Do Not Eat Any Leavened Bread on Passover
Deuteronomy’s Passover — The Second Statement of the Law
Deuteronomy 16:3: “You shall eat no leavened bread with it. Seven days you shall eat it with unleavened bread, the bread of affliction — for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste — that all the days of your life you may remember the day when you came out of the land of Egypt.” Deuteronomy repeats the Passover legislation a generation after Sinai, addressed to the generation about to enter the Land. The repetition is not redundant: it adds the phrase “bread of affliction” (lechem oni) and grounds the prohibition in memory (“that all the days of your life you may remember”). The chametz prohibition is not only a seven-day dietary restriction — it is a memory-obligation that runs through all of life.
The phrase “bread of affliction” carries two meanings held in tension by the tradition. The matzah is the bread of slaves — poor, flat, unleavened, baked in haste without the luxury of risen bread. It is also the bread of redemption — the bread Israel ate on the night God brought them out. The same flat bread that represented bondage became, on that night, the bread of freedom. Passover holds both meanings together: the lechem oni is simultaneously the slave’s bread and the redeemed people’s bread.
The Comprehensive Prohibition — All Seven Days, No Exceptions
The prohibition at Deuteronomy 16:3 covers all seven days: “Seven days you shall eat it with unleavened bread.” This is the comprehensive formulation. Exodus 12:15: “Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread; on the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses, for whoever eats leavened bread from the first day to the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel.” The prohibition is continuous, covering each of the seven days without break. There is no day within Passover on which chametz becomes momentarily permissible. The week is a unified period of chametz-free observance, not seven separate daily prohibitions.
The comprehensive nature of the prohibition shapes the Passover kitchen. Unlike a single-day fast, where the household can resume normal cooking immediately afterward, the seven-day chametz ban requires a fully restructured kitchen for the duration — separate dishes, separate utensils, careful inspection of ingredients. The prohibition’s duration ensures that Passover penetrates the household’s entire domestic life, not merely the Seder night.
Memory as the Foundation of the Prohibition
Deuteronomy 16:3 gives the reason for the chametz prohibition explicitly: “that all the days of your life you may remember the day when you came out of the land of Egypt.” The dietary abstention is explicitly grounded in memory. The seven days of matzah are a week of embodied historical consciousness: by eating the bread of the Exodus, by refusing the bread of Egypt, the Israelite re-experiences the departure every year. The prohibition is a memory technology — it keeps the Exodus present not as an abstract historical fact but as a lived, physical reality of the household.
This memory-foundation appears throughout Passover legislation. Exodus 13:8: “And you shall tell your son on that day, ‘It is because of what the LORD did for me when I came out of Egypt.’” The recitation at the Seder, the matzah on the table, the chametz removed from the house — all serve the single command: remember. The prohibition on chametz is not merely about what you eat. It is about who you are: a people whose identity is defined by the fact that God brought them out of Egypt, and whose diet for one week every year testifies to that foundational act.
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