On Pesach we relive the Exodus from Egypt and so in our davening we refer to Pesach as, “the time of our freedom” – our liberation from being a nation of slaves to the Egyptians. Seder-night is when we really bring to life the freedom experience and it revolves around the symbol of freedom – the matzah.
However there is a paradox in the Matzah because just as the Matzah is the symbol of our freedom, it is also the symbol of our slavery. On a physical level we understand how the Matzah represents both freedom and slavery. We start off the Hagadah by announcing , “this [the matzah] is the poor mans’ bread that our forefathers ate when they were in Egypt”. The Matzah was what the Egyptian fed the slaves.
Yet towards the end of ‘Maggid’ we hold up the Matzah and say, “This Matzah that we eat, why do we eat it? Because our forefathers’ bread had no time to become ‘chometz’ before the King of all kings revealed Himself to us and redeemed us from Egypt”.
Before we understand the dichotomy of the Matzah, let us first explain how the Matzah represents another aspect of our slavery – the part that the Ohr Ha’Chaim [1696-1743] calls the main point of the slavery; namely the spiritual slavery. In fact he posits that the physical one was just a manifestation of the spiritual one! But how do we see the spiritual side of the slavery and freedom in the Matzah?
R’ Mandelbaum explains that spiritual slavery is seen in the Matzah because the Matzah cannot rise, it has no yeast in it. It is stuck in the form that it is. No opportunity to be expansive, to open up and be achieving, it’s just stuck in its present state, with no opening for growth. This is a spiritual slavery, where one cannot grow and advance.
The Maharal [1520-1609] explains how we see spiritual freedom in the Matzah. We know that Matzah is made up of just flour and water – the bare essentials. No salt, sugar, yeast or the like, just the bare necessities. This is what real spiritual freedom is, to be oneself, ones real self, no fopping or peer pressure to hide the real you. When we face up to who we really are we are truly free.
A few years ago my father-in-law at his Seder played the following game. A bag was passed round the table; in it were various household articles – a hanger, a ball of string, a teddy bear, a toothbrush and many more things. What everyone at the table had to do on their turn was to pick a random thing from the bag, hold it up and explain how the thing they held represented slavery. The he passed the item to the person to his right who had to hold it up and explain how that very same thing represented freedom!
For example, one person picked up the ball of string and said, “String can tie you up and make you all restricted – that’s slavery”. To his right the next guest said, “Life with no strings attached – that’s freedom!”
The point of the game explained my father-in-law, was to show how everything in life is subjective. The very same item can represent one thing to you, but the exact opposite thing to another person. The matzah itself shows us this point – depending on our mind-set it can either be a symbol of freedom, or of slavery – it’s all in the mind.
Real freedom [or slavery for that matter] is all in the mind. Nothing is absolute; it’s just our attitude to it that determines whether it is going to free us or to restrict us. The 613 Mitzvahs could be seen as 613 restrictions or can been seen as 613 ‘advisory notes’ as the Zohar calls them – that advise us how to maximize life.
A famous survivor from the camps said that the Nazis may have had more liberty then the inmates to choose what to do and when but this did not make them more free then us – they could never take away our freedom, our mind. In mind, the prisoners could be more free then the SS officers.
There is a fabulous Chasam Sofer [1762-1839] who uses this idea to answer up two ambiguous verses. In the battle of the four kings against the five kings, Lot is captured. The verse reads, “And they took Lot and all his possessions … and he was residing in Sodom”. In the Hebrew, the phase “and he was residing” is written in the present tense, as if to say he was now living there. Seeing as he had been uprooted from where he lived, it is impossible to say that he was presently living in Sodom?!
Explains the Chasam Sofer with the same fundamental lesson that comes out of the Matzah on Seder night. A person is governed by his mind. A person can be physically in one place, but mentally in a different place. The kings had captured Lot and he was now under their jurisdiction, but mentally Lot was as connected as ever to his hometown – Sodom. Now, in the present Lot was physically in captivity but he remained back at home in his mind!
This beautiful example brings out how our physical situation is totally irrelevant to how we feel. We can eat the same thing that we ate as slaves only now we eat it in freedom.
Good Shabbos,
Yaakov
