Day One
Magnifying the Neis
The First Matzah Chabura
One of the reasons we eat matzah, and we could even say it’s the first reason, is what we explained at the Seder: לְהַחְמִיץְצֵקָם שֶׁ ל אֲ בוֹתֵ ינוּ א הִסְ פִּיק בֹל – The dough of our forefathers didn’t have the opportunity to sour, to turn leavened, עַד שֶׁ נִּגְלָה עָלֶיהָ עֲ לֵיהֶם הקב"ה גְ אָ לָ ם ו – before Hashem redeemed them (Haggadah Shel Pesach).
Everyone knows that when you make dough, it takes time for the dough to rise – you wait for the dough to rise sufficiently, to leaven, and then you bake it as bread. But on Pesach night something happened that made it impossible. ָצֵק אֶת הַבֹאפוּ וַי מִ מִּ צְ רַ יִ ם אֲ שׁ ֶ ר הוֹ צִ יאוּ – They had to bake the dough, גוֹתעוֹ ת מַ צ – into unleavened bread, א חָמֵ ץִֹי לּכ – because it didn’t have a chance to leaven, מִ מּ ִ צְ רַ יִ םִ י ג ֹ רְ שׁ וּ כ – because they were driven out of Egypt, א יָ כְ לוֹ וְ ל
ַּלְ הִ תְ מַ הְ מֵ ה – and they couldn’t wait any longer (Shemos 12:39). B’leis breirah, with no other option, they baked it as it was, and that’s how they ate their bread that day, as unleavened matzos. And so without going off into fanciful reasons, that’s the fundamental reason the Torah gives for the mitzvah of matzah.
You know, if you’re interested in understanding a mitzvah it’s always good to follow the simple statements of the Torah. I say ‘simple’ – nothing is simple in the Torah but the statements that are most available, most open, those are the statements that are of the utmost importance. And so if it says here that we eat matzah on Pesach because when the time came they were driven out and couldn’t bake bread so that’s the first thing we should think about as we’re eating.
The Impossible Escape
Now if this idea of haste is intended as one of the lessons that matzah is reminding us of, it makes sense that we should spend a little time thinking about what it means, why Hakadosh Baruch Hu made it so. After all, He could have made it happen in other ways. Their dough could have finished rising and then they could have been pressed to leave only afterwards. Or maybe Moshe Rabbeinu could have warned the nation ahead of time to prepare their dough early and be ready to leave with bread. No; instead Hakadosh Baruch Hu arranged it so that Pharaoh was pressing them to leave, and so they had to carry the unleavened dough with them out of Mitzrayim and now they were stuck with matzos.
And so we understand that the entire story was a charade; it was a performance that Hakadosh Baruch Hu was putting on. He wanted it to happen just this way, that we’re settling down for the night and suddenly Pharaoh is chasing us out, pressing us to leave. And that means that as we’re eating the matzah we’re expected to think about the purpose of that charade.
First of all we have to remember that from the very beginning when they entered Egypt it was already hopeless to think of leaving. That's how it was – once you came in, you stayed there. Even Yosef, the second-in-command, couldn’t leave without Pharaoh’s permission. And surely when they became a slave-nation, there was no question that they weren’t going anywhere. It was impossible! Even to imagine such a thing was impossible.
Not like how it was before the Civil War in America; from the beginning there was an abolitionist movement agitating for an end to slavery, and there was the Underground Railroad too – it was something that was spoken about as an eventual reality, the blacks would go free. In Mitzrayim, there was no such thing. It was like a concrete wall, a big concrete wall, and the Bnei Yisroel were imagining that this big stone wall would suddenly disappear and become thin air. Impossible!
V’nahapoch Hu
That’s why when Moshe Rabbeinu came to Pharaoh and he proposed, in the name of Hashem, that they should leave even just for a few days, Pharaoh said, "Nothing doing!" He looked at Moshe like a meshugene, like someone who lost his mind. Again and again Pharaoh refused. And he did it adamantly, b’chizuk leiv. Moshe was saying, “We’re going!” and Pharaoh said, “Never!” And so, it seemed irrevocable.
What happened? All of a sudden in the middle of the night, Pharaoh is running around the streets looking for Moshe Rabbeinu, to tell him that the Bnei Yisroel should leave immediately. He’s pushing them out.
Now if you know a little bit about kings, you know that usually they sleep at night. A Pharaoh doesn’t get up in the middle of the night to run errands; even for a million dollars he doesn’t get up in the middle of the night. But this night was different from all other nights. Pharaoh jumped out of bed and he ran to find Moshe Rabbeinu. It's a remarkable thing! Pharaoh? In the streets at midnight? And he’s begging, עַמִּי וֹך מִתְאוּ צְמוּקו – “Hurry up and get out! Leave my land. Take your people and get out of here! And make it snappy! No procrastinating!”
And because of that the Am Yisroel baked their dough into matzos. “No time to waste! We have to leave on the double quick!”
The First Testimony
And so what is the first eidus of the matzah? “Remember the neis that made me!” That's the plain pshat in the Chumash. We don’t let our dough become chometz to show that the Yetzias Mitzrayim was done with such a haste. At least on the first day of our program forget about fanciful explanations, about p’shetlech. Today the matzah is telling us “Remember the neis! That’s why I’m here, to remind you about that, to remind you about how for two hundred and ten years, the Pharaohs wouldn't listen at all. And when the time came in the middle of the night this Pharaoh jumped out of bed and said ‘Get out!’ They were so desperate to send you out that you had to bake your dough into matzos.”
And so we’re chewing and thinking and chewing and thinking. That’s what it means ‘a mitzvah of testimony; it’s testifying, and so, we should be listening. It tastes good also the more you chew, but don’t forget to think. It was something tremendous that Hakadosh Baruch Hu should take a וֹיֶ רֶ ב גוֹי מִ קוֹי, a nation that was stuck, constrained, subjugated to another nation without a way out (Devarim 4:34).
The Miracle Nation
It was something impossible but Hakadosh Baruch Hu had plans for us. We had to live out our destiny as the Am Hashem and so He took us out to be His people. And in order to magnify the neis, in order to accentuate the miracle, He did it in this way, He arranged it so that the obstinate Pharaoh – the one who said, “No!” and “No!” and “Never!” – now he’s running around in the middle of the night pressing us to go, so much so that we had to quickly bake our dough.
The matzah is testifying to a sudden turn of events, something that could only happen because Someone with a capital S is pulling the strings. And because He intentionally played out our leaving Mitzrayim in such a way that matzos had to be baked in order that we should use them as a way of remembering the neis forever, that therefore is the first lesson that the matzah is testifying to.
The Matzah Testifies:
Matzah is a food prepared in haste in order to inspire our thoughts to remember the neis of how it happened that the Bnei Yisroel baked matzah in Mitzrayim. Pesach means remembering Yetzias Mitzrayim, thinking about the miracles of that night, and the matzah is an especial testimony to what happened that night. Only that we have to listen to what the matzah is saying.
