What was the point of ordering the Israelites to not leaven their bread as they prepared to depart Egypt?

[Broomstick]

@Chronos

No, that doesn’t explain anything at all, because then you’re just pushing the question back to why the pre-Jews ate unleavened bread.

For one thing preparing unleavened bread was a lot quicker than making leavened bread. I can totally see “pre-Jews”, Egyptians, etc. enjoying crackers, because that’s more or less what matzo are. Also, they last longer than bread so something of the sort was probably used by all sorts of travelers back in the day.

Incorporating something like that into some sort of ritual wouldn’t be at all surprising.

@Marvin_the_Martian

Possibly an unleavened bread travels better? Takes up less volume/calorie, possibly takes longer to go stale or bad. So that seven days was preparing munchies for the road

Oh, definitely it keeps MUCH better. It’s not exactly hardtack but an opened box of matzoh keeps very well as long as it is kept dry, which wouldn’t be hard in an arid region. The downside is that it is fragile and can break up easily. Which trait is taken advantage of in the making of “matzoh meal” which is used for all sorts of recipes even today.

@Smapti

Part of the Sukkot celebrations involve constructing a lean-to in your yard and brandishing a lemon along with several tree branches and waving them around outside said lean-to while you say a prayer thanking God for telling you to do those things.

Yeah, that’s kind of one of the fun parts.

Although now Sukkot is supposed to commemorate our distant ancestors living in tents while wandering around the desert for 40 years. Is that retconned? I have no idea. Also, the “40 years” may not be at all literal as the number 40 had all sorts of symbolic meaning.

But getting back to Exodus - if the Hebrew authorities wanted to have a festival commemorating the Jews leaving Egypt then “let’s eat travel food” makes as much sense as anything else. Unleavened bread baked into cracker form keeps a long time and was probably commonly used by travelers (and for all I know may still be in that part of the world). In a sense, it doesn’t matter if the Exodus account was literal or mythical, changing one’s diet during that time is part of the celebration and a food one would use when leaving town in a hurry being featured makes sense.

@Spiderman

The Pharaoh was allowing them to leave. They felt they needed to skedaddle before he changed his mind (again). You don’t finish baking prep (allowing it to rise); you don’t finish baking, you GTFO.

Actually you DO finish baking - failure to finish baking dough means it’s going to rise. The purpose of making matzoh thin is so that it cooks quickly - 2, maybe 3 minutes tops. Then you have a food that you can travel with that won’t go bad for a very long time.

@Princhester

What was the point of ordering the Israelites to not leaven their bread as they prepared to depart Egypt?

1. So they could leave town quickly
2. So their bread would be in a form that could survive for weeks/months/years without going bad as they left on a multi-year journey.

@Marvin_the_Martian

I’ve only had matzoh in ball form in chicken soup. I had heard it described as like a saltine cracker without the salt - is that close? A cracker will go soft if exposed to humidity, is matzoh more stable than that?

Yep, basically like saltines. Actually, due to food allergies I avoid most saltines and use matzoh instead because plain matzoh contains 2 ingredients: wheat and salt. You can also get them unsalted.

IF the environment is humid enough yes, matzoh can soften and get nasty but for whatever reason it seems to happen much less often with matzoh than other crackers based on my experience of eating such foods for 60+ years.

I routinely eat matzoh that are a year old, even if most of that year they’ve been sitting in an open box. (I can easily pick up a year’s supply post-passover when stores are getting rid of whatever didn’t sell briskly enough before/during the holiday)