The Torah commands that leavening, chametz, disappear from Jewish homes and lives for the duration of Passover. For many, the mitzvah extends much further: thoroughly cleaning homes down to the smallest crumb, removing from storage special Passover dishes and utensils, and selling or otherwise disposing of all leavening a family owns.
Passover, according to national surveys, is the most widely celebrated Jewish holy day annually. Some 60% of Jews attend a Seder or some semblance thereof. But most importantly, every Jew knows the story: “Once we were slaves, now we are free.”
When you think about it, that’s quite remarkable. For over 3,000 years, Jews have preserved not just the memory but the identity of having been slaves. As the most repeated quotation in the Bible says, “You know the soul of the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Or, perhaps more impressively, the opening commandment of the big Ten Commandments, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”
The Seder itself states in no uncertain terms, in a key prayer before the sumptuous Passover feast, “In every generation, each person is obligated to see him/herself as though s/he [personally] came out of Egypt.” It’s ingrained in the Jewish brain; the core experience of Jewish history: God redeemed us from slavery.
Yet, my personal observation is that fewer and fewer families refrain from leavening for the Passover week. Certainly, everyone I know serves matzah at the Seder, but that may be the end of it. Obviously, there are variations on the theme: some refrain from all grain, some only from bread. Some refrain for one day or even one night. But the absolute renunciation of chametz appears, at least to this rabbi, to be much less widespread than the 60% of Jews who gather at some point during Pesach to recite the story of the Exodus from Egypt.
The basis of Judaism, traditionally and for strictly modern Jews, is morality. As Rabbi Joseph Telushkin states in the opening line of his book, “A Code of Jewish Ethics,” “God’s central demand of human beings is to act ethically.” With all of our ritual observance, the core of Jewish practice is not theology but ethics: how we treat one another.
In the Talmudic personal prayer of Rabbi Alexandri (B. Berkhot 17a), he states that what prevents us from doing God’s will is “the yeast in the dough,” by which he means our internal evil inclination, the yetzer hara. Leavening, “the yeast,” becomes a symbol of the inclination within each human to pursue our evil self-interests, against our better angels that we know in our hearts tell us to “choose good and not evil” (Amos 5:14) in order to “choose life that you and your children shall live” (Deuteronomy 30:19).
In the 16th century, the sainted Rabbi Isaac Luria, the Ari, composed a Seder prayer used among some Hasidim but not otherwise widely known. The essence of the prayer is quite simple: removing leavening symbolizes a greater ideal, namely, removing our inclination to do evil. Just as on Yom Kippur we repent for our sins, on Passover, with the removal of leavening, we symbolically rid ourselves not only for seven days but for the entire year of our desire to pursue evil rather than good.
At your Seder this year, or perhaps when you remove the chametz from your home, read this prayer. You’re not just removing dough that has leavened, you’re reinforcing the moral imperative at the heart of Judaism.
“May it be Your will, Lord our God and God of our ancestors, that just as I have removed the chametz from my house and properties, so too, should You remove all of the forces of evil, and the spirit of impurity shall be removed from the earth. May our evil inclination be removed from us and may you grant us a pure heart in truth. May all the forces of the ‘Other Side’ [sitra achra] and the k’lipot [wickedness] vanish like smoke and the kingdom of the wicked be eradicated. May You destroy all those who challenge the Divine Presence with vengeance and judgment, just as you destroyed the Egyptians and their idols in those days at that season.” (The Breslov Haggadah, p. 23)