Passover: The Secret of Matzah - Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair

[music] >> When you bake bread, you mix the flour and the water together, you knead it, and then you set it aside. You may give it a punch or two to encourage it to rise, but essentially, your involvement ends at that point. And yet, the dough doesn't remain static. The dough, so to speak, takes over. It seems to change on its own. The natural yeast causes gases to form, it expands, it rises, it swells in all directions. Its texture becomes softer and more elastic. Air pockets develop internally. The surface begins to subtly stretch and lighten in color. All of this happens after you remove your hands from the dough. Matzah is the exact opposite. From the moment the dough is mixed, it's never left to rise, never left to develop on its own, so to speak. Bread, chametz, represents a world that seems to be self-raising, [music] where nature appears to operate by itself. And matzah represents a world where nothing can happen independently of Hashem. The Torah says, "You shall guard the matzahs, for on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt." Now, at first glance, the connection between guarding the matzahs and leaving Egypt is not entirely clear. Why is the command to guard the matzah linked specifically to leaving Egypt? Emunah, faith, is the recognition that there is no autonomy in existence. Nothing unfolds by itself. Everything is continuously guarded by the will of Hashem. The Egyptians attributed power to the stars. [music] The sign of Egypt was the lamb, Aries, tele. The Egyptians worshipped the lamb as a god. Now, because Aries, the lamb, is the first of the constellation, so it's regarded, so to speak, as the king of the zodiac signs. To demonstrate that even this king, this king constellation, has no independent force, Hashem commanded the Jewish people to take Aries, to take the lamb, and slaughter it as a korban, as an offering. And this was done specifically in the month of Nissan, when Aries' influence is the strongest, and on the 15th of the month, when the moon is at its full, [music] and the power of that sign is at its zenith. And at that very moment of supposed maximum strength, Hashem showed it was totally powerless. The constellations, the zodiac, do nothing by themselves. Nature does nothing by itself at all. The Zohar Hakadosh teaches that matzah is called mikhle de emunah, the food of faith. Guarding the matzahs, stopping them from rising, is the essential message of >> [music] >> "On that day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt," because it testifies that nothing in this world does anything by itself. It testifies that every moment the divine dough maker is acting [music] alone.