[Avodah] Soft Matza

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

I wrote:
> For a very long time, the reason I learned was that this is just
> another in a long line of chumros adopted for chametz and matza.
> [...]
> Similarly, I was taught that although the halacha is to allow
> matza even up to a tefach thick, our practice (please note that
> I am not using the word "minhag") is to minimize the possibility
> of chometz by baking the matzos very thin.

R' Zev Sero responded:

> True, but "very thin" is defined for this purpose (e.g. in Ba'er
> Hetev) as an etzba, which is about 10 times the thickness of
> today's matzos.
>
> There are other proofs: all the poskim, right into the 19th
> century, talk about the baal habayis having the only ke'arah,
> and distributing from his matzos a kezayis to everybody.  It's
> even specified that the middle matzah must be made bigger than
> the others, because each person needs a kezayis from its smaller
> half.  Today's matzos barely have 3 kezeysim total, and there's
> no way to get more than one kezayis from the smaller half of the
> middle matzah.

I think RZS may have misunderstood me. I agree that the matzos used to contain many more kezaysim than nowadays. My only point was that the reason for changing to thin matzos was not so that they'd stay edible longer, but to help insure -- to an even greater degree than in past generations -- that the matzos would be free of chometz.

I even cited other areas (avoidance of chalita, and combining the 18-minute rule with non-stop kneading) where we are much more fearful of chometz than previous generations were.


R' Meir Rabi wrote:

> The preference expressed by the Rama is not for HARD Matza but for
> THIN Matza. The Matza I produce is not more than 1mm thick, that
> is significantly less than machine made and hand made Matza.

I did not realize that. I don't want to intrude on your trade secrets, but I'm very curious how you get it to stay soft and fresh for so long?

Akiva Miller

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