We have recently finished reading about Yetziat Mitzrayim, the Exodus from Egypt, and soon it will be Pesach. The Talmud says that at the seder one must see themselves as actually having left Egypt. But if this is so, why not act out the Exodus? Dress the part (as some sefardim do), wear shackles and make bricks, experience bitterness instead of just eating something bitter, then change clothes and wade across a kiddie pool to feel one is going through the Red Sea and is free. Instead we relive the Exodus from Egypt through the use of symbols such as matza and maror, which only in the particular context of the seder may have meaning.

I think the answer is that a symbol is open ended, and can be experienced, interpreted and applied in various ways. Since these are symbols, each of us will grasp the message in a slightly different way according to our learning style, knowledge, and past experiences. In this way, the seder is meant to be a process of individualized learning rather than indoctrination into a particular teacher or seder leader’s way of seeing things.

One of the beautiful parts of Judaism is the trust it has in people to find their way, the realization that the best way to teach is not only through teaching, but with symbols and actions. The mitzvot teach ideas and ways of being by asking us to do something, and we then must derive our own learning, we inculcate the ideas from these actions on our own terms, based on who we are. This provides a great richness to the power the mitzvot have to, as the Talmud puts it, “litzaref bahem et habriot,” to hone and perfect the individual human being.

Several months into the pandemic a friend gave me sourdough starter. I had never made sourdough bread but she knew I would enjoy it and told me to watch youtube videos to learn how. I did and I have been making sourdough for Shabbat for the past few months. Making bread this way, the way it was made for millennia since the Egyptians invented it, takes a long time. There is no instant yeast to be used from the refrigerator, rather one holds over some of the dough from the last batch of bread which contains the yeasts living in it and periodically one “feeds” the yeasts by mixing in more flour and water to ensure their survival and proliferation. Every loaf I bake contains the wild yeasts which my friend grew in a culture of flour and water in her kitchen in Potomac over a year ago.

The process of baking in this way is slow, it can take several days and requires attention. One mixes flour and water and some of the dough from last time which contains the yeasts and then over a day or several days the yeasts grow in the dough for the new batch of bread. Every few hours one kneads the dough a bit, gauges a sense of its progression, rise, and feel, and determines when it is ready to bake. This type of baking is more art than recipe. The yeast is a living microbe and its functioning can change over time, it can be sluggish if not fed recently, or it can create less rising in the dough if the weather is colder or less humid. This traditional process of making leavened bread is slow not just in that it takes time, but in that there is a prolonged engagement with the process which requires rootedness. It is a common hobby during the pandemic since it requires much presence in one’s house to be accessible to the kitchen and the maturing dough.

Today, as I thought about this week’s sourdough baking I realized what the power of matza is. It is more significant than just baking quickly without time for rising. To make bread in the traditional way is to be necessarily rooted, tied to a place, attentive and settled. Matza is presented in the Torah not only as a symbol of hurry, but a symbol of flight, “for in haste you left the land of Egypt,” and the seder meal was eaten in the process of movement and transition, with “your loins guarded and your staff in your hand”. I never really understood how profound a symbol of movement and transition matza is, until I understood how totally settled the making of traditional bread must be. To leave Egypt, to see oneself as moving, as no longer an Egyptian, is well symbolized by divorcing oneself from bread. The ingredients of matza are the same as bread and in the past I saw time as the only difference between them, but in baking I have come to realize that bread is not only about time but about place, about being settled, requiring presence, related to the dough and the fire, to the home and its hearth. There is perhaps little that is more representative of stolid dwelling than leavened bread, and with the Exodos we must be able to move, and to be without place.

If you are lucky I will still be making sourdough when we have you for a Shabbat meal in our backyard or in the house post pandemic!