Two Minute Torah Podcast

Pesah 5772 by Rabbi Elyse Winick

Shalom!  Welcome to KOACH’s Two Minute Torah, a project of the Department of College Outreach of The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.  This is Rabbi Elyse Winick, Director of KOACH/College Outreach.

Hag Sameah!  I hope you are listening to this as you sweep some crumbs, chop some apples or maybe skim some chicken soup.  It’s Nisan and very soon – depending on when you listen to this, perhaps very, VERY soon, Passover will be upon us.  The crazy and hectic preparations abound, whether you are cleaning, cooking, traveling or planning.  Given that this is also Hag HaAviv, the holiday of springtime, the lure of sunlit evenings, and perhaps even warmer weather, conspire to challenge our commitment to the task at hand.  Choices to be made.  To clean or to cavort?  Or even, to study or to cavort!

The freedom to choose is the leitmotif of this holiday and its symbol, the lowly matzah.  You may look forward to matzah with butter (leave it out on the counter to soften!), matzah brei, my nephew’s favorite cereal of broken matzah floating in cold, sweetened coffee (which he nicknamed ‘Pharoah Flakes’) or – you may not look forward to eating matzah at all.  It is a conundrum, matzah, and the haggadah, the text of the seder ritual, makes sure we know that.

Why do we eat matzah?  Because our ancestors left Egypt in such a hurry that there was no time for their bread to rise.  But we also eat matzah because of its simplicity, its impoverished quality, its unadorned, unflavored, undistinguished nothingness.

We recite, and here I use Nathan Englander’s beautiful translation in The New American Haggadah: “This is the poor man’s bread that our fathers ate in the land of Egypt.  All who are bent with hunger, come and eat; all who are in dire straits, come share Passover with us.  This year we are here, next year in the land of Israel.  This year we are slaves, next year the liberated ones.”

In a single moment we are compelled to confront a powerful dichotomy – that which symbolizes our escape from enslavement also symbolizes the enslavement itself.  A sign of freedom and a sign of bondage in a single, tasteless bite.  The Hebrew, lehem oni can mean both – lehem, bread, of oni, either affliction, like inui, or answer, like oneh. 

So often in our tradition we are to remember the sad with the sweet, to keep our heads about us even as we celebrate, to remember, even as we celebrate the gifts the future has yet to give.  We have just spent days removing the hametz, the leaven, from our homes, but, ideally, also from our hearts.  How easy it would be to fill our souls once more, buoyant with the taste of freedom, forgetting that with freedom comes responsibility.  Our departure from Egypt frees us from imposed servitude, but that freedom gives us the choice to attach ourselves to something higher, a more elevated purpose.  We must remember where we have been in order to best appreciate wherever we are going.

It is good to be free.  It is better still for that freedom to be framed by that which is sacred and holy.  We look back in order to chart the ideal path forward, and we do so together.

May your Pesah be sweet and liberating and may it light your journey ever forward.