Here’s our top ten, and aside for #1, in no particular order:
(1) IT’S A MITZVAH, A BIBLICAL MITZVAH!
This mitzvah has a specific window, on the Seder nights, after dark before midnight. It’s a mitzvah we get to chew on and digest. It’s a mitzvah with crunch! We have lots of thoughts about matzah, but numero uno is that it is a biblical mitzvah, a divine commandment, and a very important one at that!
(2) A SINGLE GREATEST HERITAGE CONNECTOR
Passover is one of the most widely observed Jewish traditions of the year, and Matzah probably tops the Passover list. When we eat matzah on the Seder night, we’re joining Jews the world-over, down the block and across the seas, regardless of language, socio-economic conditions, spanning the spectrum of Jewish movements – all eating matzah. And not only the Jews of our time, but going back generations, centuries, during golden ages and the harshest times of persecution – Jews always ate Matzah on the Seder night. This one of the strongest single links to our heritage. If a Jew from a hundred years ago or a thousands years ago were to pop into your Seder they’d know what you are eating and why. Here’s a personal story and lesson on “This is the Matzah of our Forefathers…”
(3) BREAD OF FAITH, BREAD OF HEALING
The Zohar says (and Chassidus quotes this a lot) that Matzah is considered “Bread of Faith” and “Bread of Healing”. The faith part is easier to understand, given the whole “left Egypt with the dough on their backs”. Jews had lots of faith and trust at the Exodus. (See our post about Passover in an era of AI and misinformation). Though, it may be harder to appreciate “Bread of Healing” given that too much Matzah can be hard to stomach, but here’s a thought on the Matzah as Bread of Healing.
(4) MATZAH AS A COMPUTER CHIP
Just down the street here on Fuller Road, the Nanotech complex has clean-rooms free of the slightest contamination where thin round computer-chip wafers (later broken into small square chips, as the matzah crumbles) are made of basic silica that process and store gigabytes of memory. This is an illustration of Matzah! Also made under stringent conditions, using basic flour and water, baked into thin round Matzahs with slight bumps that store thousands of years of Jewish memory. And the analogy doesn’t stop there! When we eat Matzah at the Passover Seder, there’s an open window for us to download and install that memory in our souls – Bread of Faith, we’re internalizing it!
(5) EACH MATZAH HAS TWO SIDES TO IT
The Haggadah quotes a verse from Exodus that we eat Matzah because of the dough that baked on their backs. But the Alter Rebbe asks (and I learned this in school just before my Bar-Mitzvah while calculating the ratio between fudge graham cookies and a pint of milk…): Is that why we eat Matzah? Doesn’t the Torah, a little earlier in Exodus, tells us that the Jews were explicity commanded to eat the Paschal Lamb with Matzah? They had the recipe! They made it to eat with the Paschal Lamb! So is the Matzah planned or unplanned? Was it expected or unexpected? Was it the Matzah instructed to eat with the Paschal Lamb on the night before the Exodus, or the Matzah that baked on their back? The Alter Rebbe explains that each piece of Matzah has two sides to it: There’s the planned and the unplanned, the expected and the unexpected, the Matzah within our control and the Matzah beyond our control, Matzah of our efforts and the Matzah born of divine revelation – our Matzah has both sides to it.
(6) MATZAH RECALLS THE HASTE, THE URGENCY
We ended up with Matzah because there was no time for the dough to sit around and rise! The Exodus was in great haste! We learn from this the importance of a sense of urgency and alacrity. Don’t procrastinate! Don’t wait for the seltzer to go flat. For good things we ought to strike when the iron is hot! The time is now! (Here’s a story learned from a Professor’s Passover urgency…)
(7) MATZAH IS FLAT – AND HUMBLE
Risen bread puffs up (symbolically) with arrogance, it’s puffy with air. Matzah’s flatness and low profile symbolizes humility – or the self-transcendence that Chassidus calls Bittul. (We at Chabad don’t eat Matzah-Balls until the 8th day, but see this Matzah-Ball Physics on Bittul Staying Afloat)
(8) POOR MAN’S BREAD, BREAD OF AFFLICTION
Matzah isn’t fancy. The Talmud calls it “Lechem Oni” or poor man’s bread. The Haggadah calls it bread of our affliction. The early biblical commentary the Ibn Ezra says Matzah was served as slave food: dense, filling, cheap and fast to make. Which makes it all the more interesting that Matzah is also the bread of redemption, of faith, of hope, of the Exodus! The same bread can ironically be both!
(9) A BREAD OF MANY RESPONSES
Another interpretation of Talmud’s “Lechem Oni” is that much is said about and on the Matzah. It’s filled with meaning and message. There’s a joke of a blind man who was feeling his way around a matzah and asked, “Who wrote this?” Bu the joke has a meaningful message: Matzah is telling us something. It speaks to us! May hear Matzah’s messages in our hearts, digest and internalize them, absorbing and applying them in our lives!
(10) A WHOLE HAGGADAH ON HALF-A-MATZAH
Early on in the Passover Seder we break the middle Matzah, saving and hiding the larger piece for the Afikoman much later in the Seder program. There’s significance in this: Like an iceberg, more is hidden than seen at the surface. We have lots more to discover within ourselves as we journey along the Seder. Back to the smaller piece: Most of the Haggadah is recited “over” the broken smaller piece. Why say a whole Haggadah on a broken Matzah? (1) it reminds us of the iceberg of potential we have hidden within! (2) it tells us we’re only half of what we could be and where we should be! (3) it helps us realize we’re incomplete, our people are fragmented, not all the “sons” are at the Seder (4) Whatever we say at the Seder, whatever we get to now, that’s only one part – of a much greater whole!