Not long ago it seemed that everyone in Brooklyn was making a sacrifice for the Lord by giving up g'brocks (I wanted to hyperlink the word to a definition but I can't find one online. I give my own definition below.) Why? I don't know. The reason wasn't that the halacha demands giving up g'broks, because, well, it doesn't.
Don't beleive me? Look in Eliyahu Kitov's Sefer Hahoda'ah where it says:
"Many people have tried, in vain, to find in the halachah, the source of this custom. After matzoh has been properly baked, it is impossible to make it chometz even by soaking it in all the water in the world... It is said that a certain great man once asked a pupil to find the origin of this custom. When the pupil admitted he was unable to find the source, the great man exclaimed, 'What an important custom this must be for it requires no foundation to support it!'
In other words, God said 'don't eat from the tree.' Chava said, 'Don't touch the tree.' And who ever dreamt up this custom took it even one step further. If you non-g'broks people have any guts you'll be eating matzo balls at the seder this year, just like God intended.
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*Gbroks is middle-high German for broken. What we mean here is broken matzah mixed with water or soup or milk. If you eat matzah brie, you eat g'broks, and as noted above that's perfectly ok. Some people, however, think that Judaism is just too darn easy so, as noted above, they invented the stringancy of "not eating g'broks." These people do not eat matzoh ball soup or matzoh brie - at least not on Passover. What they do eat is probably grody but it serves them right for trying to fix something that ain't broken."
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