Q&A: The Physical Form of Matzot
The Physical Form of Matzot
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Every year people make a whole fuss about hard matzot versus soft matzot.
This week someone told me that he eats hard matzot as the custom of our ancestors (in his case, Sephardim), who ate hard matzot, and that he does not depart from their custom.
Of course I immediately gave him a Michael-Abraham-style answer:
I eat soft matzot. And I too am continuing the custom of my ancestors. My ancestors ate the matzot they liked best, and I too eat the matzot I like best. (Or another possibility: my ancestors ate the matzot that were easiest to eat among those available to them, and I too eat the matzot that are easiest to eat among those available to me.)
A. Did I answer him properly? (Am I right?)
B. When does a line of reasoning stop being something valid and become a joke?
Answer
The first explanation is a joke, because our ancestors were not familiar with soft matzot. The second is possible. But even the second is not parallel to the swimsuit example. You are not claiming that there is value in eating whatever is accessible, only that there is no problem with it. So really you should have answered that there is no issue at all with hard matzot, just as if we had pink matzot. Therefore there is no need to preserve our ancestors’ tradition here, and no need for the swimsuit logic.
By the way, I am utterly astonished by the gentleman who finds soft matzot tastier. To me they taste awful. I tried them once and immediately gave them up.
Discussion on Answer
Why is it a joke? From a number of places it seems that they baked thick matzot, and that certainly would have to be soft (otherwise it would literally be a board). Also, from the Talmud in Berakhot 38a it sounds like there are dough mixtures that are borderline and can count both as bread and as matzah, and in Pesachim 7a you can clearly see that it is not always possible to distinguish between bread and matzah. And to say that their bread was like hard matzot is forced.
As for taste, it varies from brand to brand because the baking methods differ. If you tried “Matzot Avoteinu” and still found it awful, then I have no more arguments left 🙂
I understand. Basically, in the swimsuit example, the simplistic side violates our ancestors’ tradition according to the midrashic approach. In this example, he isn’t violating the tradition at all; at most he’s just making things harder for himself for no reason. (Maybe you could say there is value in eating the matzot that are easiest possible so that one can eat all the olive-bulk measures without difficulty, but that’s already a halakhic issue and less a matter of tradition.) (By the way, regarding olive-bulk measures, I think they have completely gone overboard with the whole issue of the required olive-bulk size. It’s already kind of a joke that people debate whether an olive is half an egg or a third of an egg, and then they go to the supermarket and buy tiny olives. It’s like there is no connection between real olives and olives in Jewish law. And then they also debate the coin-weight system of Maimonides that he used to measure the olive-bulk… good for Maimonides that he checked, but today everyone has a scale, and I really don’t understand why this whole discussion is still in the dark like this. Maybe the Rabbi will write his opinion even though it isn’t related to the original topic? I can open a new thread if that’s better.)
As for the taste of matzot—I don’t think anyone really enjoys eating matzot. I think it’s more about how easy it is to eat and the texture in the mouth than the taste. After all, you have to stuff down two of them for the blessing over bread and matzah.