Dr. Sheryl Beller-Kenner is member of a local synagogue and married to one of the parishioners of St. Ansgar's. Our Jewish brethren began celebrating the Passover with the first Seder on Monday evening, April 5 and so the pastor invited her to prepare some commentary for our Easter Sunday service.
Passover is one of the most important celebrations in the Jewish faith, as Easter is for you. The Seder, which is the Passover meal, is a way for Jews to remember the wonderful story of the liberation of the Israelites, starting in the slave camps of Egypt and ending in the land God had promised them. Through the centuries, it has become important that this journey from slavery to freedom remain a living, personal experience and not just a page in a history book. As it is stated in Exodus 12:26-27, we are obligated to pass the story on to each following generation every year. I am touched and truly honored to have been invited here today to share it with you.
In the time of Jesus the Jewish people observed this festival much as we do now. According to Luke 2:41-42, as a youth, Jesus himself observed it with his own family. By better understanding the meaning of bread during Passover and at the Seder, believed to be the Last Supper, which Jesus shared with his disciples in the upper room on the night before his death, you can experience the close connection that Jews and Christians share.
Bread is a theme that is central to Passover. During Passover, Jews are obligated to eat matzah, which is unleavened bread, and prohibited from eating chametz, which are leavened products.
Why matzah at Passover?? We bake flat, crisp matzah in order to reenact the Exodus, when the Israelites fled Egypt in a hurry; Exodus 12:14-15 states: "You shall eat matzot during seven days..., for you departed Egypt in great haste." Matzah is the most simple, essential form of bread you can have. If you let 18 minutes pass when you're kneading dough, it starts to leaven. Yeast bacteria found in the air cause fermentation. This puffing up -- the rising which the yeast produces -- symbolizes a person's own inflation with himself. The fermentation that makes the chametz represents negative forces -¬the inclination to evil, the urge to sin.
What is the difference between chametz and matzah? Time. Nothing else. The ingredients are the same. Because matzah is bread that is not leavened, it represents man in control of his passions -exercising his independent, disciplined will. Matzah teaches that to really be in control of yourself, you need to know what you want - plain, without the luxuries. This doesn't mean luxuries are wrong -unless you feel that they are essential to your life. If your ego gets in the way, you lose sight of what really counts.
In preparation for Passover, traditional Jews totally eliminate chametz from the house and the diet. By not eating chametz, we rid ourselves of arrogance and self-centeredness. Like the Israelites who broke away from accepting slavery and idolatry in Egypt, we sweep away whatever it is that binds us to meaningless acts. When we eat matzah, we get back to essentials. We focus on what really counts. We internalize the quality of humility.
In Deuteronomy 16:3, matzah is called lechem oni, "the bread of poverty". In the Passover Hagaddah, the book we read from at the seder, matzah was also called "the bread of affliction"-- the food of slavery. It was the meager meal given to the Israelites by their Egyptian masters, who did not want the slaves to be strong -- only to survive.
Matzah is also called the bread of our liberation, as it was the first food we ate when we were no longer slaves. How can the same bread of affliction also be a metaphor for freedom? It is how one views the matzah that decides whether it is the bread of liberty or of servitude. When the hard crust was given to the Israelites by the Egyptians, the matzah they ate in passivity was the bread of meagerness and slavery, but when they went into the desert because they were determined to be free, when they refused to delay freedom rather than wait for the bread to rise, the hard crust became the bread of freedom.
At the beginning of the Pesah seder, we raise the matzah to announce that we are going to re-live the experience of the Jews in Egypt. The leader holds up the matzah and declares, "Ha Lahma Anya - This is the bread of poverty and persecution that our ancestors ate in the Land of Egypt. All who are hungry come and eat. All who are in need, come and share the Pesach meal." A person who has suffered readily identifies with the needs of others. At the same time, as we say these words we lift our eyes from the Haggadah and address those who are with us at the seder table. We reflect on our feelings for family and for friends; we let them know that their needs are important to us: that we are concerned, that we care, and that we will always be there.
There are three matzot symbolically placed on the table. During the first blessing (Motzi), we hold two whole matzot together, symbolizing the close relationship that exists between our slavery and our redemption. We could not have been redeemed had we not been enslaved. This reminds us of the wholeness in our lives that is only possible with freedom. We also recognize that we are not fully free unless we are working to free others. When we recite the second blessing (al akhilat matzah), we grasp the broken piece of the center matzah. This emphasizes the broken experience of slavery. Our people learned a great deal from being broken. We learned how to live as strangers in other lands. We learned how to treat strangers and how to reach out to them.
Matzah adorns the Seder table to make us re-examine where we have gone in the course of the previous year and to measure how close or far we have come from the ideals of Torah. In so many ways, matzah symbolizes everything the Jew is supposed to strive to become. The matzah is a reminder that tomorrow will not necessarily be like today, that, through action and devotion, freedom is possible and redemption is at hand.
Dr. Sheryl Beller-Kenner
April 11, 2004