Parshat Bo: Why did they bake their dough into matzot?

In the Geonic Haggadah that we use, we find the most well-known explanation for eating matzot on Pesah: the children of Israel brought dough with them from Egypt and baked it as matzot because there was not time for it to rise. This is based on reading Shemot 12:39 as a series of clauses each explaining the one before: and they baked the dough they had brought out from Egypt into matzot because it had not risen because they had been driven out from Egypt and were not able to tarry… This understanding however faces a serious objection. The children of Israel had already eaten their Pesah sacrifice with matzot and God had instructed Moshe in the laws of a seven-day festival of matzot (Shemot 12:15-20). The traditional view, necessarily implies, however, that, had the children of Israel been given more time by the Egyptians, then they would have allowed their dough to rise and become hametz.

• Ibn Ezra and Bartenura defend the traditional view by arguing that there was no festival of matzot in Egypt. The commandment to eat the Pesah sacrifice with matzot implies nothing about the following day and God’s command to celebrate a seven-day festival of eating matzot applied only to the future. This view however, contradicts Tosefta 8:21 in which two opinions are presented about the Pesah in Egypt. The first is that the prohibition of hametz lasted for seven days as in future generations and the second is that is lasted only for one day. The second of these views is accepted as normative by the Talmud Bavli (Pesahim 94b). Various elaborate solutions have been suggested for this problem.
• Ramban interprets the verse entirely differently. In his view, the third clause explains the first: the children of Israel baked their dough in Succot because they had been driven out of Egypt and were not able to tarry long enough to bake or prepare other provisions. They baked their dough into matzot because they had already been forbidden to eat any hametz. According to the Ramban, therefore, there must be another reason altogether for eating matzot. Answers that have been given include (i) matzot are a memorial of the cheap and filling unleavened bread given to the slaves in Egypt (ii) unleavened bread symbolizes spiritual purity and humility (iii) leavened bread was particularly associated in the ancient world with Egypt, whereas the nomadic patriarchs ate unleavened bread, the bread of freedom.

For more on parshat Va’eira, see Haggadah Berurah, the Haggadah that helps you tell the story of yetziat mitzrayim.