Which Came First: The Hametz or the Matzah? Prof. Moshe Benovitz

Few topics are covered as thoroughly as the Passover story in Jewish educational programs of all types: formal and informal, synagogue and school, religious and secular. Much of the Torah is devoted to the story of the Exodus. Jewish families all over the world devote an entire evening to discussion of the background of the festival. The Passover Haggadah is the first Jewish curriculum, designed to pique the interest of all Jews – from the child who knows not how to ask to the wise and insightful Torah scholar. One would expect after all the attention paid to the Feast of Unleavened Bread in Jewish education that one question, at least, would be easily answered: This matzah that we eat – for what reason? Why on all other nights do we eat both leavened and unleavened bread, but on this night – and this entire week – unleavened bread only?

The common answer to this question is the explanation found in the book of Exodus (12:39) and the Passover Haggadah : the bread of our ancestors had no time rise, because they were chased out of Egypt and could not tarry, and they did not prepare food for the journey. They thus resorted to unleavened bread in their rush to leave Egypt, and we eat matzah on Passover in commemoration of this historical circumstance. The prohibition against eating hametz is considered a by-product of the commandment to eat matzah : in order to insure that we eat matzah in commemoration of the Exodus, we are forbidden to eat hametz . Matzah is thus a substitute for leavened foodstuffs, and we have no choice but to eat it. And in order to ensure that we eat no leavened foodstuffs at all, it is forbidden not only to eat hametz on Passover, but also to have leaven and leavened food items in our homes and throughout our borders.

But this explanation is difficult, for a number of reasons:

1. According to another verse in the same chapter of the book of Exodus (12:15), the Israelites had already been commanded to eat matzah instead of hametz for the entire week of Passover two weeks before the Exodus, on the first of Nisan! (See Exodus 12:2.) So commemoration of the Israelites’ haste during the Exodus cannot be the only reason, or even the original reason, for the prohibition against eating hametz and commandment to eat matzah on Passover. Our ancestors ate matzah during the escape from Egypt not only because of the circumstances of their flight, but because they had been commanded to do so two weeks earlier!

2. According to the above, the effect of the Exodus on the type of bread that the Israelites carried with them during their escape from Egypt has never been tested: the Israelites never even tried to bake hametz on the eve of the Exodus. They baked unleavened bread intentionally that night because they had been commanded to celebrate a Feast of Unleavened Bread on that date, and we’ll never know whether their bread would have risen had they tried to let it rise that night. But the very notion that the haste of the Exodus would have prevented their bread from rising is questionable: why was that night different from all other nights?

3. During all the years of slavery in Egypt, the Israelites presumably worked during the day and slept at night. Under these circumstances, there are two possible ways to prepare bread. Either the dough is left to rise over night, and is baked each morning before the workday, or the dough is left to rise during the workday, and is baked at night, upon returning from work for supper. Either way, there is no particular reason that they could not have prepared leavened bread on the night of the Exodus. It is true that it would be hard for the dough to rise while tied in a pack on their backs during the journey; the motion of the journey might have precluded leavening. However, there is no reason they had to let the dough rise while walking out of Egypt. If they normally kneaded the dough in the morning and allowed it to rise during the day, they could have done the same on their last workday, the day before the night of the Exodus. They could have come home that evening and baked leavened bread from the dough left to rise all day, eaten some of it with the Paschal lamb, and taken the rest with them as provisions for the journey. If they normally kneaded the dough in the evening and allowed it to rise overnight, they could have kneaded the dough that evening as usual, allowing it to rise during the Paschal meal. At the time of the Exodus (at midnight or the next morning), they could have carried the leavened dough with them out Egypt, baking it on the first rest stop along the way the following day (15 Nisan). Why was it any harder for them to have their dough rise that night than any other night?

4. Even if we assume that for some reason the circumstances of the Exodus would have prevented the Israelites from preparing leavened bread for their journey, and we eat matzah in commemoration of the Exodus, it is difficult to understand the prohibition against hametz . Eating matzah on Passover is hardly the only mitzvah that is a symbolic action: there are many others, such as tzitzit , tefillin , lulav on Sukkot, and even some of the other Seder rituals such as the bitter herb and the four cups of wine. In none of these cases is the symbolic act accompanied by a matching prohibition: we are not prohibited from hanging other pendants on our garments, in order to ensure that we attach tzitzit . We are not prohibited from wearing other ornaments, in order to ensure that we wear tefillin . We are not prohibited from having other plants in our home or synagogue on Sukkot, in order to ensure that we lift up the lulav , etrog , myrtle and willow. And we are not prohibited from drinking liquids other than wine or eating vegetables other than bitter herbs on Passover, in order to ensure that we observe these Seder rituals. Why then are we prohibited from eating hametz , in order to ensure that we eat matzah on Passover? And why is this prohibition backed up by an even more stringent prohibition, demanding the eradication of leaven and leavened products from our borders for the entire Passover week?

5. If we in fact eat matzah in order to commemorate the Israelites’ haste during the flight from Egypt, why isn’t the prohibition against eating hametz limited to the night of the Exodus itself, the Seder night? Isn’t one night of eating matzah instead of hametz enough to commemorate the one-night rush of the Exodus?

For all these reasons, it would seem that the common explanation of the commandment to eat matzah and the prohibition against leaven is a secondary one. The Israelites were originally commanded to observe a weeklong festival during the spring, during which they had to rid their borders of leaven and eat only matzah – for a different reason. Only at a later stage were these observances associated with the story of the Exodus, at which point matzah was explained as a commemoration of the rush of the flight from Egypt. This explanation only roughly fit the circumstances of the Exodus story: the Israelites didn’t even try to leave Egypt with leavened bread, because they had been commanded two weeks earlier to observe a Feast of Unleavened Bread by eating matzah , rather than hametz , on that date.

Why then were the Israelites commanded to eat matzah during Passover week? And why do we have to rid our borders of leaven entirely each year during that period?

The prohibition against allowing hametz to remain within our borders on Passover is unprecedented. It has no analogy in the Torah except in the prohibition against idolatry, the stringency of which is understandable. The severe prohibition against allowing hametz to exist within our borders would indicate that the original rationale for the Feast of Unleavened Bread lies in the prohibition against hametz , and not in the commandment to eat matzah . Now hametz is prohibited not only on Passover, but also in another legal context: leavened bread is not to be offered upon the altar as a meal offering. Leviticus 2:11 links this prohibition to the similar prohibition against offering honey upon the altar. What do honey and leaven have in common? The truth is that leavened bread and honey have nothing in common, but leaven itself, or sourdough, the yeast culture used to leaven bread, is similar to honey in that both are not very “clean”. Honey is sticky, and sourdough, too, is a sticky, smelly substance rife with bacteria. The Torah demands that the Temple rites be conducted not only in ritual purity, but also in cleanliness: we may not offer substances that originate in physical uncleanness upon the altar. Baked meal offerings must be wafers and cakes of matzah , made from simple, clean ingredients – not honey or leaven.

Passover is not only the Festival of Freedom, a commemoration of the Exodus, but also the Festival of Spring. It is the festival of the month of Aviv, the first month of the agricultural year, the month in which nature renews itself. Celebrating with nature when it renews itself after the long winter is a universal phenomenon, and so is the cleansing of the household associated with this time of year: we call it Pesah cleaning; the rest of the world calls it “spring cleaning”. Now in the non-Jewish ancient world the house could be cleaned from top to bottom each spring – especially the kitchen, rife with smelly, perishable organic matter. The old could be cleaned out to make room for the new.

But there was one thing that could never be thrown out: sourdough, the smelly yeast culture used to bake bread. In the ancient world yeast was not isolated as a separate commodity, added to dough each time in order to bake bread. Instead, the ancients prepared sourdough bread. This type of bread is still baked today alongside the more common yeast bread. Each time sourdough bread is baked, a little bit of dough is left outside the oven, for use the next time bread is baked. By that time a yeast culture has developed on the piece of dough, called sourdough, and when that sourdough is added to freshly kneaded dough, the yeast in the sourdough causes the entire batch of dough to rise. Sourdough is separated from this batch, too, before baking, for use in the next batch, in an unbroken chain. Preparing leavened bread thus requires the use of old matter, a bacterial culture that developed in an unbroken chain of bread baking that has no beginning and no end. Unlike other organic, decaying matter left around the kitchen, sourdough cannot be cleaned out of non-Jewish households each spring, or the chain of bread baking would be broken.

But the Torah demands that our renewal each spring be total and merciless, like the renewal of nature itself after the winter. We must break all the chains that fetter us to the past; we must burn out all of the old from the house to make way for the new. Even sourdough, the one thing that links even the cleanest of non-Jewish households to the past that preceded the spring, must be eradicated from our borders and eliminated from our houses as the annual cycle of nature is renewed.

How is sourdough prepared from scratch, when you did not leave any dough out of the previous batch? You mix flour and water, and allow the sourdough to develop on its own in a cool, shaded place (nowadays: in the refrigerator). This process takes a few days, and in the ancient world it could take up to about a week, depending on storage facilities available and weather conditions.

It stands to reason that the earliest stratum of halakhah insisted that sourdough, or leaven, be eliminated from our houses and our borders at the onset of Passover, as is recorded in Exodus 12:15, but immediately thereafter the Israelites would mix flour and water and begin preparing the new sourdough. According to current halakhah , of course, one may not allow even this mixture to remain in the house over Passover, since any mixture of flour and water is deemed hametz after eighteen minutes. But if our reconstruction of the rationale for the prohibition of hametz is correct, it stands to reason that at one time a mixture of flour and water was not deemed hametz until it actually developed into sourdough. Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, therefore lasts a week: after eliminating sourdough from our houses and borders, we must eat unleavened bread, bread that is free of the sticky residue of the past, until the new sourdough is ready.

At a later stage, these commandments, originally associated with the renewal of nature, were linked to the spiritual renewal of the Jewish people: the Exodus. The chains of sourdough linking us to the past were interpreted as a metaphor for the chains of slavery. The purity, freshness and renewal of matzah were reinterpreted as the exuberant rush of the freed slave, dashing into the wilderness in search of freedom and a new life.

Later halakhah did not conform in every way to the original idea behind the prohibition against leaven, which was forgotten in rabbinic literature. The prohibition against hametz was seen as a by-product of the commandment to eat matzah , rather than the other way around. In one sense, later halakhah was stricter than earlier halakhah . It prohibited the maintenance of any mixture of flour and water that has begun the leavening process (after a mere eighteen minutes) on Passover, a stringency that delayed the preparation of the new sourdough until after the Passover week has ended.

In other senses, however, later halakhah was more lenient that earlier halakhah , because the prohibition of hametz was considered a mere adjunct to the commandment to eat matzah , rather than a call for complete renewal and cleansing. The notions of “annulling hametz ” and “selling hametz ” were developed as substitutes for the actual elimination of hametz from our houses and our borders. Also, according to the letter of the law, the house need not even be cleaned thoroughly for Passover. It is enough to eliminate leavened foodstuffs from the house (or put them away, annul them, and sell them to a non-Jew); the house need not be cleaned of other organic or inorganic dirt. Some people chant the mantra “dirt is not hametz ” during their Pesah cleaning, in order to excuse a less than thorough job. But most Jews who clean for Passover don’t take advantage of such halakhic loopholes. They intuitively understand the true reason for the prohibition against hametz , and take advantage of the elimination of hametz as an opportunity to clean the house thoroughly in every respect. We are asked to renew ourselves entirely each spring: to cleanse our houses of the past. Leaven is just a particularly stubborn form of dirt chaining us to the past, dirt that can only be cleansed by means of a seven-day matzah diet.

May we be blessed with true renewal this year at the Festival of the month of Aviv – in our souls, in our homes, in our borders, and the world over.

Photo: Handmade shmura matzo.
By Yoninah – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57721084