[Avodah] Ta'am of eating matzah

[Michael Makovi]

> :> I find it hard to believe that a mitzvah ledoros depends on something
> :> from Egyptian culture that is not ledoros and not even mentioned in
> :> the chumash.
> :> R' Micha

> : Self evident to those who grew up in Egypt. That was the original intended
> : audicence....
> : R' Rich Wolpoe

> Ch"v -- the original intended audience was the entire history of the
> Jewish people! The mitzvah was given ledoros, not to one generation.
> R' Micha

But R' Rich has a point - there are MANY cases in the Torah which
modern studies have shown connections to ancient practices and
knowledge that the first generations would have been very very well
aware of. Surely it cannot be mere coincidence!

(As an aside, I recall that in the Hertz chumash, it is pointed out
that bread is a very "Egyptian" food. I forget whether he says this
regarding not eating chametz on Pesach, or not putting chametz on the
mizbeach, or where, but I know it's somewhere.)

To add more examples:

- In the Torah we find many Semitic idioms. If one follows R' Yishmael
that the Torah speaks in the language of men, then it means that many
of the literary oddities we find in the Torah and try to darshon, are
simply ordinary everyday Semitic idioms that no one originally found
odd at all. Even if one wants to say we can darshon them nevertheless,
the fact remains that no one can deny the presence of many ancient
Semitic idioms. I even saw an article by a rav at Bar Ilan (published
in Azure) in which he shows that the Torah's account of the giving of
the covenant and Ten Commandments in Shemot is put in the style of an
Assyrian suzerainty treaty, which would have underscored, to that
generation, the idea that there is a mutual contract between us and
G-d, and that we are favored servants of His (I can elaborate later if
anyone is interested).

- With the goring ox, we are told that the owner must pay, even if it
gores a child. Rabbi Hertz points out that until the Code of Hamurabi
was discovered, no one knew why goring a child ought to be different.
Answer: you might have thought that the ox's owner's children ought to
have been punished. Aside from this, many Torah laws are phrased very
similarly to Hammurabi-ish laws (especially parshat Mishpatim),
whether because of common idioms and style (see above), or in order to
draw a contrast with what is different between the laws (eg: in
Hamurabi, a slave's ear is bored if he tries to escape, whereas we
bore his ear when he refuses to leave). Presumably, our ancestors were
familiar with ancient Semitic laws. Also, many practices of Avraham
clearly resonate with Hamurabi law (in fact, many maximalists use this
as evidence that the Torah was not written in Exilic times). There are
many more examples, which I unfortunately cannot think of at the
moment.

You are taking issue with the idea that the Torah presumes knowledge
of Egytian bread and pagan meat and milk, but surely you must admit
that even if we know the basic details of idolatry, our ancestors were
MUCH more acquainted with exactly what went on at a pagan festival and
what different gods signified. The lifestyle too, they would have been
much more aware of. The question then is simply one of degree - our
ancestors absolutely positively knew more than us about many ancient
practices and beliefs, and the only question is which practices
specifically, and how much.

Actually, this is in fact davka why Rav Hirsch says we must learn
Canaanite, Egyptian, Babylonian, and Roman culture and history - he
says we cannot understand the Torah's moral laws without knowing what
they are polemicizing against. I will humbly suggest we extend Rav
Hirsch's words to many ritualistic laws too.

So you object that if we aren't aware of them, this poses a difficulty
to their being otot. But a few points:
1) G-d wanted to give us 5 books, not 50. He couldn't include a
history book to summarize all of the foreign cultures. He gave us what
was manageable for a scribe.

2) If we don't remember this things, perhaps it is simply a sign the
Torah did its job! If we aren't even aware that anyone would have even
conceived of punishing a child for his father's crime, it means that
all the more so, we won't conceive of that idea! If we aren't aware
that pagans eat meat and milk as a fertility ritual, then we too won't
do the same with that kavana. So in some way, forgetfulness is good.

3) Who knows how much Exile destroyed our memory, by disrupting
mesorah and such? Besides the Romans killing all our rabbis, who knows
how many rabbis and grandfathers and kohanim/leviim died under Bavel,
and disrupted our mesorah? We know that the Torah was forgotten until
Ezra and Hillel, and maybe this includes much history and cultural
knowledge too.

Mikha'el Makovi