Shabbat Hol Ha-Mo'ed Pesach, Exodus 33:12 - 34:26, Numbers 28:19 - 28:25

There are two sides to the humble matzah.

Browsing through a bookstore the other day, it was interesting to note that the most popular display was for board games. Remember those? There is no joystick, no remote control, no nunchuk, no hookup to a screen, and batteries aren't included because they're not necessary. Some of these games have been around for decades. The second most popular area in the store contained books and magazines about simplifying your life: i.e., getting by with less in tough economic times.

Welcome to Pesach. Despite the exorbitant grocery bill for kosher for Passover products, Pesach is about simplicity. At any rate, it used to be. The Torah reading for Shabbat Hol Ha-moed (the intermediate days of) Pesach simply instructs us: You shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread--eating unleavened bread for seven days, as I have commanded you… (Exodus 34:18). Unleavened bread is mentioned a second time in this portion: You shall not offer the blood of My sacrifice with anything leavened; and the sacrifice of the Feast of Passover shall not be left lying until morning (Exodus 34:25).

That's it. Nothing about sponge cake, macaroons, or the oxymoronic Passover bagels; just matzah plain and simple. Matzah is all about simplifying life. The Haggadah refers to it as ha-lachma anya, the bread of poverty. Nonetheless, there is actually something called matzah ashira meaning rich bread, and containing eggs, oil, and sometimes even a sweetener. However, the word matzah is quite literally simplicity itself.

By way of explanation, the Maharal of Prague, in Gevurot Hashem, his teachings on Pesach, draws our attention to a Talmudic passage describing animal hides:

Come and hear: Rabbi Hiyya ben Ammi said on Ulla's authority: There are three types of hide: matzah, hippa, and diftera. Matzah, as its name implies, is neither salted nor treated with flour or gall-nut .

Shabbat 79a

In this excerpt, matzah refers to the untreated animal hide, pure and simple.

The Maharal goes on to relate simplicity to freedom (Gevurot Hashem, 51). Ironically, a wealthy individual is burdened by his possessions and can be considered enslaved by them. In this view, it is only the individual who has no possessions who is truly free.

Well, I can't say that I fully agree. Poverty is also enslavement. When your belly is grumbling, it is difficult to think of anything other than finding a morsel to eat. No wonder when we eat the bread of poverty at the seder, we invite all who are hungry to come and eat.

Still, the idea of simplicity is an important one in a spiritual sense. Possessions do enslave us and distort our perception of things. When trying to keep up with the Joneses, we don't really get to know the Joneses at all; such competition stifles basic human contact. We see them for what they have, not for who they are.

Material simplicity brings with it a spiritual cleansing. Matzah is our back-to-basics reminder. Last week we touched upon a traditional view that matzah represents the yester ha-ra (evil inclination). One week a year, munching on matzah serves as a reminder to focus on ridding ourselves of all the bad habits that we have eased into over the course of the rest of the year.

But there are two sides to the humble matzah. It is also the bread of freedom, hurriedly baked in preparation for redemption. How you view unleavened bread depends on which side of the matzah you butter:

To be fully realized, an Exodus must include an inner voyage, not just a march on the road out of Egypt. The difference between slavery and freedom is not that slaves endure hard conditions while free people enjoy ease. The bread remained equally hard in both states, but the psychology of the Israelites shifted totally. When the hard crust was given to them by tyrannical masters, the matzah they ate in passivity was the bread of slavery. But when the Jews willingly went from green fertile deltas into the desert because they were determined to be free, when they refused to delay freedom and opted to eat unleavened bread rather than wait for it to rise, the hard crust became the bread of freedom. Out of fear and lack of responsibility, the slave accommodates to ill treatment. Out of dignity and determination to live free, the individual will shoulder any burden.

Irving Greenberg, The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays,  p. 47

The irony is that we who live in freedom willingly accept the chains of possessions. Slowly, without our realizing it our materialism enslaves us. Funny, this sounds like a lesson about Sukkot. Isn't that the time of year when we remind ourselves that with the exception of some basic essentials, material possessions are trivial? Well, here is another week-long holiday half a year later which gives us the same message as "food for thought”: The material is immaterial.

Perhaps we need such a reminder twice a year. We're pretty forgetful. Just look at what happened after that wonderful redemption from Egypt: We melted our valuables and formed the Golden Calf, which led Moses to shatter the tablets and go back up Mount Sinai, where we find him this week in the Torah reading used for both Hol Ha-moed Pesach and Sukkot. Our actions post-redemption placed us in quite predicament, which Moses is trying to solve: Moses hastened to bow low to the ground in homage, and said, "If I have gained Your favor, O Lord, pray, let the Lord go in our midst, even though this is a stiffnecked people. Pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for Your own!" (Exodus 34:8-9)

How did we end up in that situation so little time after the euphoria of redemption? We were dependent on things, in this case on idols. What is the end of result? God forgives us and has Moses write another set of tablets containing the covenant. The covenantal ceremony between God and Israel will take place fifty days after Pesach on Shavuot. We're all invited.

As we munch on our matzah and detoxify for Shavuot, chew on this lesson: Possessions are meaningless, relationships are priceless.

Moadim le-simcha and Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Michal Shekel