Our Sages teach,1 “In every generation, a person is obligated to see himself as if he is leaving Egypt.” “Our hearts are drawn after our actions.”2 Thus, to heighten our awareness of that experience, G‑d commands us to perform certain mitzvos which enable us to relive the Exodus and evoke anew the feelings aroused within our ancestors’ hearts at that time.
The sages of the Kabbalah enrich that concept, explaining that the Pesach mitzvos are not merely catalysts to spark our thoughts and our feelings, but the deeds themselves are mystical. When a Jew eats matzah, he elicits the same spiritual energies that our ancestors did. We are not merely commemorating the matzah they ate. Instead, the Haggadah uses the present tense, stating, “This is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate.” Our matzah is spiritually identical to theirs.

Two Steps Beyond Self

In his classic maamar entitled Sheshes Yamim Tochal Matzos,3 the Alter Rebbe explains that there are two dimensions to “the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate”: a) the matzah that they ate before midnight, while partaking of the Pesach sacrifice, and b) the matzah that they ate after the Exodus, when “the dough of our ancestors did not have the opportunity to rise before the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He, revealed Himself.”
With regard to the matzah eaten together with the Pesach sacrifice, it is written:4 “You shall guard the matzos,” for this matzah requires a vigilant watch lest it become chametz. In spiritual terms, the difference between chametz and matzah is that chametz rises, its puffiness symbolizing pride and inflated self-concern. Matzah lies flat, reflecting unpretentious humility. When a Jew is in Egypt, spiritually constrained by the boundaries and limitations of material existence, he must watch himself and continually struggle to avoid the pitfalls of self-concern.
By contrast, “the dough of our ancestors” that they brought out of Egypt “did not have the opportunity to rise” because “the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He, revealed Himself.” After the revelation of G‑dliness that accompanied the Jews’ redemption from Egypt, there was no longer a need to watch the dough lest it become chametz. Correspondingly in a person’s individual spiritual service, when shown Divine revelation, he rises beyond his petty, day-to-day preoccupation with his own needs and opens himself to transcendence.

From Egypt to Sinai

The matzah we eat at the Seder commemorates the matzah eaten with the Pesach sacrifice, i.e., the matzah eaten in Egypt before midnight. Nevertheless, the Haggadah describes this matzah as recalling “the dough of our ancestors [that] did not have the opportunity to rise before the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He, revealed Himself to them and redeemed them,” i.e., matzah associated with Divine revelation that precludes the possibility of chametz. On the surface, at this stage of the Pesach holiday, our spiritual experience has not yet been elevated to that rung. Seemingly, we have not been shown the revelation of “the King of kings” and must still contend with the limitations of Egypt. Why then does the Haggadah speak of the higher level of matzah?
Because the difference between the matzah eaten before midnight and that eaten afterwards was relevant only on the first Pesach, before the Giving of the Torah. By contrast, after the Giving of the Torah, even the matzah that we eat before midnight on Pesach night communicates this powerful revelation of G‑dliness, for the matzah we eat is a mitzvah, bonding us intimately with G‑d Himself. Moreover, our partaking of it is preceded by our observance of the Torah and its mitzvos the entire year. Since G‑d invests Himself in the Torah and its mitzvos, our partaking of matzah establishes a connection between us and “the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.”

Stepping Beyond the Limitations of Time

Indeed, the above explanation raises the opposite question: True, the matzah our ancestors ate after the Redemption was infused with the revelation of “the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.” Nevertheless, eating it was not a mitzvah. The fact that partaking of our matzah is a mitzvah implies that we have a more internalized connection with the G‑dliness the matzah conveys, and, moreover, it conveys a loftier rung of G‑dliness. Why then do we associate our matzah with “the dough of our ancestors [that] did not have the opportunity to rise”? Seemingly, our matzah is on a higher rung.
The resolution of this question depends on the concept mentioned initially – that Pesach is not merely a commemoration of history, but a present day happening that makes it possible for each of us to leave his own personal Mitzrayim and transcend his individual boundaries and constraints.
These constraints also include the limits of time, enabling us to experience several different spiritual phases simultaneously. Thus, the matzah that we eat before midnight is multi-dimensional, embodying the positive quality of the matzah the Jews ate in Egypt before midnight, the positive quality of the matzah associated with the revelation of “the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He,” and the lofty level contributed by the Giving of the Torah.
And in our transcendence of the boundaries of time, we have the potential to cross the horizons into the future and taste the matzah we will eat at the time of the Ultimate Redemption; may it come speedily in our days.