The Middle Matzah 

Noa Blonder

Class of 2020

I feel like the middle matzah. Just seconds away from fulfilling my life’s duty, I have been torn apart, ripped in half, thrown into a dark and unknown place, and then isolated from the ironic chaos of the seder. (Seder means order, but passover seders tend to be chaotic). How was I chosen to be the middle matzah? Out of all the boxes of matzah you bought, meant to feed our family through 8 days of Passover, you chose me? I do not know if I will ever return to the seder, get to see the faces of those gathered around the table joyously celebrating our freedom, or if I will be lost in a bookshelf, or under a couch cushion for the rest of my life, deprived from ever being able to nourish the hunger we have built up through the endless prayers and songs, dreaming of the sweet smell of matzoh ball soup and charoset wafting just an inch beneath my nose. I thought the wandering was over. 13 years I tirelessly traversed the dessert through blood sweat and tears––but mostly tears––dreaming of the promised land. The land flowing with milk and honey. The land in which they all promised me I would one day arrive in. Pictures, videos and stories, I saw this land! And it is just beyond my grasp––was beyond my grasp. I could taste the freedom crawling on my lips, I was so close, I was practically there. To see it, to feel its bittersweet breath on my skin, to feel my heart bang against my chest each time I thought about it, just to be ripped away right before I could claim it as my own. My dream of entering the promised land is fading away as each day goes by. The promise has been broken along with my heart––a parallel to the middle matzah that I have become. I will forever be wandering, yearning for the closure of stepping into the promised land. I wonder, if I will be wandering forever.

The middle matzah reminds us that, the wandering will never be over. You cannot always trust the feeling of security that is, holding your life within your hands, staring down upon it with utter control. The world has other plans for us. The world rattled my surface when everything was falling into place, pushed me down. I needed my hands to catch myself, so the life that my fingers molded crashed with me, splattered beneath my feet.

I know I’m not the only one, I know you have all become the middle matzah too. So, how can we find a balance between feeling sorry for ourselves and feeling for our world? How can we take a step back to recognize that, our pain, although valid, has melted into the tears of our world. Our pain has become a microscopic cell that bleeds out of humankind's eyes, and rolls down our cheeks. Our personal pain does not represent the terror of our world, yet is one of the millions of octaves we hear through the cries of human sufferage.


 


haggadah Section: Tzafun