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Breaking the Middle Matzah
Contributed by Noraa Kaplan

  • TOP HAGGADAHS FOR 2023

At this point in the Seder, we take a piece of matzah and break it down the middle. One half will remain on the table. The other half will be hidden, to be found later as the afikomen. Once the matzah is broken, it cannot be repaired completely. We can pick up the pieces and do our best to put them back together, but, to some extent, irreparable damage has been done.

As we break the middle matzah, we remember the break in Palestinian life that came when the State of Israel was established in 1948. The new Israeli state destroyed hundreds of villages and left hundreds of thousands of Palestinian people displaced. In the spring of 1948, Haganah, the militia that would later become the Israeli Defense Force, launched Plan Dalet, its campaign to ethnically cleanse Palestine of its rightful inhabitants. Zionist militias carried out campaigns of terror and violence. 

On April 21, the first night of Pesach, Haganah commenced Operation Bi’ur Chametz, which means “burning the leaven,” a sickening reference to the Jewish ritual of eliminating all traces of bread from the home before Passover. With incendiary bombs, gunfire, and psychological warfare, Zionist forces expelled Palestinian citizens from their homes in Haifa. Historian Ilan Pappe recounts, “without packing any of their belongings or even knowing what they were doing, people began leaving en masse… Cooked food still stood on their tables, children had left toys and books on the floor, and life appeared to have frozen in an instant. In the early hours of April 22, people began streaming to the harbour... The boats in the port were soon filled with living cargo. The overcrowding in them was horrible. Many turned over and sank along with all their passengers.”

In Israel today, Palestinians are still second-class citizens. The little territory Israel hasn’t stolen from them yet is being occupied. There is an epidemic of mass incarceration among Palestinian people, especially Palestinian youth. One in five Palestinian people have been imprisoned. Israeli police regularly kill unarmed Palestinian people, mistaking them for ‘terrorists.’ In June of 2020, police killed an autistic Palestianian man named Iyad Halaq. Protesters drew comparisons between his death and the murder of George Floyd, and stood in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. 

As we break this piece of matzah, let us recognize the finality of death. The precious lives of George Floyd, Iyad Halaq, and millions of other Black and Palestinian people murdered by the carceral state can never be replaced. Yizkor, the Jewish memorial prayer for the dead offered on major holidays (including Passover) teaches us how to remember those we’ve lost. To “bind their soul in the binding of life,” we promise to practice tzedakah on their behalf. Tzedakah is often translated as ‘charity’ in English, but more precisely, it means pursuing justice through redistributing resources. By building a better world, the dead live on through us, and their lives become intertwined with our own and the lives of those we’ve touched.
haggadah Section: Yachatz

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