Keep the Holiday of Matzot. Eat matzot for seven days. (Exodus
23:15)
We celebrated the Season of Our Freedom participating in reestablishing a Jewish community in Crete where Jews lived for 2 millennia.
For Pesach 2011/5771, 300 Jews flew into Crete from 3
continents to create a Jewish community in a holiday village overlooking Daios
Cove.
The entire village was rendered kosher for Passover. Circular hand-made matzot and rectangular
machine-made matzot were served at meals.
Circular matzot symbolize idolatry. Since words in the Torah are written without
vowels, calf (EGeL) can also be read as circle (EGuL).
The idolatrous transgression of the Israelites was their
worship of Ra, the sun God represented in Egyptian art as a golden
circle.
In a town north of Daios Cove, we watched an artist painting
reproductions of Greek pagan images on urns.
Hanukah, our other holiday of freedom, celebrates victory
against forced imposition of Greek gods on the Jews in the Land of Israel.
Rectangular matzot symbolize slavery. The Egyptians enslaved the Israelites in the
malben, meaning both brickyard and rectangle.
Mitzrayim, the biblical name of Egypt, means narrowness. The exodus into the wide expanses of the
Sinai desert expanded consciousness.
The Daios Cove Jewish community recited Psalm 118 every day:
From narrow straits I called out to God. God answered me with
expansiveness.
As we break matzot to eat them, we break out of the box and
circle, both closed forms, breaking away from narrowness of thought.
Jewish consciousness is shaped by spiral forms, from Torah
scroll to DNA to tzitzit fringes to ram's horn shofar to spiral hallah
bread.
Jews are called Am HaSePheR (People of the Torah
Scroll). The SPR root found its way into
the words SPiRal, SPiRitual and inSPiRation.
