an even more difficult challenge. The reason we eat matza is also taught in the Mishna -- the Jews left Egypt in such haste that they did not even have time for their bread to rise.
The people took their dough before it could rise ... They baked the dough which they took out of Egypt, into matza for it did not rise for they were exiled from Egypt and they could not tarry, and they had not made any other provisions. [Exodus 12:34,39]
That, of course, refers to the matza they took with them. But what about the matza they ate (as commanded) before they left?
Let us consider the sequence of events:
- God speaks to Moses prior to the first day of Nisan, telling Moses that there is a concept of New Moons, months and years.
- He further instructs Moses to tell the people to prepare lambs for the sacrifice by the tenth of the month.
- The celebratory, festive dinner will take place on the night of the fourteenth (leading into the fifteenth).
- At midnight that night, the first born of the Egyptians will die, and God will "pass over" the homes of the Jews who will escape unscathed.
- Sometime after midnight Pharaoh will come looking for Moses, and subsequently the Jews will be quickly sent out of Egypt.
- The actual exodus will take place in the morning, at which point the Jews will have to leave so quickly that there will not even be time for the bread to rise, hence the introduction of matza.
Again, we must ask: Why eat the matza the previous evening? When the Jews ate matza that evening, what was their religious experience while eating it?
The night before redemption, while they were still enslaved to Pharaoh, the Jews smeared the blood of the Paschal lamb on the doors, and then sat down to celebrate the redemption, because at that point they already felt free!
In their minds, they were liberated from the oppression of Pharaoh. They believed so completely in the forthcoming redemption that they were literally able to taste it.
Their trust in God was complete. They were still in Egypt physically, but they were long gone psychologically.
It seems that this was God's purpose on that awesome night. Once the Jews felt liberated, they needed to eat from the bitter herbs in order to remind them of the oppression. They were even able to eat the matza, which would serve as the symbol of their rapid exodus that would actually take place only the next morning. They knew that they would be leaving so quickly that they would not have time for the bread to rise.
They trusted in God completely, and literally tasted the future.
How ironic, then the commandment that every year we are to envision ourselves as if we left Egypt. The Jews in Egypt did just that: They envisioned themselves as if they left Egypt, the only difference being that they accomplished this by looking into the future, while we must look into the past.
In every generation a person is obligated to envision himself as if he left Egypt.[Mishna Pesachim 116b]
THE NATURE OF REDEMPTION
The issue at hand is in reality the very nature of redemption. Redemption is not merely political, or geographical. True redemption will bring with it complete liberation, physical, and psychological.
One can imagine if the Messiah were to come today, and bring all the Jews to Israel, and cause all the nations "to beat their swords into plowshares ..." it would not suffice if we were still psychologically enslaved.
For example, if we were still tormented by the horrors of the Holocaust, not understanding the ways of God, we would in effect still be enslaved.
The Talmud teaches:
Rav Acha, the son of Chanina taught, "The future world is not like this world. In this world on good tidings, we say 'Blessed is the one who is good and brings good.' When bad news arrives we say, 'Blessed is the true Judge.' In the future the only blessing will be: 'Blessed is the one who is good and brings good.' [Pesachim 50a]
We see that redemption has a psychological aspect to it as well.
True liberation means to be freed from the things that haunt our minds, aside from our physical tormentors.
This is what God wanted to