Only now, Hecht gets the luxury of a 1989 Plymouth Voyager—that his wife laments losing for a month—with which to carry all his matzo-making magic. And instead of wrathful Egyptian soldiers, Hecht had to satisfy 21 first-graders from Saratoga Elementary School before the lunch bell rang.

Hecht was in Saratoga March 29 to teach public school children the history behind Passover and show them how to make matzo using flour, water and teamwork.

"For most of these kids, this is the only exposure to the Jewish culture they're going to get," Hecht said.

That exposure also included a crash course in grinding flour. Hecht brought wheat and showed the students how to separate the grains from the nonusable part of the stalk—called chaff. The dry, crackling wheat elicited giggles and shrieks from the children as they played with it.

"How did the Jewish people avoid all the prickly stuff?" Hana Michael, 6, asked, rolling chaff between her fingers to separate the grains out.

Once the grain had been separated and collected, Julius Frank and Jade Bisht showed off their muscles by cranking the stone mill to make flour. The children mixed the flour and water, kneaded the dough and rolled it into flat shapes.

Just as Hecht was putting the matzo in to bake, the lunch bell rang. He told the youngsters their matzo crackers would be waiting when they returned.

The eight-day Jewish holiday of Passover officially begins at sundown on April 5. The name Passover comes from the biblical story that tells of God's plan to kill all the first born of both man and beast. God instructed Moses to tell Jews to mark all their doors with lamb's blood so the angel of death would pass over their homes. Then after the death of his first-born son, the Pharoah gave the Jews their freedom but only gave them a short time to leave Egypt.

Hecht said he's been bringing Passover into Bay Area schools for five years, but most of his stops are at local Jewish schools, not public schools like Saratoga. He provides a complete mobile matzo factory—with flour and water booths, bags of grain, a small oven and plenty of wheat stalks.

The class's teacher, Sherri Wiesner, who is Jewish, met Hecht while working at a synagogue during a teaching hiatus. She brought the matzo making in as part of spring celebrations in her class.

"We're a public school, we do everything," Wiesner laughed, pointing out the various art projects her students have done over the year.

And although many of them had never eaten matzo, ground grain into flour or talked about the suffering of the Jewish people at the Pharaoh's hand, the students understood the story of Passover and were well versed in the ideas of slavery, freedom and celebration.

"The Passover story is a universal one," Hecht said. "It's a story of freedom, so it's a very American message."