Who Knows Three?

I hope to update the glossary soon to account for the jargon in this entry. Please be patient. I can answer questions if you e-mail me! Don’t forget to remove the 3.

The centerpiece of the Passover seder is a tray with a stack of three whole matzot: unleavened, usually cracker-like breads made with only flour and water. Early in the seder the the middle matzah is broken in two by hand, and the larger of the two pieces—it’s virtually impossible to make them equal, and I’ve tried—is wrapped in a cloth and set aside, usually off the table. This piece, called the afikoman, is shared by all participants at the end of the seder as a last course. (It’s often referred to as a “dessert.” Nobody else seems to find this as funny as I do.)

Some people never think to ask why there are three matzot. (If they do ask, the standard response is that they represent the three levels of the ancient religious caste system: the Kohanim [the priests], Levites [the acolyte caste of which Kohanim are a subset] and Israelites [all the other Jews]. I dislike this explanation, mostly because I’m a Levite and I don’t fancy being snapped in two.) Most of us don’t realize that until recently, at least according to a Jewish standard of “recent,” there were only two matzot. But first things first: why do we break one of them?

וַיְהִ֣י ׀ בַּיּ֣וֹם הַשִּׁשִּׁ֗י לָֽקְט֥וּ לֶ֨חֶם֙ מִשְׁנֶ֔ה שְׁנֵ֥י הָעֹ֖מֶר לָֽאֶחָ֑ד וַיָּבֹ֨אוּ֙ כָּל־נְשִׂיאֵ֣י הָֽעֵדָ֔ה וַיַּגִּ֖ידוּ לְמֹשֶֽׁה: וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֲלֵהֶ֗ם ה֚וּא אֲשֶׁ֣ר דִּבֶּ֣ר ה֔’ שַׁבָּת֧וֹן שַׁבַּת־קֹ֛דֶשׁ לַֽה֖’ מָחָ֑ר אֵ֣ת אֲשֶׁר־תֹּאפ֞וּ אֵפ֗וּ וְאֵ֤ת אֲשֶֽׁר־תְּבַשְּׁלוּ֙ בַּשֵּׁ֔לוּ וְאֵת֙ כָּל־הָ֣עֹדֵ֔ף הַנִּ֧יחוּ לָכֶ֛ם לְמִשְׁמֶ֖רֶת עַד־הַבֹּֽקֶר:־

It came to pass that on the sixth day they gathered double bread, two omer-measures [of manna] for one person, and the leaders of the community came and told Moshe. He said to them, “This is what Adonai has commanded: Tomorrow is a day of Sabbath rest for Adonai. Bake what you will bake and cook what you will cook, and leave whatever remains until morning.” (Exodus 16:22-23)

The “double bread” in this passage isn’t bread at all, of course, but manna. The Hebrew word לֶחֶם (bread) is a bit like קֶמַח (flour) in that it sometimes serves as a catchall term for food. In fact, the Semitic root L-Ḥ-M often refers to whichever food was most important to the ancestral culture, suggesting that “food” is the earlier meaning, with more specific ones arising in different contexts. For example, Hebrew is a language historically spoken by farmers who got most of their calories from grains, so it’s to be expected that leḥem would mean “bread”; Arabic originated in a society that relied on animal herding, and laḥam is the Arabic word for “meat.”

Whether or not this passage refers to bread, the rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud interpreted it as such:

אמר ר’ אבא, בשבת חייב אדם לבצוע על שתי ככרות, דכתיב לחם משנה

Rabbi Abba said, “On Shabbat one is obligated to say motzi over two loaves, as it is written, ‘double bread.’” (B.T. Shabbat 117b)

Here we have the origin of the practice of using two intact loaves of bread to begin a meal on Friday night and Saturday morning: it serves as a reënactment of our receiving twice as much manna on Fridays in the desert. (There’s actually a dispute among medieval scholars over whether this is meant to recreate the desert experience or whether the doubling exists for other reasons. If we go there then we’ll be there all day, and you still have cleaning to do.) The practice also arose to do this on major holidays as well as Shabbat, but Pesach remained an exception because of the following concern:

לֹֽא־תֹאכַ֤ל עָלָיו֙ חָמֵ֔ץ שִׁבְעַ֥ת יָמִ֛ים תֹּֽאכַל־עָלָ֥יו מַצּ֖וֹת לֶ֣חֶם עֹ֑נִי כִּ֣י בְחִפָּז֗וֹן יָצָ֨אתָ֙ מֵאֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרַ֔יִם לְמַ֣עַן תִּזְכֹּ֗ר אֶת־י֤וֹם צֵֽאתְךָ֙ מֵאֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרַ֔יִם כֹּ֖ל יְמֵ֥י חַיֶּֽיךָ:־

Do not eat leavened bread with it [the paschal lamb offering]. For seven days you shall eat matzot with it, poverty bread (because you left the land of Egypt in haste), so that you shall remember the day of your exodus from Egypt all the days of your life. (Deuteronomy 16:3)

In the Biblical context, “poverty bread” seems to refer to the type of bread and nothing more. Leavened bread was a luxury in the ancient world, and its preparation requires a lot of time, something that poor people throughout history have famously lacked. Rabbinic interpretation takes the phrase in another direction, though:

אמר רב פפא, הכל מודים בפסח שמניח פרוסה בתוך שלמה ובוצע. מאי טעמא? לחם עוני כתיב

Rav Papפa said, “All agree that that on Pesach one places a piece [of bread] inside a whole loaf and says motzi. Why? It is written, ‘poverty bread.’” (B.T. Berakhot 39b)

“Poverty bread” is no longer just a description of the bread; it also dictates the manner in which the bread is eaten. Another passage clarifies (and embellishes):

לחם עוני, עני כתיב! מה עני שדרכו בפרוסה אף כאן בפרוסה

“Poverty bread” [לחם עוני]—but “poor person’s bread” [לחם עני] is what’s written! Just as a poor person eats a piece of bread, so here we eat a piece of bread. (B.T. Peachim 115b-116a)

First, a bit of explanation. The amora speaking here has picked up on the fact that the word for “poverty” in the passage from Deuteronomy is spelled out עֺנִי, with the O vowel indicated by a diacritical dot but not by a fully written וֹ, as in עוֹנִי. In a text without vowel markings—the only kind that existed at the time—there was no way other than context to differentiate between עֺנִי (poverty) and עַנִי (a poor person), since both appeared simply as עני. It’s unlikely that this rabbi believed the word ought to be pronounced עַנִי, but he did take the spelling as a hint at how the commandment ought to be carried out.

In the ancient Near East, bread meant flat bread. Loaves were smaller than the American supermarket loaf, and as is clear from these rabbis’ discussion, it was considered the mark of a poor person to sit down to a meal that began with a broken piece of bread rather than an entire loaf of bread. Instead of feasting on two intact loaves, the practice of Pesach was to eat a loaf and a half (or a little less than a half) in deference to the notion that matzah is not only poverty bread, but also poor man’s bread. So, then, wherefore three matzot?

In 11th century Europe we begin to see some commentators questioning the loaf-and-a-half system for Pesach. Symbolic poverty is all well and good, they said, but is it yuntif or isn’t it?! Rashi (1040-1105) is the first, as far as I know, to raise the issue of eating less than two whole loaves, suggesting three, one of which can be broken while leaving two intact for the double-bread practice on Shabbat and holidays. It’s not clear from his wording whether he really did this, but Rashbam (1085-1158, Rashi’s grandson for those keeping score at home) clearly did, as we see in his comment on the above cited passage:

אף כאן בפרוסה. לברך על אכילת מצה, ושתי שלימות מייתינן משום המוציא דלא גרע משאר ימים טובים שצריך לבצוע על שתי ככרות, ובוצע מאחת השלימות

“So here we eat a piece of bread.” To say “al akhilat matzah,” but we bring two whole loaves for “hamotzi” (in order not to reduce the meal compared to the rest of the yamim tovim, when we need to say motzi over two whole loaves) and say “hamotzi” over one of the whole ones.

Think the text is clunky? Well, you try altering an ancient ritual and see what happens!

It goes like this. The first time we eat matzah at the seder we say two berakhot: hamotzi lechem min ha’aretz, which is what one says before eating bread of any sort, and then al akhilat matzah, the berakha over the commandment to eat matzah. What Rashbam seems to have done is hold two full matzot in his hands when he recited the first berkaha, as is customary on holidays and on Shabbat, and then switch things around to hold the loaf-and-a-half while reciting the second, which deals specifically with the bread of poverty / poor person’s bread. Since he’d already broken a matzah earlier in the seder, he had to start with three, and so do we today.

The practice did not take hold uniformly or quickly. Maimonides (1135-1204), who was born fifty years after Rashbam but lived in Spain and later Egypt, doesn’t appear to have heard of the three-matzot practice. (Rashbam, like Rashi, was French.) On the other hand, the Rosh (1250?-1327), who confused matters by being born in Germany and then inconveniently dying in Spain, uses the term ולא נמצא (“it is not found,” or colloquially “it does not exist”) in reference to the two-matzot custom. To the best of my knowledge, three matzot are now all but universal. Anyone know what the Yemenites do?

Next question: Anyone know how I can get periods to align properly at the ends of Hebrew passages? I’ve left them off for now because they keep relocating in confusing and unhelpful ways. I’d offer cookies to whoever can solve this problem for me, but Pesach is coming.