Matzah as the Antidote to Egyptian Culture
Shmuel Herzfeld
Shabbat Hagadol, 5772
I.
There are many important projects that our shul is engaged in. One of the projects that I find most inspiring is the project where we actually bake our own Kosher for Passover ShmurahMatzah.
I believe (although I could be mistaken) that we are the only synagogue west of New Jersey in the world that bakes our own Kosher for Passover ShmurahMatzah. Here is an excerpt from my own book, Fifty-Four Pick Up, which describes the background to how we came to start doing this project.
On a recent trip to Israel our tour guide, Rav Yehudah Bohrer took us to his brother’s matzah factory. It was an inspiring experience.
We came to Rav Bohrer’s brother and saw his “factory.” We saw a shack and inside this shack were three ultra-Orthodox Jews grinding the grain of the wheat by hand into flour. It required both immense force and concentration. Although one is allowed to use a machine to grind the matzah, they were grinding it by hand in order to beautify the mitzvah. This type of matzah is called RASHI Matzah (rechayimshelyad – ground by hand). The men doing the grinding were working up a tremendous sweat and could not be spoken to as it might interrupt their focus on grinding the grain for the purpose of eating matzah on Pesach.
Rav Bohrer’s brother assured me that his matzah was the only matzah that Rav Chaim Kanievsky would eat.
This matzah “factory” produces four and a half tons of matzah. I asked him if he would ship some matzah to me in America, but he only laughed. I don’t think I have a chance of getting that matzah from him, so if anyone is around BneiBrak and can ship me some of his matzah I would appreciate it greatly.
I was overwhelmed by the dedication of these men to performing the mitzvah. For months and months they would prepare in order to fulfill the mitzvah of eating matzah properly. What a merit to be standing with someone who cared so deeply about the performance of a mitzvah that it would literally take over his life months in advance!
I found this so inspiring that I immediately decided that we too would make our own shmurahmatzah in Washington DC. Since that time, every year we make kosher for Pesach, shmurahmatzah. It is one of the most inspiring projects of our shul and I owe the impetus for it to seeing Rav Bohrer’s brother in action.
Since that day in BnreiBrak I have been inspired by the dedication to the mitzvah of matzah that I saw in those men in the “factory”. I knew that I wanted to have the same love for the mitzvah of matzah that I saw in those men.
How does one acquire love for mitzvah? Two ways. Understand more about the mitzvah and also put your heart and soul into the preparation for and performance ofmitzvah.
Everyone who bakes matzah in our shul knows that we put our heart and soul into it. It is a tremendously rewarding process. We prepare for hours and hours just to set up the process. The actual baking of the matzah is an intense process; it is filled with some anxiety and frustration, requires hard work and skill, and it involves a great deal of excitement. But it is all worth it.
The matzahwe bake doesn’t taste the same and it doesn’t look the same. It tastes divine and when you look closely at the matzah you can see the holiness of our efforts. I encourage everyone to join us this year in baking matzah in our shul.
Aside from putting our heart and soul into the making of the matzah, we also need to understand more about the mitzvah. For this reason, I want to share with you some thoughts about matzah in order to help us better appreciate the mitzvah of eating matzah.
This year in studying the mitzvah of matzah I came to the realization that when we bake the matzah with great intensity we are not only participating in a great mitzvah, we are also participating in a historical reenactment of great significance. When we bake the matzah with a proper understanding of the historical and spiritual value of our efforts we will realize that we are actually connecting ourselves in a very significant way to the generation of Moshe and to the Israelites that followed him out of Egypt.
II.
Our Haggadah records two seemingly opposite, even contradictory, interpretations about the symbolism of matzah.
The Haggadah opens by declaring that matzah is the: “Bread of affliction that our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. Ha lachmaanyadiachaluavhatanabearahdemitzrayim.”
This suggests that matzah is the bread of affliction that we eat on Pesach in order to remind ourselves of the bitterness of our bondage to Pharaoh. We eat the mazah in order not to forget that we were once enslaved. Despite the fact that we are now redeemed, we didn’t always have it so good.
But towards the end of the Maggidsection, the Haggadah records a second reason for the eating of Matzah on Pesach. The Haggadah says:
“This Matzah that we eat—what is its meaning? It is because our fathers’ dough did not have time to rise before the King of Kings, the Holy One, blessed is He, revealed Himself to them and redeemed them. Al shum she-lo hispikbetzekamshelavoteinulehachmitz ad sheniglahaleihem.”
According to this approach we don’t eat matzah in order to remember our afflictions in Egypt. We eat to remember that we were redeemed by God. The matzah is a symbol of God’s ability to redeem us in an instant. When we were redeemed it happened so quickly that the dough did not even have time to rise, so too, whenever God redeems us in history it can happen in an instant. That is how quickly God can change our fortunes in this world.
Matzah is a simple bread that lends itself to many contradictory feelings and interpretations.
In his book, Being Jewish: The Spiritual and Cultural Practice of Judaism Today, Ari Goldman tells about some of these contradictions. He writes about a man who buys a non-kosher hotdog on Passover and then discards the bun and puts the treif meat in between two pieces of matzah. He writes about other people whose desire to eat matzah is filled with contradictions as well.
At a spring party at the journalism school, the dean’s office was good enough to provide matzah on the buffet table. One adjunct professor carefully scraped the shrimp salad off the bread and transferred it to the matzah. “Oh I love Passover,” he was overheard saying. An old friend from Tuscon, Emily, goes one step further. She makes sure to order the most expensive and most carefully supervised matzah, known as matzahshmurah, but she puts all sorts of unsupervised toppings on it. Another story comes from my friend David…David remained at a conference table and took out his matzah and hard boiled egg. As he unwrapped it a colleague joined him and unwrapped his lunch. It was ham and cheese---on matzah. The colleague looked at David and smiled. “Boy am I glad I am not the only one. It’s hard to explain Passover, isn’t it?”
Such is the fate of mtzah. It has become the bread of contradictions. And we see these contradictions all the way back in the Haggadah and even in the Torah as well!
The Haggadah views matzah as both a symbol of affliction and a symbol of redemption. This is at first glance a contradictory message, but the more we study the concept of matzah, the more it makes perfect sense. In its origin, Matzah was actually intended to be a contradiction to the entire society that the Israelites found themselves living in!
III.
These contradictory messages about matzah are found in the biblical texts.
In SeferShemot, even before the Israelites are redeemed from Egypt, Hashem commands the Israelites to eat matzah on the night that the redemption will take place. This command is issued on the first day of the month of Nissan.
Hashem said to Moshe and Aharon in the land of Egypt saying: "This month shall be [reckoned] to you [as] the head [beginning] of months. It shall be to you the first of the months of the year. Speak to the entire community of Israel saying, 'On the tenth [day] of this month they shall take--- each man [shall take] a lamb for [his] family, a lamb for each household. If the [members of the] household are too few for the [eating of a] lamb then he shall take [a lamb] [together] with his neighbor, close by his house, according to the number of individuals. According to what the person eats shall you make your count regarding the lamb. A flawless lamb, a yearling male must be in your possession. You may take it from sheep or goats. You shall hold it in safekeeping until the fourteenth day of this month, they shall slaughter it--- the entire community of Yisrael--- between evenings [in the afternoon]. They shall take of its blood and place it on the side of the doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they will eat [the lamb]. They shall eat the meat during this night. It shall be roasted over fire. They shall eat it with matzos and bitter herbs. (Exodus 12:1-8)
On the first day of the month Hashem is telling the Israelites who were still enslaved in Egypt that on the night of redemption, i.e. the eve of the 15th, they should eat a lamb with matzah and maror. Hashem then commands them to not only eat matzah on the night that they are actually redeemed from Egypt but also for future generations as well.
You must eat matzos for seven days, but before the first day you must remove [all] leaven from your homes; for anyone who eats chametz, that soul will be cut off from Yisrael. [Chametz is forbidden] from the first day [of Pesach] until [after] the seventh day. The first day shall be a holy assembly and the seventh day shall be a holy assembly to you. No work shall be done on them, only for [the preparation of food] which will be eaten by every person, that alone may be done for you. You must be vigilant regarding the matzos, for on this very day I brought out your hosts from the land of Egypt. You must preserve this day for your generations, it is an eternal statute. In the first [month] on the fourteenth day of the month, in the evening you shall eat matzos, [continuing] until the twenty-first day of the month in the evening. For seven days no leaven may be found in your homes, for whoever eats chametz that soul shall be cut off from the community of Israel, whether a proselyte or a native born in the land. You must not eat anything that is chametz. In all your dwellings you shall eat matzos. (12:15-20)
This time the commandment adds several important features: First, it is for future generations who have already been redeemed from Egypt. Second there is a requirement to have a seven day festival associated with the matzah. And third, there is also a prohibition against having leaven or sourdough (seor) in your homes on this festival and against eating chametz(leavened bread) on this festival.
Since this commandment was issued on the first day of the month—two weeks before the redemption-- then obviously the reason why they were commanded to eat matzah is not because their dough did not have time to rise on the night of redemption. Furthermore, why can’t they have any leaven in their homes? Theoretically, the fact that they eat matzah should not require them to destroy their leaven. For example, on the festival of Sukkot we move out of our homes and into booths, but we are not required to destroy our homes!
In this passage the Torah does not tell us why there is a commandment to eat matzah. Nor does the Torah tell us why specifically there is a festival of matzot for seven days. It does however hint that the nature of matzah is redemptive as there is no mention of affliction associated with the matzah.
Several verses later the Torah tells the story of the Israelites leaving the land of Egypt and when it tells that story it adds a different layer to the commandment to eat matzah:
The Egyptians pressed the people to hurry them---to send them out of the land, for they said, "We are all dead men." The people took their dough before it was leavened. Their leftovers were wrapped in their clothing, [and carried] on their shoulders. The B'neiYisrael did as Moshe said, and they requested of the Egyptians silver articles and gold articles and clothing. Hashem granted the people favor in the eyes of the Egyptians, and they granted their request. They [B'neiYisrael thus] drained Egypt of its wealth. The B'neiYisrael traveled from Ramseis to Sukkos. There were about six hundred thousand males on foot besides the children. A great mixture [of nationalities] also went up with them. There were [also] sheep and cattle, a huge amount of livestock. They baked the dough that they had brought out of Egypt into matzoh cakes, for it was not leavened. Since they were driven out of Egypt and could not delay, they had also not prepared provisions for themselves. The habitation of the B'neiYisrael living in Egypt lasted four hundred and thirty years. It was at the end of the four hundred and thirty years, and on that very day all of Hashem's multitudes went out of the land of Egypt. (Exodus 12: 33-41)
This time the Torah tells us explicitly that the children of Israel ate matzah on the night they were redeemed from Egypt because they were redeemed in an instant and their dough did not have time to rise.
But this cannot be the exclusive reason that we must eat matzah on Pesach. First, as we have seen, the commandment to eat matzah was given two weeks prior to the redemption. Second, there is another biblical text from Vayikra which we will discuss later on, that hints to the idea that there is something fundamentally and spiritually wrong with eating leaven on Pesach.
Before we go on to the next biblical text there is another question about this passage. Why within the context of their eating matzah does the Torah tell us that the Israelites lived in Egypt for 430 years? Is there a connection between the dough not rising and the length of time that they lived in Egypt?
IV.
There is a verse from Devarim that contains both ideas about Matzah that the Haggadah relates; namely, that maztah is the both the bread of affliction and the bread of redepmption.
The verse states:
You shall slaughter the pesach-offering to Hashem, your God, flocks of ruminants and cattle in the place that Hashem chooses to house His Presence there. Do not eat chometz on it; seven days are you to eat on it matzos, bread of anguish; since in haste you left the land of Egypt, so that you remember the day of your exodus from the land of Egypt all the days of your life. And no sourdough of yours may be seen in all of your boundary seven days; and none of the flesh may remain overnight which you slaughtered towards the evening of the first day---until morning. (Devarim 16:2-4)
Here, the Torah calls matzah, lechemoni (bread of affliction) and tells us to eat matzah for seven days because we left Egypt in a hurry (bechipazon).
The great commentator Ramban (R. Moses b. Nachman, 1194 –c. 1270) writes (in his commentary to 16:2): “Now this explains many things. It mentions here that matzah is bread of affliction to teach that there is a commandment to remember that they left Egypt in a hurry, and this is an affliction for when they were in Egypt they had meager bread (lechemtzar) and scant water. And this hints to two things. Thus it says that ‘This is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate in the land of Egypt.’”
Ramban is saying that the two themes of matzah which are found in the Haggadah are rooted in this verse. The idea of matzah as redemption is found in the fact that we left Egypt in a hurry; i.e. the redemption happened in a split second. And second, in this verse the Torah calls matzah the bread of affliction. Ramban suggests that it is called the bread of affliction because when the Israelites were in Egypt they had lechemtzar. This can mean either that they had only a small amount of bread in Egypt or else that the bread they ate in Egypt was different than the Egyptians bread; i.e. the Egyptians ate sourdough, whereas the Israelites ate matzah.
In any case, Ramban sees this verse as pointing to two aspects of matzah: it is both the bread of affliction and also the bread of redemption.
It seems that according to Ramban this is an intentionally conflicting message that is vitally important for us to remember on Seder night: we must remember that our current state of redemption is a result of our previous affliction. Who we are as a people (and as individuals) is a direct reflection of how we were once afflicted. This must then become part of the narrative that we tell on Seder night; we must make certain that our current situation—our actions, our beliefs, and our value-system--always reflects our past history.