As a teenager, my metabolism was extremely fast. I ate almost an entire loaf of bread each day! You can imagine that Erev Pesach was a very challenging day for me, as one may not eat chametz after mid-morning, and matzah can’t be eaten until the evening at the Seder. I would enter the evening of the seder starving for matzah.
Indeed, eating is a big part of Seder night. We eat Matzah, Maror, Karpas, Afikomen and a full meal—Shulchan Orech. There is a puzzling contrast between eating matzah on Seder night and eating the Korban Pesach at the time of the Beis HaMikdash. The halacha is that one is not allowed to eat matzah on Erev Pesach in order to have an appetite for matzah at the Seder. The Korban Pesach, however, specifically needs to be eaten on a full stomach. Why does the matzah have to be consumed with an appetite, yet the meat from the Korban Pesach must be eaten for “dessert”… after we are full?
Rav Moshe Wolfson explains that Hashem created the feeling of hunger in our stomachs to tell our bodies when we need food to give us energy. Conversely, when we’ve eaten enough, our bodies have a feeling of being full. At that point, eating more food than needed is no longer beneficial for the body. The Ba’al Shem Tov says that the food we eat not only benefits our body but also nourishes our soul. The food itself gives us physical nourishment, and spiritual nourishment comes from the brachos that are recited before and after eating the food.
Matzah and Korban Pesach have unique nourishment abilities. The Zohar calls matzah the bread of emunah (faith) and the bread of healing because of its role in Yetzias Mitzrayim. The matzah we eat on Pesach has spiritual and nutritional benefits for our body. With every bite of matzah we eat, we’re ingesting “grams of emunah”! Not only that, but it also has healing abilities for physical ailments.
The Korban Pesach is different, since it is consumed solely for spiritual nourishment; it’s eaten on a full stomach when the body no longer has a need for food. The Korban Pesach is called Afikoman. The Midrash says that Afikoman is a compound word: afiku mann—take out the mann. Mann was food from heaven and provided the Jewish nation in the desert direct spiritual nourishment. The Gemara says that the mann got directly absorbed into the limbs and didn’t need to undergo digestion. Eating mann was like an IV going straight into the neshama. Hashem told Moshe to hide a flask of mann for future generations. Today, we don’t have a Beis HaMikdash, so we eat matzah as the Afikomen in remembrance of the Korban Pesach. The Afikomen we eat relates to the flasks of mann that were saved for the future generations.
The matzah we eat on Seder night has a dual element. The matzah at the beginning of the Seder is for the mitzvah of Matzah, which we eat with a real appetite. The matzah we eat towards the end of the seder as our Afikomen reminds us of the Korban Pesach and is eaten on a full stomach. The matzah thereby nourishes our body and soul.
By the end of Shulchan Orech, many people are no longer hungry for matzah. They think, “Oh my, I still have to eat more matzah for the Afikomen!” But that is exactly the point: we aren’t supposed to have an appetite for Afikomen, since it is spiritual food. With each bite, we are ingesting emunah and healing powers.After understanding the incredible symbolism and powers of matzah, I am even more excited to eat matzah! May Hashem grant us the physical and spiritual nourishment we need from the matzah and may we celebrate Pesach next year in the Beis HaMikdash, eating the Korban Pesach as well!
Rabbi Baruch Bodenheim is the Rosh Yeshiva of Passaic Torah Institute (PTI)/Yeshiva Ner Boruch. Rabbi Bodenheim can be reached at [email protected]. For more info about PTI and its Torah classes, visit www.pti.shulcloud.com
