The Matzah

Haggadah Section: -- Cup #2 & Dayenu

This is the Matzah , the unleavened bread that we eat on Pesach. You probably already knew that. But why do we eat it now?

Most significantly, this is what the Hebrew slaves had to eat when they fled from Egypt. (The Bible doesn't say why, if they were able to carry all that dough as well as the gold and silver that the Egyptians handed them, they didn't also take some yeast, but maybe they baked bread differently from how we're used to doing it.)

As we said earlier, matzah is the bread of affliction, the bread of poverty. Compared to much other bread, matzah is, well, boring. It's fun to eat at the seder table and as an option at other times in the year, but when you're stuck eating it for an entire week, it's easy to get tired of it. (And the crumbs get into everything.)

And that's the point. Matzah helps us remember that, compared to a lot of other people in the world and even nearby, we're privileged in many ways that might not be otherwise apparent. Health issues aside (and those can indeed be a huge restriction), we can pretty much eat whatever we want, whenever we want it. Any food that we can imagine is pretty much within reach.

But a lot of people have no choice in what to eat or the conditions in which they live. They are at the mercy of weather conditions, political crises, wars, the lack of education, and a myriad of other causes that mean that they can eat only what they can get at with limited resources. In much of the US, we have (at least at the moment) organizations and agencies working to try to fill in the gaps and to get people the resources that they need, but it's not so in remote locations and food deserts here, or in many other places in the world.

Being limited to Passover foods for a week makes us more mindful of our eating and the resources that we have available. And the best thing is that it lasts only a week. After the limitations we take on during Passover, regular food tastes better. For those who can eat bread and the other foods that we don't have during that week, the first taste of it afterward can be wonderful.

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