As we are nearing Passover, also known as Chag Hamatzot, the holiday of Matzah, the ninth grade Jewish Studies class is asking all possible questions about Matzah.
The students are working collaboratively on a PowerPoint presentation preparing parents to answer almost every possible question about the making and eating of Matzah. At the same time, we are learning about the many meanings of this ancient symbolic food.
Matzah is mentioned in the Torah before the Passover, so how did it become such a meaningful symbolic food?
Does Matzah signify the taste of freedom or the taste of slavery?
It seems like there are two sides to Matzah: practical and figurative. It was a fast food that could be made for unexpected guests (see Avraham and Sarah). However, on that special night when Pharaoh finally conceded to let his slaves worship their God in the desert for three days (you might have thought differently but Moses’s request to "Let My People Go" was only for three days' leave; never did he tell Pharaoh that this was a plot for running away), it took on a very different meaning.
As Egypt's end to slavery became a distant past, parents were looking for a concrete way to help them transform history to memory.
History is what happened to those people, over there, back then.
Memory is what happened to US.
I wish you all a meaningful seder full of honest questioning, enlightening conversation, and delicious Matzah.
Shabbat Shalom,
Mr. Carmi, Jewish Studies Teacher
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