Back to Question of the Week Back to Archives Q: Since the whole idea of eating matza -- unleavened bread -- on Pesach is to commemorate the fact that the Israelites did not have time to allow their bread to leaven when they left on the exodus from Egypt, why then is it considered Pesachdic to leaven baked goods with air? I have watched people serve leavened cakes, pancakes and even sandwich rolls at their Pesach tables. Why is it permissible to leaven goods with air and not with yeast? Leavened is leavened, is it not? Marilyn
		A: I love this question (and a whole category of questions like it) because it allows me (a non-Orthodox Jew) to defend Orthodoxy and generally wreak havoc with denominational stereotypes. If you're a believing Orthodox Jew, or the kind of Conservative Jew that your Conservative rabbi wishes you were, then your central connection to God is in doing God's will as expressed in the halakhah -- Jewish law. Following God's rules is the essential Jewish act in halakhic denominations of Judaism. Now, if following God's law is the central religious activity, then delving into the intricacies of God's law is admirable, and practicing according to those intricacies is holy. So from outside the halakhic system, all those puffy products seem like a hypocritical defeating of the whole idea of Passover. But within the system, they're not. They are making use of the intricacies of halakhah and its particular definitions of leavening in order to increase culinary enjoyment on Passover. And that is a holy act. The same could be said, for example, of the practice of selling one's chamets to non-Jews for the duration of the holiday in order to be able to leave it in your house. Some would deride that as a "legal fiction" that lets one avoid the practice of Passover. But that's exactly wrong! It may be a "legal fiction," but what's important is that it's "legal" and therefore, within the halakhic system, essentially good. It is following God's law, which is the main thing you are supposed to do. Some people have heard me teach this idea and didn't believe that I was being sincere. But I am. Although I do not center my own Judaism on the practice of halakhah, I can appreciate why someone would do so. And given such rule-centered practice, such "legal fictions" as "unleavened sandwich rolls" make completely good sense and are not at all hypocritical. However, what should we say for those of us who are not law-centered Jews? It would seem to me that this may be an area where liberal Jews may need to be more strict (the Hebrew term is "makhmir") than their strict coreligionists. If, for example, one views Judaism as a symbolic language in which Jews try to search for God's truth with themselves, with each other, and with God, then Passover cookies are a very confusing use of that symbolic language. Our very lack of rule-centeredness may require us to impose a stricter rule on ourselves than those Jews who "follow the rules!" A principled liberal Judaism is not just about taking the easy way out. written by Rabbi Jeremy Schwartz
		last update: August 1999 Got a question for Reb on the Web? Visit our Archived Questions SHOOT*! ("SHOOT" is the Hebrew acronym for SHe'elot OOTeshuvot (Questions and Answers), the centuries-old dialogue between Jews and their rabbis.)

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