Shmuel was right about matza TB Pesakhim 115

 Matza as a symbolic food encapsulates the entire story of the Exodus from Egypt. On the one hand, the Pharaoh fed the Israelite slaves matza because it is cheap to make and a little fills you up. On the other hand, matza is the first bread our ancestors ate as a free people. So at the same time it symbolizes both slavery and redemption.

The Magid section of the Haggadah begins “הָא לַחְמָא עַנְיָא-Ha lakhma onya-This is the bread of affliction. This is “a translation of lekhem oni, found only in Deuteronomy 16:3, ‘for seven days thereafter you shall eat unleavened bread, bread of affliction…”¹ “This passage is not found in the Talmud and appears to have been first mentioned in Seder Rav Amram Gaon (our first prayer book; c. 860 CE)² It is written in Aramaic because that was the vernacular so everybody could understand what was being said.

Shmuel interprets the phrase lekhem oni on today’s daf TB Pesakhim 115. ““The bread of affliction [lekhem oni]” (Deuteronomy 16:3) means bread over which one answers [onim] matters, i.e., one recites the Haggadah over matza.” (Sefaria.org translation) Because in Hebrew the word for affliction oni- עוֹנִיis similar to the word for answers onim עוֹנִין, he makes that connection. In the spirit of Shmuel I’ll share with you some commentary on the bread of affliction.

\In the Haggadah Exalted Evening based on the teachings of Rabbi Joseph B Soloveitchick, the Rav teaches: “Pesakh is the holiday of solidarity. Not all the Jews in Egypt were slaves. Slavery was neither uniform nor homogeneous; there are various degrees of slavery. Hazazl (the sages-gg) tell us that the tribe of Levi was never enslaved. The Jewish aristocracy, the people who were wealthy, those who paid high taxes, did not have to do physical labor. Still, there was unity of purpose, solidarity, and responsibility. Each one felt the pain of his neighbor, and that helped bring about the ge’ullah (redemption-gg) therefore, on Pesakh before we sit down to read the Haggadah, we declare ‘This is the poor bread that our forefathers ate in the land of Egypt. Let all who are hungry enter and eat; let all who are in need come and celebrate the Passover.’ I interpret ‘in the land of Egypt’ as referring to the period they were slaves. That they were slaves. They not only ate this bread, but shared it with each other. One had matza, while the other had none; the former split the matza in two and passed half to his unfortunate brother. Therefore, we eat the ‘poor bread’ as does a pauper… who eats a broken piece.³

In the same vein Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in his Haggadah comments: “What transforms the bread of oppression into the bread of freedom is the willingness to share with others… The difference between freedom and slavery lies not in the quality of bread we eat, but in the state of mine which we eat it.”⁴

The Night that Unites Haggadah shares this teaching of Rabbi Kook, the first chief Rabbi of Israel. "''This is the bread of affliction,' is a paragraph which radiates hope. We faithfully affirm that just as there was the great redemption in the past, the Exodus from Egypt, it can and will surely happen again! Although we may be living today in a place far from our homeland-speaking a foreign tongue-we never lose sight of our dream to return to the land of Israel. This is the meaning of the concluding words of this paragraph. 'Now we are here, next year in the land of Israel; now we are slaves, next year, we will be free!'"⁵

Rabbi Abraham Twersky, MD reminds us in his Haggadah from Bondage to Freedom that "eating the ‘bread of affliction' should remind us of all those who do not yet enjoy the blessing of freedom. We should bear in mind that as long as even one person is enslaved, all mankind is not yet free.”⁶

I have more commentators, but I won’t cite them. Shmuel is correct. We have a lot to say about matza.

1 Marc Brettler (our Biblical Heritage) My People's Passover Haggadah, volume 1, page 123

2 Alyssa Gray (medieval commentators) My People's Passover Haggadah, volume 1, page 126

3 page 26-27

4 page 22-23

5 page 72

6 page 59