Why Matzah on Passover?

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Why do we eat Matzah on Passover?

by Rabbi Shlomo Chein
Passover and Matzah is a match made in Heaven.

The Torah says:1 "In the first month on the fourteenth day in the evening you shall eat Matzah... for seven days leaven shall not be found in your houses". Hence a Jew has an active obligation to eat Matzah on the first night of Passover, and whilst s/he doesn't have to eat Matzah for the rest of the week, s/he has a passive prohibition from eating/possessing any leavened bread.2

Passover Matzah is also known as the "bread of affliction"3, "poor man's bread"4 , "bread of faith"5 and "bread of healing"6 .

Those four terms actually sum up the reason behind eating Matzah on Passover: when our ancestors were slaves in Egypt (affliction) G-d miraculously redeemed them (healing); the Jews followed G-d out into the desert without knowing exactly where they were going or how they would survive in the desert (faith), carrying with them just simple dough which - in the rush of the Exodus - didn't have time to rise (poor man's bread).

By eating Matzah we commemorate the exodus of the past, and because "we are what we eat" we actually bring faith, healing, and humility (poor man's bread) into our personal lives, enabling us to escape and transcend the personal afflictions of life.

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