By Rabbi Efrem Goldberg
Tariffs and free trade. AI and the proliferation of technology. There are many issues of our day that remain complicated. But for each issue that is truly complex, there are issues, policies, and perspectives that are presented as complicated when in truth they should be simple and straightforward.
Matzah, the most important food at our Seder, seems straightforward, but if you think about it, it is actually complicated and confusing. On the one hand, it symbolizes freedom. It is the bread over which we recline like aristocrats as we recount the story of our liberation. On the other hand, it is called “lechem oni,” the bread of affliction. For the bread meant to be a sign of royalty, it is rather bland. The recipe is flour and water. Period. Not only does it not call for other ingredients, any additional item would invalidate it. When you hear someone talk about their sourdough starter, they might use more affectionate and protective words than when they talk about their spouse and children. With matzah, if the dough ferments or processes in any way, if you add ingredients, sweetener or spices, you disqualify it and it cannot be used to fulfill the mitzvah. In food competitions, the taste is only part of the story, the presentation, texture, and appearance are all important. Matzah is asymmetrical, imperfect, basically a bland cracker, dull and simple even in its presentation and appearance. This is the food of royalty?
The Maharal is bothered by this question and in several places, he uses it to explain the fundamental theme of matzah and how in fact it symbolizes freedom, wealth, and royalty. In Gevuras Hashem (36) he explains that we tend to think the more things we have, the more complex and complicated our portfolio, the more intricate, sophisticated, and extravagant our possessions, the more it reflects wealth, freedom, and affluence. But the Maharal says the opposite. The more we depend on fancy things, fancy experiences, and even fancy ideas, the more we are enslaved to them, beholden to them, and reliant on them. To be truly free, to be actually wealthy, is to embrace simplicity, pashtus. The less we depend on externals, on what an object or experience can provide, the freer we are from them.
The Maharal explains that lechem oni doesn’t mean bread of affliction, that those who eat it are suffering. He translates it as bread of oni, of living without, which doesn’t lead to affliction and suffering; it leads to freedom and liberation. When you depend on worldly or material things or on superficial experiences, you are not free. Freedom is a return to pashtus, to simplicity, to the plain and uncomplicated. Only the one who can live with oni and without worldly things is truly free and wealthy because they are not dependent on anything. To be clear, we don’t eat matzah the whole year. There is nothing wrong with enjoying some yeast, some leaven, some of that sourdough. But for one week, we demonstrate our freedom from those things so that even when we return to them, we do so by seeing them as luxuries, as external to who we are, not necessities, not something we can’t live without.
Warren Buffett is an incredibly wealthy man. Most would assume I say that because he is worth $139 billion. But that isn’t why. The 93-year-old has lived in the same modest house in Omaha, Nebraska for 66 years. When asked why he never upgraded, he said, “I’m happy there. I’d move if I thought I’d be happier someplace else. This house does just fine. I’m warm in the winter, I’m cool in the summer; it’s convenient for me. I couldn’t imagine having a better house.” The founder of Berkshire Hathaway, one of the richest men in the entire world, only swapped his flip phone for a smartphone in 2020. Buffett is free not because of his tremendous wealth, but because he doesn’t depend on it for happiness.
Others, too, are craving this wealth of simple living. There is a big movement towards getting rid of smartphones and turning them in for dumbphones. The movement isn’t in Monsey, Lakewood, or Yerushalayim; it’s all over America. Sales of flip phones and dumbphones are skyrocketing, with people craving simplicity, plain, simple, bland, back to basic living. People are bloated on chametz and looking for more matzah in their lives.
Matzah is freedom because it is a return to simplicity, a break from that on which we have grown dependent and it’s a discovery that we can be happier with less. Isn’t that exactly what we feel for the week of Pesach? We have fewer ingredients to cook with, but we eat more than ever. We put most of the toys away and the children and grandchildren are even happier playing with the simple toys that are left out, sometimes finding more joy in the box they came in than the toy itself.
The Brisker Rav would keep his matzos for the Seder under lock and key. When asked if he was concerned with someone stealing them, he would reply, “u’shemartem es hamatzos, safeguard the matzah—Do you not put your valuable jewels in a safe?” The pashut, simple matzos are our most valuable treasure. All year long we make things more complicated than they need to be by pursuing complex things and experiences.
Pesach and matzah remind us that the things that are most pashut, the most simple and straightforward, are the truest and the richest and can make us wealthy. Like Warren Buffett, we shouldn’t be attached to and dependent on complex things, even if we can afford them. Being happy with the simple and plain will set us free. And lastly, the matzah should remind us to simplify our relationships.
I once attended the funeral of a woman who was clearly complicated. There was palpable tension among her children and grandchildren and during the eulogies, they subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) praised her, yet communicated that she introduced a lot of conflict in the family. The last speaker was her son. He got up, paused, and said, “Mom was complicated, let’s keep things simple. Let’s simply love one another, be loyal to one another, and get along with one another,” and with that he sat down.
If we want the geulah, we need to introduce more matzah into our relationships and our lives. Instead of making them complicated, keep them simple. Let’s simply love one another, be loyal to one another, and get along with each other.
Rabbi Efrem Goldberg is the Senior Rabbi of the Boca Raton Synagogue (BRS), a rapidly-growing congregation of over 850 families and over 1000 children in Boca Raton, Florida.
