My younger daughter and I made matzah yesterday evening. (It’s surprisingly easy). I do this most years in preparation for Passover and we use the homemade matzah to fulfill the mitzvah of eating matzah at the seder. My daughter begged to help me; making matzah is a lot of fun for kids.

I had this moment of realization while making the matzah that seems to strike me every year, as if for the first time. While squishing the dough between my fingers, I remembered why all matzah must be baked before the holiday begins. Once Passover starts, no more matzah can be made.

The reason is surprising, simple and paradoxical: It is impossible to make matzah without also making chameitz.

So, I need to give a bit of background here. Matzah is the flat, unleavened bread that is eaten during Passover as a sacred obligation. It is made by combining flour and water, mixing them quickly, and placing the flattened dough into a very hot oven within eighteen minutes, before it has time to rise.

We usually think of chameitz as the opposite of matzah. It is any food made from grain that is not matzah. Bread, cookies, cake, beer, pasta, cereal and grain-based liquors are all examples of chameitz. All are forbidden during Passover. Chameitz, during Passover, represents our “puffy” egos and inflated sense of self. Not only is it not permitted to eat these foods, according to traditional Jewish law, one is not even permitted to own chameitz during Passover. 

And this is the reason why you cannot make matzah during Passover. In the simple act of combining flour and water, chameitz is a necessary by-product. Any water-flour combination that does not enter the oven within eighteen minutes becomes chameitz. 

As I was making the matzah with my daughter, we were constantly cleaning off the white, sticky dough that covered the rolling pins, the counter, our hands and our aprons like glue. All of it becomes chameitz; all of it would be forbidden to be in our house after Passover begins on Friday evening.

This is the paradox of matzah and chameitz. They are not really opposites. Rather, the distinction is only in the arbitrary conceit that flour and water turn into chameitz in eighteen minutes. Matzah and chameitz are separated only by the fire of the oven and the fire of our imaginations. 

There is a teaching about this narrow distinction between matzah and chameitz based on the similar spellings of the two words in Hebrew. Matzah is spelled mem, tzadi, hey. chameitz is tzadi, mem, chet. The two words are as close to each other as the two letters hey (ה) and chet (ח)—distinguished only by a small gap in the hey. The only difference between matzah and chameitz is in that gap, a narrow space in which we allow God to enter.

The fact that we cannot make matzah without making chameitz reminds us during Passover that we cannot create any holiness in our lives without also introducing the possibility of its shadow. We cannot make ourselves more holy without also introducing arrogance and self-aggrandizement into our egos. We cannot purify ourselves spiritually without also risking the possibility that we will thereby separate ourselves from others. Like matzah and chameitz, sacred holiness and gross arrogance are not really opposites. They are separated only by the small gap of how we invite God into our consciousness.

The matzah we made with our own hands is, like us, both spiritual and earthy. It is bound up in the sweat and labor of ploughing fields, growing grain, grinding, kneading and baking. At the same time, it is elevated to the sacred by careful attention to our intentions. By noticing the subtle differences between pious humility and arrogant self-righteousness, between hey and chet, between matzah and chameitz, we discover how we can be both material and divine.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Shabbat HaChodesh: The Death of Little Things
Bedikat Chameitz

There is no Jewish ritual that requires more planning than the Passover seder. It is not just the cleaning and removal of chameitz from the house. It is not just the meal planning, the shopping, the baking and cooking. It is not just setting the table, reviewing the Haggadah, and planning the seder. On top of all of that, the really hard part is doing it all in ways that inspire us, spiritually move us, and fill us with joy. 

Here are some ways to plan joy into your seder:

1) Answering children's questions is the main purpose of the seder and it is the experience that gives the seder a heart and soul. Get started early on helping the children attending your seder to have questions that they are genuinely curious about. Read Passover stories with them and start writing down the questions they ask. Even better, get them to tell you the story and find the questions together with them. The haggadah reminds us that we have an obligation to teach each child in a way that is appropriate to his or her abilities and interests. Make sure that you get older and more curious children to ask deeper questions in a way that will keep them interested—How do we experience slavery in our lives today? Where is Pharaoh in the world today and where is Pharaoh in our own hearts?

2) Keep a balance between traditions and new innovations. Many of the joys of the seder come from doing things exactly as they have been done in the past—with cherished ritual objects, favorite recipes, and the little details that make the seder your own. Be aware, though, of the places where traditions have outlived their purpose or have grown stale. My family use to conduct our seder under a tent in the living room as a way to give us more room and make the seder more exciting for the kids. After a few years, though, the innovation turned into a just another "thing we're supposed to do," so we dropped it. Try at least one new thing every year.

3) Don't turn the Haggadah into an idol. I love the poetry of the Haggadah, but I know that there are plenty of seders in which reading the words becomes more important than finding meaning in them. It is helpful to remember that the Haggadah developed over centuries. In its original form, the Haggadah was little more than an outline of topics and a series of suggestions for conducting the seder. Give the Haggadah its due, but make sure its message doesn't get swallowed up in its words.

4) Sing. Sing. Sing. The seder has some of the funniest and oddest music in the entire repertoire of Jewish liturgy. Enjoy it and sing it out. When else during the Jewish year do we sing a sacred song about how "it would have been enough" for God to deliver us from Egypt even if we never got the Torah? How odd is it that we ask our children to sing a song of questions that we never completely answer? Who can explain a song that is the Jewish equivalent of "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly"? Have fun with them all.

5) Share your seder. There is a moment in the seder in which we open the door and invite all who are hungry to join us. It should not be just a symbolic gesture. There are plenty of people who hunger for food and there are plenty of people who hunger for spiritual and community connection. Invite them to your seder and discover how much more joyful your seder can be when you welcome others to join you, especially those who may not otherwise have any seder to attend.

What are your suggestions for a more joyful seder? Let us know in the comments.

Nisan, of course, is also the month of Pesach (Passover), the most labor-intensive holiday of the year. For many families, Rosh Chodesh Nisan marks the beginning of the long process of cleaning out the entire house of chameitz (any food made from grain that is not matzah) and getting ready for the seder. This is, in fact, what the Israelites did to prepare for the first Pesach when they were still slaves in Egypt. We read in Parashat Bo:

Adonai said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, "This month is your first new month of the months of the year. Tell the whole community of Israel, 'On the tenth day of this month, each of you will take a lamb (or kid) to your household, one lamb for each family.… It will be yours to watch over until the fourteenth of this month, when you will slaughter it, all of the gathered community of Israel, at twilight.'… In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, in the evening, you shall eat matzah until the twenty-first day of the month, in the evening. For seven days, nothing leavened shall be found in your house, for anyone who eats chameitz, that person shall be cut off from the community of Israel, whether stranger or citizen of the land." (Exodus 12:1-3, 6, 18-19)

Imagine. From the tenth day of the month, each family had that little lamb or baby goat in their home. They heard it bleating for its mother. The children played with it. 

For more than four days the Israelites watched over that little animal, knowing what its fate would be as they cleaned out the chameitz from the entire house. They knew that, once their work was done, it would be more than a meal. It would be their escape from the angel of death and a ticket to freedom. The blood of the baby animal would be painted above the doors of their houses. The meat would be the main course, eaten with matzah and bitter herbs, at the first seder. 

This is what it means to prepare for the seder, to prepare for our freedom. It means painfully watching the death of something that you have gotten used to. It means allowing yourself to be uncomfortable about saying goodbye. It means constantly having to remind yourself that there is a good reason for going through all of this. Slavery is hard. Giving up slavery can be hard, too.

There is still real slavery in this world, but most of us will never know it. (Be grateful for that.) On Pesach, we can focus on a different kind of slavery. It is the slavery of all the habits and bad behaviors that we cling to—the way we won't give up eating things we shouldn't, using our power in ways we know we shouldn't, giving in to our anger and fear in ways that hurt us. Letting go of all that is more difficult and more painful than scrubbing the bottom of the bread drawer or cleaning out the black gunk stuck the inside walls of the refrigerator.

Preparing for Pesach is intense and it is meant to be difficult. This Shabbat, we remember what it means to prepare for a new beginning and to suffer over the little things that we fear to let die. We just have to remind ourselves, over and over, that it is our ticket to a new world of freedom.


Other Posts on This Topic:
Bedikat ChameitzShabbat HaChodesh: Prepare for Freedom!

"Adonai, our God, You redeemed us from Egypt and You rescued us from the house of bondage. You slew all their firstborn and You redeemed Your own firstborn. You split the waters of the Sea of Reeds. You drowned the wicked; You saved the beloved. The waters covered their enemies and not one of them was left." 

That is part of the traditional text of the Ge'ulah blessing—the blessing for redemption—that is recited every morning right after the recitation of the Shema. (This part of the blessing is edited out of Reform prayerbooks). 

Tradition says that today, the seventh day of Pesach, is the anniversary of that day when God parted the waters for the Israelites and allowed the sea to come crashing down on Pharaoh's army. We've been paying for it ever since.

The rabbis of the midrash and the Talmud cringed at the thought that God would choose to murder the Egyptians in order to rescue the Israelites. According to one midrash, God shushes the angels in heaven when they cheer the destruction of the Egyptians.  "My creatures are drowning," says God to the angels, "and you would sing praises to Me?"

As I look at the words of the Ge'ulah blessing tonight, though, I notice for the first time that the wording is ambiguous. Who is wicked? Who is beloved? Whose heads were covered with water? Such ambiguity cries out to be interpreted.  Why couldn't the prayer just say, "You drowned the Egyptians and You saved us"?  There has to be a reason.

The reason, I think, is to remind us that it could just as easily be the other way around. God does not favor Israel just because it is Israel. God does not punish Israel's enemies just because they are our enemies. That kind of easy triumphalism is exactly what the author of the blessing wants to avoid. There is no promise that Israel is the redeemed in the text, just the possibility of being the saved beloved, which exists alongside the possibility of being the wicked drowned.

"Egypt" (Mitzrayim, in Hebrew) is not just a country in the rabbinic imagination. It is the very idea of the human ego running amok with self-adoration. Mitzrayim is the place of narrowness (the word tzar, hidden within "Mitzrayim," means "narrow.") It is the place where we put on the blinders that keep our vision from expanding to include anything but ourselves. The rabbis were right to cringe. It wasn't an army of Egyptians that God chose to wipe out. It was the egotism that allows human beings to see only themselves until not one other human being is left.

The idea that we would think ourselves great because God saved us from Mitzrayim is the very opposite of the lesson intended from this story. The Ge'ulah blessing had to be written in a way that denied the self-congratulatory reading. Our joy on the seventh day of Pesach is not the product of thinking ourselves special or superior. Rather, it is the joy of humility that we experience when we realize that we are loved despite ourselves.

The seventh day of Pesach is a major festival day, a festival of humility. Unlike every other major pilgrimage festival day of the year, we recite only the short version of the hallel psalms today. We remind ourselves not to be too loud when we praise God for transforming us from slaves into free people. This day is set aside for recognizing that the deepest joy is not the joy of boasting. Rather, it is what we experience when we take off the blinders and see a world much bigger and richer than it could be if it were our invention alone.

Tonight, my children and I performed one of their favorite rituals, and I have to admit that it is one of mine, too.

I brought them down to the bottom of the stairs in the dining room, which was in total darkness, and asked my older daughter to light the candle while her sister held the feather and the large wooden spoon.  I held the paper bag. Together, we made the blessing for the search for chameitz (leavening). 

Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu melech ha'olam asher kid'shanu b'mitzvotav, v'tzivanu al biur chameitz.  Blessed are you, Adonai our God, Source of all being, who makes us holy with mitzvot, and commands us to remove chameitz.

I told the girls that our search for the ten pieces of bread (which they knew I had hidden a few minutes before) would be done only by the light of the candle and, as much as possible, in silence. We were searching not only for pieces of bread, but also searching ourselves for all the stuck places in our hearts where we wish to free ourselves. The two of them started wandering through the house, holding back their squeals of delight each time one of them spotted a square of quartered sandwich bread. The feather would come out to sweep it into the spoon and then the spoon would deposit it into the bag.

Why do my girls love this ritual so much? Of course, there is the excitement of knowing that Pesach (Passover) begins tomorrow night. There is also the fun of carrying the lit candle through the house and playing with the props of feather and spoon. Maybe that's it.  Maybe they also really like seeing how seriously I take all the Pesach preparation and give them their own special role in all the madness. Maybe, they also get some of the deeper stuff. Maybe.

I know why I love this ritual. I love the way we use rituals to do the impossible and pretend that we have accomplished a miracle.  We are supposed to rid our homes on this night of every vestige of leavening. Every single molecule of grain in the house is to be hunted down and exterminated so that the festival can be celebrated in a state of purity and perfection. We pretend that it is so, and in so doing, we really do perform a miracle. 

It is the miracle of creating within our souls the memory of deliverance. We were slaves and now we are free. Our imperfect lives — so filled with so many forms of self-imposed servitude — are redeemable. We are made free with a word, a spoon and a feather.

The pieces of bread are all gathered in the bag.  (Well, actually, all but the one that the dog found and ate while I was trying to find a feather.) Tomorrow morning I'll burn the bag on my driveway and utter a formula declaring my home to be free of chameitz. I'll be ready to sing the songs and drink the cups of wine at the seder tomorrow night.  I'll know, against all material evidence to the contrary, that I personally was delivered from slavery in Mitzrayim. A miracle.

Tonight, my children and I performed one of their favorite rituals, and I have to admit that it is one of mine, too.

This coming Shabbat is Shabbat HaChodesh. It is the fourth of the four special Shabbatot before Pesach (Passover).

The Jewish calendar sets periods of preparation before major holidays that require special spiritual attention. The month of Elul is a time to prepare for Rosh HaShanah and the Days of Awe. The Omer period is often interpreted as a seven-week period of purification for receiving the Torah on Shavuot. Similarly, the first two weeks of the month of Nisan, which begins this coming Monday night, is a time to prepare ourselves spiritually for the liberation of Pesach.

The special haftarah for Shabbat HaChodesh includes a passage from the prophet Ezekiel (45:16-46:18) that describes the sacrifices offered at the Temple during the first two weeks of Nisan. In particular, the first and seventh days of Nisan are marked by special offerings to cleanse the Temple. Interestingly, the seventh day is for cleansing the Temple "from the uncleanness caused by unwitting or ignorant persons" (Ezekiel 45:20).

What could this mean for us? How do we prepare the sanctuary of our hearts to joyfully wipe away our own unwitting ignorance as we prepare for the holiday of liberation? 

Ignorance is the enemy of freedom, just as mindful awareness is the enemy of oppression.  This year, to make ourselves truly ready to become free from Mitzrayim--the place of narrow imagination and confined spirit—we can make a special intention to take off the blinders of ignorance and indifference to see the world around us. When we do, we can discover the joy of connecting ourselves to the highest aspirations of human beings around the world for freedom.

These last few months have been momentous for the cause of liberty. Change is sweeping the Middle East and Northern Africa as people long inured to dictatorship are fighting for a new age of democracy. Just as the people of Egypt, Tunisia, Libia, Yemen, Syria, Saudi Arabia and other nations are shaking off decades of passivity and fear, we can begin to support them by opening our hearts and minds to their cause. 

In response to the nuclear disaster in Japan, people across the globe are speaking up and demanding a sane energy policy based on safe and renewable energy sources. To make this Pesach a meaningful holiday, it is time to cleanse ourselves of our ignorance about the price the earth pays for our addiction to unsustainable energy sources. 

As we enter Nisan, let us joyfully prepare ourselves for the celebration of freedom by washing away our indifference to changes that can help renew the world.