The bible tells us that people cannot live by bread alone (Deuteronomy 8:3), a statement so powerful it is repeated in the New Testament.

 Bread is one of the oldest prepared foods. Evidence on rocks in Europe from 30,000 years ago shows starch residue left from the plants which had presumably been pounded to create flour in order to make early flat bread.

With the Neolithic age and the spread of agriculture, bread from grains became the mainstay of the human diet. Yeast spores are everywhere – in the air and even on the surface of cereal grains, so any dough left to rest in the open air will over time become naturally leavened. But people quickly learned to help the process along -Pliny the Elder reports that the Gauls and the Iberians used the foam skimmed from beer to produce “a lighter kind of bread than other peoples.” Those who drank wine instead of beer in the ancient world used a paste composed of grape juice and flour that was allowed to begin fermenting, or else they used wheat bran steeped in wine, as a source for their yeast. But the most common source of leavening was to retain a piece of dough from the previous day to use as a starter for the new dough.

Probably that is why every year or so one had to start again, to not keep on endlessly adding a piece of dough from before to the new mix of flour and water, but to break what we would see as the cycle of infection and make a new start with this important food.

Bread means so many things to us – it was used to pay the workers’ wages in ancient Egypt and the word is still used today to denote wealth – both ‘bread’ and ‘dough’ are slang expressions for money.  The word ‘companion’ denotes someone with bread (com + panis). The Roman poet Juvenal satirised superficial politicians and the public as caring only for “panem et circenses” (bread and circuses).

The cultural importance of “bread” goes beyond slang, to serve as a metaphor for basic necessities and living conditions in general. A “bread-winner” is a household’s main economic contributor whose role is “putting bread on the table”. A remarkable or revolutionary innovation is often referred to as “the greatest thing since sliced bread”. Bread is the staple requirement in all human societies.

The word “bread” itself is curious – it has been claimed to be derived from the root of brew though it may be connected with the root of break, for its early uses are confined to broken pieces, or bits of bread. But in Hebrew the etymology is even more curious – “Lechem”, the Hebrew word for bread, is the same root as “lochem” – to do battle, and unlike the Teutonic languages, the third possible root “lacham” means not to separate, but to join together.   Using all three meanings, Ludwig Kohler, the author of a dictionary of biblical Hebrew, suggests that this third root – to be joined together, explains both battle and eating bread – in battle there is hand to hand combat and soldiers are bonded together in groups, in eating bread together people bond together in solidarity – breaking bread with someone is a powerful signifier or peace with them. Of course, the opposite may also be true – wars are fought over resources, and what is the most basic resource alongside water? Bread.

So what has this to do with the emblematic food of Pesach?  Matzah is symbolic of two kinds of bread: both the bread of affliction and the bread of liberation.   As we consider this festival and the foods we don’t let ourselves eat – for Pesach should not be, as it increasingly seems to be becoming, a time when we can imaginatively create dishes that mimic chametz, with breakfast cereals and potato flour pasta made kosher for Pesach, – but we should be thinking of the staples of our lives, what they are based upon, how we are separated and how we are joined, how we add value to our lives rather than live them mechanistically.

By eating matzah we are helping ourselves consider what is freedom, what is poverty, and how fine the line between the two. We are reminding ourselves of what is basic and important in our lives and what is the froth of the leavening.  Every so often we have to stop, to break the chain of habit, to start again from the beginning and Pesach is that time. Just as we break the cycle of infection of using a piece of dough from the previous day by making our bread with no additions except the elemental flour and water, so we take a week to live our lives in simplicity, to think about what we have been doing unthinkingly.  Bread is freedom and bread is poverty. Bread is broken and bread is joined. As we navigate the ambiguity and the possibilities of lechem in the form of matzah, we have the choice to think again. Are we in freedom? Do we oppress? Are we broken and separated from what matters? Are we joined to others in a strong bond?

The festival of Pesach will soon be over, but I hope the thinking it demands of us goes into the weeks of the Omer as we build and count up towards Sinai and the accepting of Torah.