[Avodah] Ta'am of eating matzah

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 08:27:06PM +0300, Michael Makovi wrote:
: BUT, if we find such things as that bread was peculiarly Egyptian, or
: that pagans were prominently involved in meat and milk, etc., can it
: be coincidence? That the meaning would be closed to most Jews of
: history is a certainly a kashya, but it does not beat the fact that
: the parallels are too obvious to be mere coincidence.

It could be common cause. Leavened cakes create a feeling of luxury
(perhaps -- consider that more a placeholder for whatever the cause is)
so Egyptians went for it and we avoid it in certain rituals.

In other cases, it could be inherent. Like the Moreh's explanation of
qorbanbos as explained by the Abarbanel. If a person has a sufficiently
personal relationship with deity, that will be manifest as an emotional
need to give. We see this in AZ, and therefore is a critical part of
avodas Hashem. And if we don't allow people to express that toward the
Borei, they would (if sufficiently spiritual) do so for AZ.

: And can we deny that most Jews of history were oblivious to the
: Gilgamesh flood story and the incredible contrast with our flood
: story, as Dr. Marc Shapiro points out? ...

Or, both are records of the same history. Or the details differ simply
because our worldviews do. Not that we set out to create a contrast.
It's there because we differ.

ChM wouldn't have us punish children for their parents' harm to someone
else's child even without Hamurrabi. His other take just makes that
easier to see the path not traveled.

But in any case, that's wandering away from the point -- the function of
mitzvos.

...
: Why G-d spelled some things out, and left others for us to just stam
: know or forget, is definitely a question. A very good one, I'll agree,
: but it is a question that I do not believe negates the fact (IMHO)
: that the Torah's mitzvot do often relate to ancient realities with
: which we are today unfamiliar with.

And here we totally left... you went back to asking why Hashem gave them
the opportunity to understand that part of the Torah, and some other
oart they gave some other era.

I'm takling about assuming a mitzvah's function can't rest on such
things. It could be misinai, it could be written into how our souls
respond. But the motivation of the mitzvah can't be to internalize an
idea not associatable to the mitzvah until millenia after the mitzvah
was legislated.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Today is the 39th day, which is
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