Deacon Paul Nghia Pham

WHAT WE CHOOSE TO BAKE

“Remember this day on which you came out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” — Exodus 13:3

A good Passover story, someone once said, should always involve cakes.

Not because cakes are holy, but because they are ordinary. They appear at celebrations. They sit at tables. They are cut and shared without much thought. Cakes belong to daily life — which is exactly why this story unsettles.

In Austria, a pastry baker named Manfred Klaschka became news not for inventing something delicious, but for something deeply disturbing. His catalogue of custom cakes included swastikas. One design even showed a baby raising its arm in a Nazi salute.

When the story broke, Klaschka apologized. He insisted he was not a Nazi. He met with a Holocaust awareness group. He baked a cake with Jewish and Christian symbols to express regret.

And then he explained himself.

“I am just a pastry maker,” he said. “I was fulfilling my customers’ wishes.”

It was that sentence — simple, almost casual — that stayed behind after the news moved on.

Fulfilling customers’ wishes.

Which means there are customers who want such cakes. There are homes where such cakes are ordered, delivered, sliced, and eaten. There are gatherings where people smile at a table and say, “What a beautiful cake,” while symbols of hatred sit harmlessly in frosting.

That realization is more unsettling than the baker himself.

Because it means hatred does not always arrive shouting. Sometimes it arrives wrapped in sugar.

This did not happen only in Austria.

Years earlier, a grocery store in New Jersey refused to bake a birthday cake. The request was simple, the manager said. The words were not.

“Happy Birthday Adolf Hitler.”

The boy’s name was Adolf Hitler Campbell.

His sisters carried names that left no doubt about their parents’ beliefs.

The store refused.

When the story appeared in the news, people reacted with disbelief. Shock. Anger. But the most important detail was easy to miss: the request was made at all.

Someone believed it was acceptable.

Someone expected it to be honored.

Someone believed this, too, was just another customer’s wish.

Reading about the Austrian baker, one could almost imagine a terrible meeting point — a baker willing to fulfill any request, and a family eager to celebrate hatred as identity. A cake passing from hand to hand. Candles lit. Photos taken. A moment that feels normal to those inside it.

Which is exactly the danger.

Hatred rarely survives on rage alone. Rage burns out. Hatred survives by becoming ordinary.

That is why this story belongs in Passover.

Every year, at the Seder table, a sentence is spoken quietly but deliberately: “In every generation, each person must see himself as if he personally came out of Egypt.”

Not as history.

As responsibility.

Because Egypt was not only a place. It was a system. A way of thinking. A structure where some lives were expendable and others entitled. Where fear was enforced through routine, policy, and silence.

Leaving Egypt was not the end of the story. It was the beginning of vigilance.

Freedom, once won, must be protected — not only from armies and weapons, but from habits, excuses, and convenience.

Because Pharaoh never disappears. He simply changes costumes.

In every generation, there are those who fire weapons at school buses. Those who dream of erasing peoples from maps. Those who speak of extermination not as horror but as strategy. There are those who build weapons while explaining that they are only fulfilling national wishes.

And there are others — quieter, more dangerous — who say, “I am just doing my job.”

Just baking cakes.

Just following orders.

Just meeting demand.

Passover reminds us that slavery is sustained not only by tyrants, but by systems that allow ordinary people to stop asking whether something should be done — and focus only on whether it can be done.

The baker said he was not a Nazi.

Perhaps he believed that.

But the deeper question Passover asks is not, “What do you believe?”

It is, “What are you willing to create?”

What symbols will you decorate?

What stories will you normalize?

What will you place at the center of the table and pretend is harmless?

Because cakes matter precisely because they are not weapons.

They are invitations.

They say, “Come celebrate.”

And what we celebrate shapes who we become.

This is why the story of Exodus never ends.

It is retold not because the sea still parts, but because the human heart still needs reminding. The danger is not only in hatred that screams. The danger is in hatred that smiles, explains itself politely, and asks only to be treated like any other request.

Passover is not about ancient cruelty.

It is about modern choices.

It asks whether we will refuse certain orders — even when refusal costs business, comfort, or approval. It asks whether we will say, “No, not everything should be made.”

Not every wish deserves fulfillment.

Not every demand deserves accommodation.

Some requests must be refused — not loudly, not angrily — but firmly.

Because to refuse is also to remember.

And remembering is an act of resistance.

At the Passover table, bread is removed. Bitter herbs are tasted. Questions are asked — especially by children.

And perhaps that is the final image worth holding: children asking questions at a table, learning that freedom is fragile, that dignity must be defended, and that memory is a form of courage.

In every generation, something is being baked.

Ideas.

Symbols.

Stories.

And in every generation, someone must decide whether they will simply fulfill wishes — or guard the meaning of what is placed before others.

Passover teaches us this quietly, year after year:

Freedom is not preserved by miracles alone.

It is preserved by ordinary people who refuse to decorate oppression — even when it comes covered in sugar.