and the Earth's seasonally awakening creativity.
