Parshat
Bo
The remaining plagues are carried out by God against Egypt. The plague
of locusts destroys the crops. Then came the plague of boils, followed
by hail which brought fire with it as well. Pharoah continued to relent
on his promises to let the Israelites go free. A plague of darkness
then descended on the Egyptians. For three days the Egyptians could
not even move about. One more plague was about to come down on Egypt.
God warns Moshe that redemption is near and that the month of Nisan
was to be the first of the months of the year. On the fourteenth, lamb’s
blood was to be painted onto all the doorposts and lintels of the Israelite
houses. When God came down at midnight to slay the firstborn of Egypt,
he would look upon the blood as a sign and “Passover” those
houses. A sacrificial lamb was to be roasted and consumed. It was to
be eaten with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Nothing was to remain
for morning. The people were commanded to eat unleavened bread for seven
days and observe the “Lord’s Passover”. The first
and seventh days were days of Holy assembly and all work was to stop.
Even when they reached Canaan, the Passover sacrifice and festival was
to be celebrated.
At midnight, God came down to Egypt and killed all of their firstborn. Pharoah and all the Egyptians quickly sent the Israelites out of Egypt. God commanded the people to take gold and silver with them. Approximately six hundred thousand men left Egypt plus their wives and children. They were commanded to bring a “kordan pesach” on the fourteenth of Nisan every year. They were also commanded to redeem their firstborn males and to wear tefillin as a “sign on your hand and for a memorial between your eyes”.
“Seven days shall you eat unleavened bread…” The commandment to eat matzah during Pesach derives from this verse in our parsha. What are the deeper insights into chametz and matzah? From the Talmud (Berachot 17a) we read:
“Rabbi Alexandri, on concluding his prayer, used to add the following; Sovereign of the Universe, it is known full well to You that our will is to perform Your will, and what prevents us? The yeast in the dough and the subjection to foreign powers. May it be Your will to deliver us from their hand, so that we may return to perform the statutes of Your will with a perfect heart…”
The “yeast in the dough” refers to “chametz” and the “subjection to foreign powers” can be interpreted homiletically to refer to the yetzer hara and the desire for material wealth. Our lust for vanity and honor is represented by the puffiness and rising of the dough (chametz). It subjects us to a “foreign power” and prevents us from fulfilling our obligations to God. In parsha Lech Lecha, God says to Avraham “Go to you…”, meaning “look into yourself, the inner divine spark of godliness and exile yourself to a place a Torah; a place that I will show you.”
The exodus from Egypt occurred when the Jews had sunk to the forty ninth level of impurity. It would take another forty nine days (until Shavuot and the giving of the Torah) to reclaim that sense of mission and obligation. In our own lives, we cast away the materialism of the daily life by abstaining from chametz for seven days on Pesach. We eat the “poor bread”, the lechem oni. But matzah, in the plural, is matzot and is written just like the word mitzvot. This reminds us of the divine nature of the humble and the lowly.
Chametz is spelled “chet, mem, tzadi” while matzah is spelled “mem, tzadi, hei”. They share the letters mem and tzadi. Together these spell the word “matz”, which means “to beat” or “meitz”, which means “to oppress”. The letter “chet” is similar to the word “cheit” which means “sin”. Thus, chametz can be thought of as “cheit meitz” which means “the sin of oppression”. When we eat chametz, we are oppressing our souls, our yetzer tov (good inclination) and subjecting it to a foreign power (the yetzer hara). The purpose of the matzah is to correct for that oppression.
Matzah, can be thought of as “meitz hei” which means to oppress the “five”. The letter hei has a numerical value of five. The sages list four cardinal sins: idolatry, bloodshed, immorality, and loshen hara (gossip). I would like to add one more; the sin of apathy and forgetfulness. Too often we sit by a let evil happen because it is either not our concern, or we don’t have time to get involved. Maybe someone else should do it. The end result is that the evil goes on. By eating the matzah, we oppress these five deadly sins and free ourselves for one week for a spiritual redemption.
Matzah spelled backwards is ha-tzom, which means “the fast”, or “ha-tzam” which means “the thirst”. The matzah is a thirst for answers. The sages interpret “lechem oni” not as “poor bread”, but in the sense of “oneh” meaning answers. The matza is the bread over which answers are given. In the Haggadah we say “Ha lachma anya”; “this is the bread of affliction”. This can also mean, “This is the bread of answers”. After the four questions are asked during the Pesach seder, the matzot are uncovered, and we deliver the “answer” to the youngest child.
Chametz can be thought of as “tzam cheit” or “thirsting for sin”. By relying of material possessions instead of devoting ourselves to good deeds, torah study, and the performance of mitzvoth, we lust after those things that in the end, makes us poorer and not richer. We are not truly free if we are slaves to our possessions!
“This month shall be unto you the beginning of months; the first shall it be to you of the months of the year.” This was the first commandment given to the Jews on the eve of redemption. Rashi, in his commentary on the opening verse of the Torah, cites a Midrash in which it is stated that the Torah, if it was only a book of laws, could have begun here in chapter 12 in Sefer Shemot.
The Jewish calendar is a complex mixture of Astronomical observations concerning both the sun and the moon. By marking the months using a lunar cycle of phases (29 ½ days) but marking the seasons by the sun, there is an inherent discrepancy between the two.
Tradition states that when God gave this commandment to Moshe, He showed him the phases of the Moon and instructed Moshe how to intercalate the leap year. Since 29 ½ days multiplied by twelve does not equal the 365 days of a mean solar year, the discrepancy is made up during a nineteen year cycle in which the two systems coincide (235 lunar months). Months can range from 29 to 30 or even 31 days (defective, regular or full). In a leap year, which occurs during years 3,6,8,11,14,17,19 of the nineteen year cycle. The extra month of Adar is added to keep Pesach in the spring. For more detailed explanations, please see my commentary on Mishnah Rosh Hashannah which is attached as an appendix to this set of commentaries.
At midnight, God came down to Egypt and killed all of their firstborn. Pharoah and all the Egyptians quickly sent the Israelites out of Egypt. God commanded the people to take gold and silver with them. Approximately six hundred thousand men left Egypt plus their wives and children. They were commanded to bring a “kordan pesach” on the fourteenth of Nisan every year. They were also commanded to redeem their firstborn males and to wear tefillin as a “sign on your hand and for a memorial between your eyes”.
“Seven days shall you eat unleavened bread…” The commandment to eat matzah during Pesach derives from this verse in our parsha. What are the deeper insights into chametz and matzah? From the Talmud (Berachot 17a) we read:
“Rabbi Alexandri, on concluding his prayer, used to add the following; Sovereign of the Universe, it is known full well to You that our will is to perform Your will, and what prevents us? The yeast in the dough and the subjection to foreign powers. May it be Your will to deliver us from their hand, so that we may return to perform the statutes of Your will with a perfect heart…”
The “yeast in the dough” refers to “chametz” and the “subjection to foreign powers” can be interpreted homiletically to refer to the yetzer hara and the desire for material wealth. Our lust for vanity and honor is represented by the puffiness and rising of the dough (chametz). It subjects us to a “foreign power” and prevents us from fulfilling our obligations to God. In parsha Lech Lecha, God says to Avraham “Go to you…”, meaning “look into yourself, the inner divine spark of godliness and exile yourself to a place a Torah; a place that I will show you.”
The exodus from Egypt occurred when the Jews had sunk to the forty ninth level of impurity. It would take another forty nine days (until Shavuot and the giving of the Torah) to reclaim that sense of mission and obligation. In our own lives, we cast away the materialism of the daily life by abstaining from chametz for seven days on Pesach. We eat the “poor bread”, the lechem oni. But matzah, in the plural, is matzot and is written just like the word mitzvot. This reminds us of the divine nature of the humble and the lowly.
Chametz is spelled “chet, mem, tzadi” while matzah is spelled “mem, tzadi, hei”. They share the letters mem and tzadi. Together these spell the word “matz”, which means “to beat” or “meitz”, which means “to oppress”. The letter “chet” is similar to the word “cheit” which means “sin”. Thus, chametz can be thought of as “cheit meitz” which means “the sin of oppression”. When we eat chametz, we are oppressing our souls, our yetzer tov (good inclination) and subjecting it to a foreign power (the yetzer hara). The purpose of the matzah is to correct for that oppression.
Matzah, can be thought of as “meitz hei” which means to oppress the “five”. The letter hei has a numerical value of five. The sages list four cardinal sins: idolatry, bloodshed, immorality, and loshen hara (gossip). I would like to add one more; the sin of apathy and forgetfulness. Too often we sit by a let evil happen because it is either not our concern, or we don’t have time to get involved. Maybe someone else should do it. The end result is that the evil goes on. By eating the matzah, we oppress these five deadly sins and free ourselves for one week for a spiritual redemption.
Matzah spelled backwards is ha-tzom, which means “the fast”, or “ha-tzam” which means “the thirst”. The matzah is a thirst for answers. The sages interpret “lechem oni” not as “poor bread”, but in the sense of “oneh” meaning answers. The matza is the bread over which answers are given. In the Haggadah we say “Ha lachma anya”; “this is the bread of affliction”. This can also mean, “This is the bread of answers”. After the four questions are asked during the Pesach seder, the matzot are uncovered, and we deliver the “answer” to the youngest child.
Chametz can be thought of as “tzam cheit” or “thirsting for sin”. By relying of material possessions instead of devoting ourselves to good deeds, torah study, and the performance of mitzvoth, we lust after those things that in the end, makes us poorer and not richer. We are not truly free if we are slaves to our possessions!
“This month shall be unto you the beginning of months; the first shall it be to you of the months of the year.” This was the first commandment given to the Jews on the eve of redemption. Rashi, in his commentary on the opening verse of the Torah, cites a Midrash in which it is stated that the Torah, if it was only a book of laws, could have begun here in chapter 12 in Sefer Shemot.
The Jewish calendar is a complex mixture of Astronomical observations concerning both the sun and the moon. By marking the months using a lunar cycle of phases (29 ½ days) but marking the seasons by the sun, there is an inherent discrepancy between the two.
Tradition states that when God gave this commandment to Moshe, He showed him the phases of the Moon and instructed Moshe how to intercalate the leap year. Since 29 ½ days multiplied by twelve does not equal the 365 days of a mean solar year, the discrepancy is made up during a nineteen year cycle in which the two systems coincide (235 lunar months). Months can range from 29 to 30 or even 31 days (defective, regular or full). In a leap year, which occurs during years 3,6,8,11,14,17,19 of the nineteen year cycle. The extra month of Adar is added to keep Pesach in the spring. For more detailed explanations, please see my commentary on Mishnah Rosh Hashannah which is attached as an appendix to this set of commentaries.
