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By Alan Morinis It is well known and easily understood that matzah represents the middah [trait] of humility. Compared to the fancy, inflated breads that take four or five adjectives to describe (like multi-grain seeded artisan fig and olive, for example), the humble matzah is simple and unpretentious, admirable qualities for a human being as well. The matzah I am eating this year holds special significance because my own eyes observed it being made, baked and packaged. The Olympics were coming to my hometown of Vancouver, promising crowds, traffic and mayhem. What an excellent time to make my first visit to Israel in 42 years. And there I was able to fulfill the mitzvah of observing matzah being made. I didn’t mean to visit a matzah bakery. I had contacted my friend and Mussar colleague, Rabbi Ephraim Becker, and he graciously agreed to see me, though he warned that he had an errand to run at the time that I had said was convenient for my visit. I could come along and we could visit along the way, he suggested. That sounded fine. The errand turned out to be supervising the making of shmurah (literally, “observed” or “guarded”) matzah. We drove to a rural moshav, where a non-descript corrugated iron building revealed nothing of the scene happening inside. In a highly choreographed dance of production, dozens of people organized into three assembly lines fed three large, flaming wood-burning ovens that churned out batch after batch of shmurah matzahs. Halachah, or Jewish law, stipulates that no more than 18 minutes elapse between the moment water is added to flour and when the matzah emerges from the oven. The process I observed timed out at an Olympic-worthy 4 minutes. The matzah factory was one of many highlights of my trip. Among the others were hearing the megillah on Purim, first in an Ashkenazi synagogue and then in a Yemeni one. How deep and wide I tried to open myself to the experience of davenning in the tiny, beautiful synagogues of Tzfat: in the shul dedicated to Rabbi Yitzchak Abohav, a 15th century Spanish Mussar master (author of Menorat HaMaor), in the synagogue of the Ari (Rabbi Yitzchak Luria), where a plaque identifies this as the place where the Shabbat hymn Lecha Dodi was sung for the first time, and at the shul of the Holy Alsheich—all on one Shabbat. The bookstores of Mea Shearim. The Kotel. The hot springs of Tiberias. Hungarian Blintzes. The Mussar teachers I met. At the same time, the conflict with the Palestinians was a haunting presence, sensed most often in its unmentioned absence. I am incensed by the illegitimate (at its heart, anti-Semitic) campaign to delegitimize Israel on the international stage, and chagrined by the number of dupes that have been pulled into that effort. At the same time, there are real grievances over land, rights, water, homes and travel that are being addressed not by constructive engagement with people and problems, but rather by Israel’s relentless drive to build and develop, as if bricks and asphalt will pave over and push away human and political problems. It’s not likely, I fear. Nor is it a humble approach. Humility, like matzah, implies a simple and straightforward truthfulness, and certainly not weakness. Lessons taught by Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, founder of the Mussar movement, offer us some insight in this area. R’ Yisrael would inspect matzah bakeries to check that they were maintaining standards of stringent kashrut. One owner was shocked when Rabbi Salanter declared that the bakery was in violation of the law. “What have I done wrong,” the owner protested. R’ Yisrael’s answer was that there was blood in the food. “Blood! Where is the blood,” he protested incredulously? “Your sense of efficiency, together with the unacceptable demands placed upon your workers, shows that their blood is mixed into the food produced in this bakery,” Rabbi Salanter answered. Even though there wasn’t actual blood mixed into the matzah, Rabbi Salanter would not certify the kashrut of the matzah. And in a similar vein, at another time Rabbi Yisrael was unable to be present during the baking of his Pesach matzah, about which he was extremely meticulous. He assigned one of his students to watch over the baking and instructed him to be extremely careful not to upset the woman who kneaded the dough and not to rush her because she was a widow. To upset her would violate the prohibition against oppressing widows and orphans. R’ Yisrael added: “The kashrus of the matzos is not completed by observing all the laws of Pesach alone, but also requires the meticulous observance of the laws of behavior toward other people.” Rabbi Salanter is offering us an important lesson that applies in many contexts. Mussar students strive to bring holiness into every corner of our lives, and in our efforts to be holy, it is important to be punctilious in the traditions and rules, and also to be sensitive to the ways our actions affect others. Rabbi Joseph Breuer (1882-1980) summed it up by saying that “a Jew must not only be glatt kosher, he must also be glatt yosher”—one who leads an upright life. This notion applies at the level of the individual and at the national level, as well—including in regard to the Palestinians. It is a humble approach, and because of that, the only one likely to succeed in the long run. Why? Because HaShem favors the humble (Chullin 89a). |
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