bat tables, why do we spend the days
before Passover stalking chametz —
searching out every last crumb, spring
cleaning the whole house in case
there's a bit of a pretzel in the dust
under the bed? Why does holy bread
turn unholy in the month between the
full moon of Purim and the full moon
of Passover?
Of course we don't usually think
this seriously about what's crumby.
For most of us, stalking chametz is
child's play. My sister tells me that
when her kids were very young, she
took them through the house the
night before Passover with a feather
and a flashlight,
the flashlight an
update of the
traditional can-
dle, searching for
the last bits of
chametz in the
house. This is
after the house
already has been
swept and
cleaned; after the
last loaves of
bread and boxes
of Cheerios have
been munched,
and whatever
remains have been
donated to the local food bank, com-
bining two mitzvahs in one. Then the
parents carefully hide 10 pieces of
chametz for the kids to find. When
the search is done, the bits of chametz
are burned in the yard. The house is
ready for Passover.
The first time, when her kids were
very young, my sister left rather large
slices of bread so the kids would be
sure to spot them. The only problem
was, when she took the bread out into
the yard, it wouldn't burn. All she got
was toast.
Yet for all the fun involved, stalking
chametz is one serious mitzvah. We
read in Exodus 12:15 that the penalty
for eating chametz is that the offend-
ing "soul shall be cut off from Israel."
Why should a soul be "cut off" for
the sake of a crumb? Something inter-
esting goes on here, which has to do
with making definite boundaries in
time, transitions from one kind of
consciousness to another, between the
evening before Passover and the start
of the seder. You can't eat leaven, but
you can't eat matzah either. As the
medieval philosopher Maimonides
writes, "The sages have forbidden the
eating of unleavened bread on the eve
of Passover so that there be a recogni-
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tion of its eating in the evening. The
early sages would hunger on the eve of
Passover in order to eat the unleav-
ened bread with good appetite." So,
for one day, you live in the zero degree
of Jewish bread time, the empty pas-
sage between chametz and matzah.
We can understand this bread fast
as an occasion to begin to look
inward. The searching for chametz
goes on, not just under the bed, but in
the heart. As Maimonides, tells us,
commenting on Exodus 12:15, "What
is this removal of which the Torah
speaks? It is that one should annul the
leaven in his heart and consider it as
dust."
What is the chametz in the heart?
We read in the Talmud (Berakhot 17
a), "R. Alexandri on concluding his
prayer used to add the following: Sov-
ereign of the Universe, it is known full
well to Thee that our will is to per-
form Thy will, and what prevents us?
The yeast in the dough."
Chametz represents the ferment of
one's yetzer harah, which is usually
translated as one's evil impulse. But
the concept of yetzer harah is not as
simplistic or dualistic as a little bad
angel perched on the shoulder.
Because the yetzer harah is also the
source of a lot of good in our lives:
our sexual desire, our appetite, our get
up and go. Chametz represents the
puffed up swollen version of our ego
when our constant preoccupation with
our own desires comes at the expense
of any other awareness. That is when
"chametz" cuts off the soul from
Israel; when our self-preoccupation
keeps us from awareness of what our
soul truly desires.
Chametz could be the swollen head
of the corporate professional who
doesn't care that people are thrown
out of work, as long as his personal
portfolio's doing well. It could be the-
seething of the unhappy breadwinner
who works a job he hates, or more
pointedly at this time of year, the fer-
menting frustration of a wife who in
addition to working a job and caring
for her children, has to slave in the
Passover kitchen. Whatever our per-
sonal situation, whatever the nature of
our chametz, the whole purpose of the
seder is to remember the possibility of
freedom. When we change over from
bread to matzah, we are suggesting
that we can make do with less if we
have to, that we don't have to be
enslaved to our jobs, or our taskmaster
egos. (As my teacher Rabbi Zalman
Schachter once remarked, the ego is a
great manager, but a lousy boss.)
Just as the spirit of Passover inspires
us to liberate the poor and hungry
from the slavery of poverty, and
oppressed workers from the slavery of
unfair labor practices, we need to lib-
erate our own minds. If we don't care
enough to free ourselves, how can we
care enough to free others?
We read in the Kabbalistic
understanding of the seder, that the
story of Passover is not a historical
event only, but an event in our con-
sciousness, that we repeat in our lives
again and again because we are always
enslaving ourselves, and always in
need of an exodus from one Egypt
after another. In symbolic language,
Egypt represents our own internal
slavery to a constricted narrow con-
sciousness, the stale bread of daily liv-
ing. Egypt or mitzrayim has the same
root in Hebrew as tsuris, and also of
mitzarim, or the narrow
places, the narrow straits
and constrictions of reflex
thinking. In this
scheme, the Pharaoh
who says to Moses, I
am not aware of
YHVH, represents the
ego, which says, when-
ever I get an inkling
that life is more than
earning bread — "Hey
leave me alone, I'm just
trying to get this body
through life, and I don't
want to hear about the
demands of an outside
awareness — whether of
human suffering, or of
God." (And many would
say, and I'd agree, that
the awareness of human
suffering is an awareness
of God.) The bread of Egypt, the ordi-
nary egotistical leavened bread of our
everyday thinking, is puffed up, and
too full of itself. Rabbi Zalman
Schachter compares that puffed up,
leavened ego state to swollen body tis-
sue, whereas tissue in a healthy state is
flat and dry.
Flat and dry as matzah. To the
Kabbalist matzah represents binah,
divine understanding. It's the pure
light of awareness, a special sacred
light from the first day of creation,
before there was either sun or moon.
To receive such a light, we have to
prepare ourselves.
We read in the Zohar that matzah
is like the special diet prescribed to a
sick person.
Similarly, when the Israelites came
out from Egypt they knew not the essence
and mystery of the Faith. Said the Holy
One: 'Let them taste only the medicinal
food, and before they have finished it be
shown no other food whatsoever' But
when the matzot were finished, which
was the medicine by means of which
they were to enter and to comprehend
the mystery of the Faith, then the Holy
One proclaimed: 'From now on they
may see and eat leavened bread, because
it cannot harm them' [Soncino Zohar,
Shemot, Section 2, 1836].
Our chametz minds need a spring
cleaning in this beautiful month of bur-,-/
geoning new life, the month of Nissan.
Once cured of our chametz conscious-
ness, through the medicine of matzah,
we can go back to our daily bread.
But by then we've already found a
new grain oftruth. On the second
night of Passover we begin
the counting of the
omer, which com-
memorates the spring c
sacrifices in Temple
days, when the new
barley crop was brought
to the Temple. And for
49 days, we say, today is
the first day of the count-
ing of the omer, today is
- the second day and so
on. Many today use this
counting of the omer as a
period of meditation and self-
examination. In these 49 days
of counting the omer, we are
to examine and clarify 49
aspects of our thinking and
behavior. We also move in
story time from the Exodus of
Egypt. On the 50th day, we
arrive at Shavuos, which corn-
memorates the revelation of
the Torah. We have arrived at
Mount Sinai. We have passed from
chametz, to no chametz, to matzah, to
barley, only to arrive once more at
bread. This time, if we are able to
receive it, the bread of wisdom.
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