Congregation KTI

Chag Sameach! Best wishes for a sweet, joyous, and kosher Passover!

The symbolic foods of Passover, matzah chief among them, are an inexhaustible source of commentary and meaning-making.

The standard explanation of matzah, which I heard many times last week from our young students, is that it symbolizes the haste with which we left Egypt in the middle of the night. This is indeed one of the explanations offered in the Torah (Exodus 12:39) and quoted in the Haggadah (toward the end of Magid, with Rabban Gamliel’s explanation of the three main symbols of the holiday).

One of the problems with this, however, is that the people were commanded to eat the first Passover sacrifice (the one whose blood was painted on the doorposts the night of the Exodus) with unleavened bread and bitter herbs before they actually left (12:8).

Might there be another explanation of the symbolism of matzah? And beyond that, one that can explain why there is such a stringent prohibition on eating leavened foods during this holiday?

Dr. Tova Dickstein, who researches ancient foods, offers an explanation of why unleavened foods are connected to remembering the Exodus.

Dr. Dickstein explains how leavened bread was characteristic of Egyptian culture. The Egyptians were a settled, agricultural society, with fixed plots of farmland watered by the reliable and abundant Nile. The Joseph story preserves the historical memory of Egypt as a source of abundant grain. Furthermore, the Egyptians perfected the method of leavening dough and baking it in large, permanent ovens that could maintain a consistent temperature. Used as a form of payment, measure, and in religious worship, bread became the foundation of Egyptian society —a rich, hierarchical society that, not for nothing, relied on slave labor to sustain its wealth.

By contrast, consider the nomadic, shepherding lifestyle of the Israelites, both in the days of the patriarchs and also once the people returned to the land. They were constantly on the move, following the flocks. They could not carry heavy ovens with them or wait around for hours for dough to rise. So instead, they would eat matzah, bread that can be cooked quickly in lightweight or improvised ovens and fires. To this day, the nomadic Bedouins across the Middle East bake unleavened bread in these simple, portable ovens.

We now understand a further level of the symbolism of matzah and hametz. Hametz, leavened bread, is the bread of settled civilizations that rely on slave labor. Matzah, unleavened bread, is the bread of free shepherds who work for themselves and go wherever they need to.

Eating hametz on the festival of freedom, when understood this way, becomes nonsensical. We could not possibly eat the food of our enslavers on a holiday that celebrates our freedom.

With this in mind, we can savor the matzah even more, understanding how this simple food is the food of free people.

Best wishes to you and your families for a sweet and joyous Passover.