 The holiday of Pesach is also known as the Festival of Matzos, and it is the holiday on which we are to eat matzah for seven days.
For a seven-day period shall you eat matzos. [Shemot 12:15]
We have always understood the eating of matzah to be associated with the haste with which the people were hurried out of their bondage.
This matzah that we eat – why do we eat it? Because the dough of our fathers did not have time to rise before the Holy One revealed Himself to them and redeemed them.
[Haggadah]
Our assumption is that the Israelites left Egypt carrying sacks of matzah and not bread, and that this was due to the fact that they had to bake it in a hurry, before the dough had been given sufficient time to rise.
The problem is that the Torah tells us otherwise.
The people carried their dough before it had risen, the leftovers wrapped up in [sacks] upon their shoulders. [Shemot 12:34]
They baked the dough that they had removed from Egypt into cakes of matzah, for it had not risen. [12:39]
Evidently, they did NOT bake their dough into matzah while still in Egypt. They carried their dough out. Then, later, after they had left Egypt and arrived in the desert, they baked it.
But that begs a powerful question. We know that dough rises and becomes chametz after sitting unworked for more than 18 minutes. They undoubtedly spent more than 18 minutes getting from Egypt to their first stopping point. Why didn’t the dough rise in their knapsacks while they were traveling and then become bread when it was subsequently baked in the desert? Bread would actually have been no problem for them to consume in the desert, as the seven-day prohibition against consuming chametz did not kick in until the following year.
This day shall become a remembrance for you and you shall celebrate it as a festival for God for your future generations as an eternal enactment. For seven days you shall eat matzah after first nullifying all leaven from your homes, [since] whosoever eats chametz on these seven days will be cut off from the people of Israel. [12:15]
If anything, our reason for eating matzah on Pesach should have nothing to do with what happened as we were leaving Egypt. The night before, when we were commanded to eat the Korban Pesach, we were commanded to accompany it with a side dish of matzah.
They shall eat the meat on that night, roasted in fire [together with] matzos, over marror.
[12:8]
If Seder night is a reenactment of the night of the eating of the Korban Pesach, our matzah ought to be reminiscent of that night’s eating of matzah, an act which took place hours before the carrying out of the traveling dough!
The key to understanding the significance of our matzah is a comment Rashi makes on verse 34.
The leftovers [were] on their shoulders – They carried the leftovers of matzah and marror (from the previous night) out with them in their shoulder packs…out of the great love they had for the mitzvah. [Rashi 12:34]
The Israelites left Egypt with two items in their knapsacks – 1) the previous night’s leftovers and 2) fresh dough for baking. The fresh dough they would have baked into bread before leaving but they were hurried out of Egypt by the insistent Egyptians and so they left with the unbaked (and unrisen) dough. They figured the dough would rise while in transit, and they would bake it into bread at their first stop in the desert.
When they opened their sacks, they found a surprise.
Expecting to find it fully leavened by the desert heat and the passage of time, they discovered their dough still as unleavened as it had been when they rushed it into their knapsacks back in Egypt! It was as if someone had intervened in the course of nature and prevented the dough from rising.
Actually, Someone had.
If we read into Rashi’s commentary, we will see an extraordinary exchange of affection taking place between the Jewish people and the Almighty. The Jewish people had been given a mitzvah to eat the Korban Pesach together with matzah and marror. The people were thrilled to have been assigned this special deed which they understood would bind them closely with their Master. They cherished the special Divine love the mitzvah had communicated to them and they treasured its symbols. Of the lamb meat, they were instructed to leave none of it over until morning. But no such demand was made of the matzah and marror, so with tenderness and affection they saved leftover pieces of the matzah and the marror to take with them as sentimental mementos of the closeness with God forged on the night of the fifteenth.
God responded. He said, “If they can feel so much love that they want to hold onto the symbols of My mitzvos as keepsakes, I will show my love in return by causing all their new dough to turn into more of the same symbol; and I will intervene in nature to do so!”
They baked the dough they had brought out with them from Egypt, after arriving at their first stopping point in the desert. Amazingly, it all baked up as matzah – that pure and simple symbol of a new love that had been kindled on Passover night. In remembrance of those special feelings, we eat matzos every year and rekindle that love; we sing about that love in Shir HaShirim; we remember a love so strong that it led Hashem to show off His prowess just as Yaakov did generations earlier at a well in front of his beloved Rachel, first by exercising control over the natural process of leavening and then, a few days later, by displaying His power over the mighty waters of the Red Sea.
Some couples have a special tune that brings back memories of their early affection every time they hear it played. In our relationship with our Beloved, we have a special food. Every time we eat a piece of matzah on Pesach, it’s as if the heavenly jukebox is playing our song.
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