I’m used to having to change my plans. Between being a doula and being a mother, I know what it is to have a plan for the day and then to have to cancel it, change it. It’s my life. I’m used to it.

I’m used to cooking for the Shabbat meals on Thursday, just in case I’m not home Friday. I’m used to picking up the phone in the middle of the night and running out of my house. I try to prepare dinner at breakfast time just in case I have to leave. I have to set everything up for the unexpected.

That is until this year. What a year!It’s been a year of relinquishing control Talk about no plans whatsoever. Lockdown, no lockdown. School, no school. Quarantine, not allowed to work, allowed to work—complete and total confusion. It’s truly been a year of relinquishing control, of planning to have no plans because every day is unknown. It was a year of “I have no control.” A year of being humbled.

My children ask, “Are we having guests for Seder night?”

“I don’t know.”

Each holiday this year during the pandemic we have had the same conversation, and while we pray that the answer is “Yes, of course, don’t we every year?” This year, every holiday, the answer was: “I don’t know.”

And we still don’t know.

We have heard passionate opinions from professionals about everything on every side. There’s so much technology, science, medicine, so much at our fingertips, but really, we kept seeing throughout this past year that nothing was as expected. Everything was in G‑d’s hands, and as much as we thought we knew, we simply do not know.

I know, you might tell me that this is true with every aspect in our lives, but who can argue that this year, we saw it far more clearly?

And here we are once again at Passover, and I can’t believe that it’s been a bit more than a year of planning not to have a plan.

The matzahs are ready to be placed on the table. There is wine and all the symbolic foods in the fridge. Somehow, thank G‑d, we made it. I look at those matzahs, and a question pops up in my mind. Why do we have a mitzvah to eat matzah on this night? It’s actually one of the questions that we ask in “The Four Questions,” the “Mah Nishtanah?” There is a special mitzvah to eat matzah specifically on Seder night, the night we left Egypt. Why?

We say in Haggadah: “This matzah that we eat, for what reason [do we eat it]? Because the dough of our fathers did not have time to become leavened before the King of the kings of kings, the Holy One Blessed Be He revealed Himself to them and redeemed them.”

We are eating the matzah to remind us that our forefathers left in haste with no time to allow their bread to rise.

It seems a bit strange. What does that mean, no time? The plagues transpired over a period of 10 months. There were plenty of announcements. We knew that we were leaving; it wasn’t a surprise. When the Nation of Israel left Egypt, we left with our entire nation—with riches, with sheep and goats. We left with plenty of things, including jewelry and riches. We knew that we were going. It was the plan.

And yet, with all of our planning and knowing that information, we still had to leave in a hurry—not according to our plan, but to G‑d’s. The matzah that we eat on this night, Seder night, is to remind us that our redemption, our liberation and our formation as a people happened when we, with faith, followed G‑d’s plan and just went where He told us to go. You see, the only thing that we needed to take us out of Egypt was faith in G‑d.

So here we are with our matzah, also known according in the Zohar as “bread of faith” and “bread of healing,” on Seder night.

Why are we commanded to eat it specifically at night?

King David writes: “To declare in the morning Your kindness, and Your faith at night (Psalms 92:2).”

In the daytime, we see as far as we canAt night, we see nothing see. What we see is revealed, and our plans go according to what we expect. But at night, in the darkness, we see nothing. However, in truth, in the darkness we are not limited to the boundaries of what we can see. So actually, we can see farther! A person who believes and clings to their faith has a vision more than what they can tangibly see.

So, on Seder night, the night when we left in a haste, we were liberated from Pharaoh and his control. We were liberated from being limited to having the freedom to see beyond what our eyes can see, and with this, we began our process to becoming fully healed.

On this night of Seder, wherever we are, with whomever we are, let’s thank G‑d that we made it to this night. As we eat the matzah—the bread of our faith, the bread of our healing—let it truly bring us healing. Let us fully embrace the lesson that with all of our tools, technology, medicine and information, the only power we truly have is to put our trust in G‑d and to go where He has us go.