Slavery is not something that happened only to the children of Israel more than 3,000 years ago. Jewish tradition teaches that “each person must see himself as if he personally had come out of Egypt.”
There are many elements in Jewish tradition that correspond to the Feast of Passover, but not all of them are necessarily found in the Scriptures. The most emblematic of these elements is, without a doubt, the Passover lamb, which was required from the very first Passover in the land of Egypt. Later, each year in the land of Israel, one lamb per family had to be taken to Jerusalem to be sacrificed in the Temple.
Since the year 70 CE, when the Temple was destroyed by the Romans, the Passover lamb has no longer been sacrificed. Instead, Jewish people today remember it with a simple lamb bone placed on the traditional seder plate, which contains many other elements that are not necessarily commanded in the Torah.
Aside from the lamb, there are not many commandments in the Torah about what must be done on Passover or exactly how it must be done. One of the few commandments about what to eat appears in the same verse where the commandment to eat the lamb is found:
And they shall eat the flesh that night, roasted with fire, and unleavened bread (matzot); with bitter herbs (merorim) they shall eat it.
Exodus 12:8
We can observe that in Hebrew there are two completely different words for leavened bread (lechem) and unleavened bread (matzah). Matzot is simply the plural of matzah. Matzah was not a type of bread accidentally created when the people of Israel left Egypt in a hurry. Rather, this type of bread had always existed and was commonly prepared in Middle Eastern culture and throughout the world.
In the case of Passover – Pesach, we are given a reason why we must eat matzah, and it is so that we may remember that “we came out of the land of Egypt” (Deut. 16:3). Here, matzah is also called the “bread of affliction.”
Merorim is the plural of maror, which comes from the word mar, meaning bitter. The bitterness also comes from Egypt — from remembering our slavery.
Slavery is not something that happened only to the children of Israel more than 3,000 years ago. Jewish tradition teaches that “each person must see himself as if he personally had come out of Egypt.” And this is true. Slavery is personal, and it is rooted in the mind. Affliction and bitterness have to do with living a life enslaved to sin.
Our celebration, therefore, has to do with the personal deliverance of the Almighty from this slavery.
And if we have been set free, what then is the point of matzah and bitter herbs?
We must know where we come from. We must remember our past and know our history, know whom we used to serve, if we are going to live a life of freedom. And we must teach this to our children, if we do not want them to return to that slavery from which the Eternal has set us free.
2 Responses
Is it the feast of unleavened bread?
Yes, it is the same.