A Morsel on Matzah
…You are dry as a twig
split from an oak
in midwinter.
You are bumpy as a mud basin
in a drought.
…You are pale as the full moon
pocked with craters
…Matzah, by Marge Piercy
Thank God for poets who can even elicit flavor from matzah!
In just a few weeks we will be celebrating Passover, using our own choice words to describe that iconic food of freedom. To orient us in time, the ancient sages directed us to read on this Shabbat, right before the month of Nissan begins, a portion of the Torah called “The Month” Ha-Chodesh (Exodus 12:1-20).
“God said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: This month (ha-chodesh) shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you…Sacrifice the paschal lamb on the fourteenth day…You shall observe the [Feast of] Unleavened Bread [on the fifteenth day], for on this very day I brought your ranks out of the land of Egypt; you shall observe this day throughout the ages as an institution for all time…” (Exodus 12:17).
This passage marks the first time in the Torah where the Jewish people are given mitzvot, sacred obligations, and they include the pesach offering and eating matzah. It seems as if the Israelites celebrated Passover one year later at Mt. Sinai (Numbers 9:5), but then for the next thirty-nine years they did not sacrifice the pesach lamb, nor did they eat matzah - because they were living solely on the miraculous mannah.
In the book of Joshua, which picks up the story of the Torah with the people entering into the land of Canaan, we read:
“The Israelites offered the passover sacrifice on the fourteenth day of the month, toward evening. On the day after the passover offering, on that very day, they ate of the produce of the country, unleavened bread (matzah) and parched grain. On the day after when they ate of the produce of the land, the manna ceased. The Israelites got no more manna; that year they ate of the yield of the land of Canaan” (Joshua 5:10-12).
Notice that the Exodus isn’t mentioned at all as a reason for eating matzah. Rather, the association here seems to be with eating from the produce of the land. Many scholars think that matzah-eating originated as a spring agricultural festival, and only over time merged with the historical holiday we know today as Passover. In any case, though, the impression we get of the first Passover in the Land of Israel is that matzah coincides with reaping the bounty of that particular land, and that mannah stops because it is no longer needed. The Israelites are out of the wilderness. They are home.
But regardless of how the people in Joshua’s time celebrated Passover, ourPassover is modeled after the guidance in the Torah proper - a Torah which rolls back to the beginning right before the people reach their destination. The Torah’s Passover isn’t primarily about arriving home, but about leaving oppression and entering a wilderness of possibility.
“You shall observe the [Feast of] Matzah, for on this very day I brought your ranks out of the land of Egypt.”
Marge Piercy concludes her poem on matzah with these lines:
What we see is what we get
honest, plain, dry
shining with nostalgia
as if baked with light
instead of heat.
The bread of flight and haste
In the mouth you
promise, home.
When we eat matzah, we taste the promise of home, of deep connection to our earthy roots, but our focus is on witnessing and experiencing the fullness of alienation that characterized the Israelites in Egypt and the subsequent progression to liberation.
In this month of Nissan, whether we taste matzah in Seattle or Jerusalem, or anywhere in between, may the shine of nostalgia blend with a vision of a better world, and may matzah’s honest, plain, dry character remind us to be real about suffering, about the work of freedom, and the hard yet worthy path of persistence.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Jay LeVine
