A (Much-Needed) Dose of Matzah

Eating matzah was a fundamental part of leaving Egypt and remains the core element of our Seder Night. Given the tensions within Israeli society today, its message of making space for others can hardly be more urgent.

The festival we commonly refer to as Pesach is termed by the Torah as “Chag Hamazos.” Pesach, strictly speaking, is the one-day (or one-night) festival related to the Pesach offering. The seven-day celebration that ensues, as we note in Kiddush and other festival prayers, is the “Festival of Matzos.”

The question we should ask ourselves is why. Why are the matzos important enough to have an entire festival named after them? Why are they constitutional to our celebration of the redemption from Egypt?

[T]he Torah notes the seven-day obligation to eat matzah before our speedy departure from Mitzrayim (Shemos 12:15), indicating that the matzos are central to the day irrespective of our haste. One could even suggest that we left hastily to ensure eating matzos rather than vice versa.

Moreover, which lesson does the matzah teach us? Of course, the matzah reminds us of what happened as we left Egypt. As the Torah writes (Shemos 12:34, 39), we had no time to allow the dough to rise and ate matzah instead. Yet, the Torah notes the seven-day obligation to eat matzah before our speedy departure from Mitzrayim (Shemos 12:15), indicating that the matzos are central to the day irrespective of our haste (the obligation to eat matzah with the Pesach offering is also mentioned earlier, Shemos 12:8). One could even suggest that we left hastily to ensure eating matzos (and the negation of chametz), rather than vice versa.[1]

What is the secret of the matzah?

 

The Festival of No-Chametz

The answer to this question is latent in the conundrum of matzah as a seven-day mitzvah. While the Pasuk states that “you shall eat matzos for seven days” (Shemos 12:15), the Gemara at ‎the end of Pesachim (it is striking that one has to study the entire tractate to reach this insight) ‎teaches that there is only one time during the entire Pesach festival when eating matzah is ‎obligatory: Seder Night. For the rest of Pesach, eating matzah is not an obligation.

This halacha leaves ‎us scratching our heads: Surely, the Pasuk instructs us to eat matzah for seven days?‎

Moreover, the Gemara derives the first-night obligation to eat matzah is derived from the words: “In ‎the evening, you shall eat matzos” (12:18). However, it is hard to ignore the context: “In the first ‎month, on the fourteenth day of the month in the evening, you shall eat matzos, until the twenty-first day of the month in the evening.” Again, the simple reading seems clear: seven days of ‎matzos, from the fourteenth through the twenty-first of Nissan. How do we restrict this to one day?‎

The Mishnah Berurah (simanim 475 and in 639) writes that the simple reading of the verses, by ‎which we need to eat matzah every day of Pesach, is why the Vilna Gaon maintained that ‎there is a mitzvah to each matzah throughout Pesach. While this is not a full obligation, it remains a ‎mitzvah. Yet, being optional alone, what kind of a mitzvah is this? Moreover, how can we explain the ‎discrepancy between the “simple reading” of the verses and Chazal’s interpretation?‎

Yet, there is a simple answer to this seeming conundrum. The seven days of Pesach, to be more precise, are less the festival of matzah and more the festival of no-chametz. Matzah is just the positive way of expressing the negation of chametz. Indeed, the obligation to eat matzah is always noted together with the negation of chametz: “You shall not eat any leavening; in all your dwellings you shall eat matzos” (Shemos 12:20).

The message is crystal clear: Pesach is a no-chametz zone, obligating us to change our ‎diet from bread as the staple to a diet without bread or its leavened cousins

There are no less than four ‎Torah mitzvos related to the negation of chametz on Pesach – one prohibition against eating (with the full severity of the kares punishment), ‎two concerning keeping chametz in one’s possession over Pesach, and one positive instruction to dispose of chametz ‎before Pesach. The message is crystal clear: Pesach is a no-chametz zone, obligating us to change our ‎diet from bread as the staple to a diet without bread or its leavened cousins. ‎

However, a “festival-of-no-chametz” doesn’t work. Simply refraining from chametz does not ‎give any positive expression to the no-chametz idea – it is a negative alone, and we could be ‎refraining from chametz because we’re on a gluten-free diet or because we don’t feel like eating carbohydrates. The way in which we give a positive ‎expression to “no-chametz” is through the matzah – unleavened bread. Hence, Pesach is the ‎‎“festival of matzos.”‎

To announce the onset of the no-chametz period, we are instructed to perform the positive ‎act of eating at the beginning of the Pesach festival – on the first night of Pesach. This is a full ‎obligation, and it declares the “change of diet” that lasts throughout the seven days of Pesach. ‎However, for the remaining days, there is no obligation to eat matzah since the entire idea of the matzah ‎is to negate chametz. Other than the first night, we fulfill the mitzvah by negating ‎chametz even if no matzah is eaten.‎

Yet, the Vilna Gaon taught that there remains some mitzvah in eating matzah. The reason is that every time we eat ‎matzah, we give a positive articulation to the negation of chametz – and while not ‎obligatory, doing so remains worthy, an “optional mitzvah.”[2]

 

What No Bread?

Throughout the year, bread is a big positive. It is our staple food: “Bread shall satisfy the heart of man” (Tehillim 104:16). Every important meal, whether on Shabbos and festivals or at weddings and other occasions, begins with bread. Yet, for seven days of the year, bread becomes evil, something we need to eradicate. Again, even before we left Mitzrayim, the Torah tells us that “anyone who eats leavened food, that soul shall be cut off from Israel, from the first day to the seventh day.”

How are we to understand this seeming paradox?

The answer lies in the symbolism of chametz, which represents the notion of self-inflation. Rather than adding substance, the forbidden se’or (sourdough) – the source of chametz – triggers a chemical reaction that causes the dough to rise. In human terms, chametz translates as arrogance and conceit. We are self-inflated, not with the substance of wisdom, goodness, and righteousness, but simply with ourselves.

When Chazal articulate what it is that distances us from Hashem, they mention two primary factors: “You know that our will is to do Yours,” prayed the Alexandri the Sage, “but who prevents it? The yeast in the dough and the subjugation of foreign nations. May it be Your will,” he ended, “that You shall save us from them and we will return to perform the ways of your will with a complete heart” (Berachos 17a).

During the entire year, we serve Hashem with the fullness of our selves. With personality. With all we are. With chametz. But as newborn infants, before we reach this maturity, we need to begin with a special diet that negates self-inflation and makes maximum space for Hashem in our lives

The second element is superficial – the hardships of exile that keep us preoccupied and prevent us from focusing on the good and the just. The first, by contrast, is internal. When we are full of ourselves, there is no space for Hashem in our lives.

The Pasuk in Yechezkel notes that Pesach is our national birthday: “And your birth, on the day that you were born” (Yechezkel 16:4). Ours, however, was no ordinary birth. It came together with Hashem’s revelation and the initiation of His eternal relationship with the Jewish People. On Pesach, we celebrate our national birth together with our newly forged relationship with Hashem. We do so with the matzah.

During the entire year, we serve Hashem with the fullness of our selves. With personality. With all we are. With chametz. But as newborn infants, before we reach this maturity (a process that culminates at Shavuos with the bread offering), we need to begin with a special diet that negates self-inflation and makes maximum space for Hashem in our lives. This is the diet of matzah, the diet of no-chametz.

It is for this purpose – for making space for Hashem, trusting Him, and yearning for His closeness – that we came out of Egypt. “I the Hashem, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt; open your mouth wide and I will fill it” (Tehillim 81). Yetziyas Mitzrayim teaches us to open our mouths, to place our hope and trust in Hashem, to revel in our relationship with Him.

For seven days a year, the Festival of Matzos trains us how to do it.

 

Making Space for Others

Eating matzah provides us with training for something else, too. Aside from our relationship with Hashem, we empower our relationships with one another. The two go together. If your theology is slavery, as that of pagan gods that both enslaved and were subservient to their worshippers, then there will be no space even for others. If your theology is relationship, as Hashem asks of us – a theology of freedom – then your connection to others will be one of relationship, of closeness and love.

Rabbi Akiva thus taught that “Love your fellow as yourself” is the great principle of Torah (Yerushalmi, Nedarim 9:4). Understanding the principle of “love your neighbor” is understanding the negation of idolatry and the service of Hashem. We begin to realize it when we leave Egypt.

Pharaoh, as the god-king over Mitzrayim, ensured that in Mitzrayim there was no space for Hashem. If the deity itself is a human form, there is no capacity for transcendence, no possibility of touching something higher. Pharaoh enslaved the people to himself, thus defining a national culture of slavery: either you enslave me, or I enslave you. Nobody makes space for anybody else.

Leaving Mitzrayim, the house of bondage in which slavery superseded the very concept of human relations, means making space both for Hashem and for others. Doing so is the great principle the Torah desires from us.

Leaving Mitzrayim, the house of bondage in which slavery superseded the very concept of human relations, means making space both for Hashem and for others. Doing so is the great principle the Torah desires from us.

For eternity, it is thus forbidden to “descend to Egypt,” to return to the Egyptian mindset that implies total reliance on one’s own strength: “Woe to those who descend to Egypt for aid, who rely on their multitude of chariots and on the immense power of their horsemen, but did not desire the Holy of Israel and did not consult Hashem” (Yeshayahu 31:1). “Egypt,” the Pasuk continues, “is human, not Divine; her horses are flesh, not spirit” (31:3).

Being Jewish is making space for Hashem – and with Him, making space for others. The Festival of Matzos is the festival of making space for the Other in our lives. It is the festival that negates slavery. The festival of freedom.

***

The Zohar (2:183b) calls matzah the “bread of healing” that reinvigorates our Emunah. For the entire year, we eat chametz bread, engaging our “yeast in the dough” and working out our relationships with Hashem and others as best we can. On Pesach, however, we take time off for a week of healing, a week of returning to our national birth when we ate matzah and made space in our lives for Hashem and for others.

It is hard to think of a more crucial message for the present time. After endless weeks of demonstrations and flaring emotions, Israeli society seems to have deteriorated to a place in which contending groups are unable to make space for each other, unable to listen to, understand, or empathize with each other. We are in danger of returning to the bondage of Egypt.

Our duty, today as then, is to leave Egypt behind. Much has been made of Israel’s recent “chametz legislation” (concerning bringing chametz into hospitals), which was supported by some and opposed by many. But no act of legislation will save us. With or without the Chametz Law, what we truly need is an especially large dose of matzah.

 


[1] This is similar to the Ramban’s interpretation of the verses, according to which the Israelites refrained from eating their bread as chametz because of the Torah prohibition and not because they lacked the time for the dough to rise. The interpretation itself is somewhat strained, yet the concept of chametz being prohibited irrespective of the hasty departure seems clear from the Torah verses.

[2] Based on this analysis, it stands to reason that ‎once one can fulfill the Vilna Gaon’s instruction to eat matzah without matzah shemura; it is sufficient to ‎negate chametz with regular matzah. This, indeed, is the ruling given by the Chayei Adam.

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