Sermon: 7th Day Pesach Morning

Written by Rabbi Colin Eimer — 25 April 2022

There used to be a quip about bottled water – I think it might have been for Volvic. The advertising blurb said something like “this water was formed underground over 3 million years ago,” suggesting I, presume, that this water was really pure. But on the side of the bottle it said, “use by June 29^th” In other words, even though the water might have been formed aeons ago, it’s ‘best before date’ was less than a year away.

This or something very much like it was on the box which contained the matzah I knew from my childhood: “Rakusen’s of Yorkshire,” it says now; then I think it was “Rakusen’s of Leeds.” I don’t think I ever looked at the list of ingredients. Then as now it would have said simply “wheat flour and water.” And that would have surprised and confused me, for what little I knew about Pesach I did know that we weren’t allowed to eat bread because it was made with…. wheat flour. And I was reminded of that Volvic ad, because somewhere on the box was a “best before” date. But what could go ‘off’ with matzah? I wondered: the ‘use by’ date has nothing to do with the product deteriorating. By coincidence, the matzah which was acceptable throughout the year suddenly becomes chametz when?…. just before Pesach the following year. “Quelle coincidence,” as my bubbe would have said.….

That we shouldn’t have any chametz in our habitations is such a big Pesach ‘no-no’ that it necessitates many people – usually women – having to spend hours clearing the house of any chametz. And ‘habitations’ didn’t just mean actual homes, but in our possession. That required Jewish law to develop a legal fiction: you formally sell your chametz to a non-Jew for a nominal sum, so you really have divested yourself of any connection with it. And you buy it back from them after Pesach. I recently read that Patrick Moriarty, head for short, though not for long, of JCoSS, buys all of JCoSS’s chametz. He is, of coursed,supremely qualified to do so: not just a non-Jew but an ordained Anglican vicar, to boot!

In a few hours time we’ll no longer need to be eating matzah for religious reasons. So how did “nebbich Colin, confused of Hendon” become “enlightened Colin”? When he learned that matzah is, indeed, made by mixing flour and water but – and that’s the big ‘but’ – the whole process from mixing water and flour to getting it into the oven must take absolutely no more than 18 minutes. That’s why the front of this box says חי רגעים ‘18 minutes’: 18 minutes having been determined as the time after which the mixture would begin to naturally leaven, even without yeast. The heat of the oven was seen as stopping that leavening process.

So something that has taken 17 minutes and 59 seconds to get into the oven is perfectly kosher for Pesach. But just 1or 2 seconds longer – and it suddenly becomes chametz.

Not only are those few seconds crucial but matzah has to be made with one of the five grains – wheat, rye, oats, barley and spelt – which, if found in any food on Pesach, automatically render it chametz. We might think that to avoid confusion it should be made from anything but those five grains. Which means that matzah has to be made from something that is capable of leavening.

But that’s just one mystery of matzah for me. Call me a sentimental old fool, but I find there is something at one and the same time special, mystical, paradoxical, spiritual about matzah. It’s that moment in the Seder when we take that first bite of this year’s matzah. I always find it quite special, quite emotional really.

So what is it about this bread that isn’t bread, this food that isn’t food? A week ago we sat around our Seder tables – in person, and what a mechayeh that was! We do some preliminaries – kiddush etc. But the Seder really begins with ha lachma anya. “this is the bread of ….” There are a number of ways to translate ‘anya’ – misery, poverty, affliction, suffering. Obviously all are in the same area of meaning – but each has a subtle difference. We break the middle of the three ‘ritual’ matzot in two and put one piece away for the afikomen. Why do so? It reminds me of a point in Solzehnitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch where Denisovitch in the Gulag finds a piece of bread. He’s desperately hungry but he only eats half of it and puts the other half in his pocket for later.

Ha lachma speaks of two sorts of hunger. “Kol dichfin, All who are hungry let them come and eat.” You give that person food. But there’s also “Kol ditsrich, all who are in need, let them come and celebrate Pesach.” No physical hunger here. They are yearning for something, for meaning, purpose, direction, perhaps. But whatever that hunger, it won’t be satisfied with actual food. They need a spiritual response, a message of liberation, of freedom.

In the Torah, matzah is what they ate as they were leaving. But at the Seder it’s what they ate in Egypt. It’s the food of slaves. Yet as we go through the Seder what happens to the matzah is a sort of Jewish version of trans-substantiation. I’m aware that it’s invariably dangerous to push an analogy too far. But what happens to the matzah that started its Seder-life as lachma anya, a reminder of what our ancestors ate in Egypt? We work our way through the Seder – the enslavement, the plagues, the liberation. We sing dayyenu, a thank you for all the things that were done for us.

In the Torah, matzah is called lechem oni – the bread of poverty, some say the bread of suffering. In the Zohar it has two names: michla dim’hay’menuta (2:41a) the ‘bread of faith’; and michla d’assvata (2:183b) the ‘bread of healing.’

Over the course of the Seder the matzah goes through all these phases; it slowly begins to change in its nature, its meaning, ceasing to be a reminder of what we ate in Egypt. Maybe that’s why the halachic literature is so insistent on none remaining in our possession during Pesach. It is that mystic michla d’ass’vata, the bread of healing and michla dim’hay-menuta, the bread of faith.

That’s Jewish trans-substantiation: as we take that first bite, matzah is no longer the bread of suffering but has become michla d’chayruta, the bread of freedom.

And what is the absolutely last thing we do before we get to the meal? Hillel’s sandwich. We take two pieces of matzah and we make a sandwich of maror, the bitter herbs. Freedom sandwiches, crushes bitterness and pain. That’s the message of the Seder – which each of us, in every generation, has to experience personally, as if we were going out of Egypt. That’s why I call it “Jewish transubstantiation.” That same bit of 17 minutes 59 seconds – not 18-minutes 1 second – matzah which began the Seder as the symbol par excellence of our degradation, has become the symbol par excellence of our freedom. Slavery and freedom at one and the same time – that’s the paradox of matzah. Just a couple of seconds and what is acceptable can become unacceptable. We sit around our Seder tables to remind us that we are both free but also enslaved.

Yesterday evening, the World Union for Progressive Judaism organised a Service of Solidarity for the Ukraine. 400-500 people from all continents were on Zoom. One of the rabbis who had escaped Ukraine talked her journey from Kyiv to the West. She talked about the experience of war. It destroys both victim and perpetrator, she said. It destroys humanity, it makes you think only of your survival.

In a way that’s the message of the matzah with its many different names – bread of poverty, suffering, affliction, healing, faith. The hunger we bring to our Seder tables is not for actual food. But we hunger for meaning, direction and purpose in our lives.

And there’s yet another translation of lachma anya: anya in Hebrew also has to do with ‘answer,’ la’anot. It’s the bread of answers but answers imply questions and immediately after ha lachma we have Mah Nishtanah. Lachma anya is the bread that demands a response from us in terms of our commitment, our behaviour, our moral standards. Maybe it’s OK that boxes of matzah have a “use by date”: for each Pesach poses new questions, demands new responses. The questions that we bring and the responses that are required can’t just be carried forward from one year to the next