DOES EATING MATZAH HELP?

Dear Family,

I hope everyone is well.

Mazal Tov Chanan on your upcoming birthday next week. Thinking about it, yours is probably the first birthday I ever got to recognise, 2 years after I was born! Wishing you a happy year with many simchos.

We are now moving into the month of Nissan, with Pesach drawing close very quickly, and I have been learning a maamer about matzah. (from the Alte Rebbe called 'Sheshes yamim')

Really, I think Freida should give over the dvar Torah this week. It just so happened that she has been learning the same maamer! , and when we discovered this I could see that Freida was further ahead than me and really understood it so well BH!

Anyway, I will try and give over only one point, as the Alte Rebbes maamarim are very deep.

So far I can see 2 themes

1. The connection of 6 days to matzah (one pasuk says'You shall eat matzah for 6 days')
2. The connection of matzah to the recognition of Hashem and to emunah - faith.

In relation to the second point, the Alte Rebbe discusses a pasuk from Gemorra Brachos which says that 'an infant child does not know how to call out the name father until he has tasted the taste of wheat.'

The Gemorra specifically uses the word 'calling father', which implies that the child does not yet recognise, or have any real knowledge of his father. He just calls 'father, father' at 3 years of age or less.

This expresses a very high level of bitul from the child. Bitul means an acceptance and obedience with very little understanding. Here you have an infant who has been fed only milk from the mother, who has very limited and undeveloped faculties, who now starts to eat grain, and can now, without understanding, call out and recognise father.

The whole of humanity have the capability, by looking at the vast and intricate creation of the Universe, to recognise the greatness of Hashem.

But for Hashem, the creation of the world is like uttering a few words ('Baruch sheamar the hayah haolam' - Hashem spoke and the world came into being.) ie for Hashem , Creation is a tiny thing.

But a Jew has a connection to Hashem way beyond the creation of the world, and this connection and faith (emunah) is unique to the Jewish Nation.

In the same way as an infant can recognise his father even without any understanding, so do we have the capability to connect to Hashem at that very high level, AND BE ACCEPTING AND OBEDIENT, EVEN WHEN WE HAVE SO LITTLE UNDERSTANDING OF THE LOVE AND CARE AND GREATNESS OF HASHEM.

In the Zohar matzah is called lachma dimhemnusa - the bread of our faith.

In the same way that a child's life has a massive transformation after he starts to eat wheat, and can now link, and call out 'father father', so on the first night of Pesach when we taste the taste of matzah, we draw down from a very high source, an infinite light 'that no thought can grasp'. And we can bring this down into our own small minds to enable us to call out 'Father, Father.'

And this is the meaning of 'roeh emunah' shepherd of emunah. It does not mean that we are a shepherd of emunah. It is just the opposite. It means that we shepherd-in emunah ie we actually draw it down - with the eating of matzah!

Gut Shabbos and Gut Chodesh to all.