The great matzoh fire!!

You know it's a slow news cycle when humble matzoh makes the headlines..

For the uninitiated, matzoh is the hard, flat unleavened bread invented by Jews in the desert when they were in such haste to leave Egypt and slavery that they left without waiting for the bread to rise.

Police in Spring Valley, New York were investigating a report that something smelled of smoke in the middle of the night. what they found was an old school bus converted into a huge oven for Passover matzos - complete with a smokestack, exhaust fans and a working fire.

A building inspector said that while the bakery bus wasn't nearly up to code, it was "very creative."

The old bus was parked near a private home in a Hasidic Jewish neighborhood and connected to the house with a plywood passageway.

Its owner, Rabbi Aaron Winternitz, told police he'd been making matzoh there for three Passovers and planned to do the same this year, with Passover coming up in a week.

Rabbi Winternitz made the matzoh for his 50-member Congregation Mivtzar Hatorah. Observant Jews `pass' on leavened bread and certain other foods and eat matzoh during Passover week to honor their ancestors who had no time to make leavened bread as they fled slavery in Egypt.

The Rabbi proudly admitted that the oven-in-a-bus was his invention, and that he purposely bought an old school bus because "school buses are made strong and safe."

Unfortunately the oven-in-a-bus is something of a fire hazard. Manny Carmona, Spring Valley's deputy building inspector, told Rabbi Winternitz that he has to move the bus at least 10 feet away from the house, disconnect the unauthorized gas line that was fueling the oven and come up with documents to show that a licensed engineer had overseen the project.

Chag Sameach!