A Modern Day Midrash:
If our ancient forebears watched us flocking to the stores and buying cellophane- wrapped boxes of matzah and heard about all the fences the rabbis erected around the matzah, they would laugh.
They would tell us: “Look, we needed to eat but also be ready at a moment’s notice to get up and leave. So instead of the usual bread we had the time to let rise properly and bake, we took a little flour and mixed in a little water and we slapped it out in rounds, much like naan or tortillas or Moroccan flat bread or pita or any middle eastern style unleavened flat bread, cooked it hurriedly over our hearth, and we were ready to leave and escape to freedom. You’re making entirely too big of a deal out of this whole matzah thing. You have come to worship the bread like you do the sefer Torah. Is the Torah the scroll, or is it the words we take into our hearts? Is the seder what you have written in your booklets or the story of slavery and liberation you have experienced in your own life like we did? Is the tedious process of cleaning out chametz in your house, and the practice of “selling” it (on paper) so as not to appear to own it, in reality a poor substitute for looking at the chametz in your souls?
Really, Pesach is about looking in your souls and finding your constrictions, and experiencing with us those moments of moving out of slavery and into freedom. You have made your modern day Pesach customs your new enslavement to form, not even seeing that you have done so. Pesach is here to tell you: BE FREE! Root out the Pharaohs in your minds and hearts! And sometimes, that might include those old restrictive ways which you have outgrown. Entirely too many rules! Too many fences! Too many complications! Don’t be a Jew who keeps the rules and forgets the soul of the matter.”
Passover is a time to question everything. So we ask, why do Ashkenazi Jews eat hard thin matzah out of boxes and are forbidden to eat even a speck of corn, rice, or legumes during Pesach, (and by extension anything having ANY of these ingredients, which would include anything with corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup in it––try finding a convenience food without that!), while Sephardi Jews eat soft, pliable matzah and corn, rice, and legumes during the same holy festival?
First, a bit of background . . .
In Europe, matzah became less soft because of the way Europeans make bread in general, because European ovens are very different than Middle Eastern ovens.
In European ovens, a large box is filled with hot air and it is the hot air itself that cooks the bread. This hot air dries out the outer layers of bread. So Europeans bake very large/thick breads, so even if the outside is dry, there is still a soft center. But thin flatbreads will just become dried out and very unpleasant to eat in such an oven.
So European Jews (Ashlenazim) became so accustomed to their ovens that when reading halakhic texts they erroneously thought the word תַּנּוּר (tanoor) refers to their type of ovens which cooks via warm air.
The reality is that תַּנּוּר (tanoor) is related to all Middle Eastern type ovens (and in fact the Indian Tandoor oven even shares the same name). These ovens cook very thin breads primarily using hot surfaces, not hot air. So when the Bible, or the Shulchan Arukh of Yosef Karo speak of ovens/תַּנּוּר, they mean an oven which cooks bread by means of a hot surface, not hot air.
So originally, European Jews made their matzah thicker, so that it still had a soft center, but a crisp outer surface. Then they started making their matzah thinner and thinner based on the opinions like that of the Rema, and then the thin matzah would become dried out and hard in the European style ovens.
Eventually, the European Jews adopted the custom of poking holes in the matzah to cause the moisture to escape rather than allowing it to bubble on the bread, because they feared that these bubbles were actually chametz, although we know they are not chametz, but just the moisture in the bread releasing steam and causing air pockets as it cooks. Thinner and thinner matzah with holes poked in it further dried out the matzah.
About that same time, the industrial revolution took over, and the matzah factories figured out they could create machines to mix drier and drier doughs, creating a very shelf stable matzah that could be transported, sold, and stored for years. It became a corporate decision to industrialize the manufacture of matzah and sell it in cellophane wrapped boxes for maximum shelf life, convenience, and corporate profit, and eventually convincing U.S. Jews that this is the only kind of matzah that is kosher for Passover!
Basically, what makes matzah into nearly inedible cracker like boards are how thin they are rolled out (for faster bake times) and the perforations rolled into the dough. This allows air to escape during baking. The earliest opinion concerning this type of cracker-like matzah came from the Rema (Rabbi Moshe Isserles of the 16th century) who held that matzah should be rekikin (defined by some as wafer-like or thin). (Rema, Shulchan Aruch 460:4) A commentator to the Rema, the Baer HeiTeiv (1730 - 1770) noted that soft matzahs were available still in his era.
So then, the cracker-like matzahs were a result of mass production and the need to keep them shelf stable for longer. Soft matzahs, like any soft bread––flat or otherwise––do not have a long shelf life. Supply and demand, corporate profit, industrialization, and convenience all conscripted to convince U.S. Jews that boxed matzah is the way to go.
Although it appears that many Ashkenazic Jews came to assume that perforating matzah dough was a requirement for it to be considered kosher for Passover, Rav Hershel Schachter holds that this is not a requirement, and that Ashkenazic Jews can eat Sephardic soft matzah, citing as authority the Mishna B’rurah who speaks of Matzah made as soft as a sponge, which can be used for the Mitzvah of eating Matzah.
When the Shulchan Arukh mentions the methods of cooking matzah, all of them involve cooking matzah with a hot surface, and not hot air. Our modern ovens cook with hot air, not a hot surface.
The matzah of the ancient Hebrews was not cracker like. It was flour and water mixed together and patted out, cooked over a very hot surface quickly.
We can do this today by putting a very hot, dry skillet on the burners to make flat bread, or in a tandoor oven or similar.
Several matzot can be made in less than 18 minutes using this method, although if someone is constantly moving the dough before it is rolled out and cooked, the 18 minute rule doesn’t even apply. It’s only when the dough is left to sit still for 18 minutes that the natural process of fermentation begins. (The Shulchan Arukh says that from the moment the flour and water touch, if not continuously worked, it takes the time of an average person to walk a mile for the dough to become chametz, which is further specified as 18 minutes. So as long as the dough is continuously worked before being rolled out and baked, it does not become chametz even if it goes beyond 18 minutes.)
If you go to Yemen, or to Yemenite Jewish neighborhoods in Israel, you can still find soft matzah. In fact, soft unleavened flatbreads can be found around the world!
It is this kind of soft, pliable, unleavened flatbread that is similar to what the Jews of the Exodus carried with them as they left, as Exodus 12:34 teaches us, that the Jews took their matzahs bound up in their clothes and carried them on their shoulders. Today’s Ashkenazi/U.S. cracker-like matzahs would break under those conditions, but not Sephardic matzahs.
Passover and non-Passover matzah may be soft or crisp, but only the crisp cracker type is available commercially in most locations. Soft matzah, if it were commercially available, would essentially be similar to a kosher flour tortilla.
Finally, why are Ashkenazi Jews forbidden to eat even a speck of corn, rice, or legumes during Pesach, and by extension anything having ANY of these ingredients, while Sephardic Jews are not? Because the Ashkenazi rabbis were much much stricter, and put up much higher fences around the mitzvot, not wanting Ashkenazim to eat anything which might be mistaken for that which is forbidden. Beans and corn and rice (kitniyot) can all be ground into flour and the flour used to make bread, and the rabbis were afraid the people would become confused and accidentally eat forbidden bread, so they ruled all kitniyot were forbidden.
Sephardic rabbis knew the people would not only know the difference, and were closer to the source when it came to the original Middle Eastern ancient Hebrew diet. European Jews had acculturated very far away from Middle Eastern diets.
Today, we have the luxury of choosing our diets from almost any in the world. From the Standard American, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, German, Italian, Spanish, Mexican, Asian . . . we can choose to make more healthful choices.
I’ll be making my own Sephardic flat bread matzah this year, and I’m excited about it! I’ve always followed more of the Sephardic customs than the Ashkenazic anyway, not being raised with any particular Jewish customs, so it’s time I also kicked the matzah crackers to the curb as well.
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