From Forbidden to Obligatory

The Transformation of Chametz From Pesach to Shavuot

“So Naomi returned from Moab accompanied by Ruth the Moabite, her daughter-in-law, arriving in Bethlehem at the beginning of the barley harvest.” (Ruth 1:22)

Fill your horn with oil and set out; I am sending you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have decided on one of his sons to be king. (1 Samuel 1:16)

“From the day after the Sabbath, the day you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, count off seven weeks. Count off fifty days up to the day after the seventh Sabbath, and then present an offering of new grain to the Lord. From wherever you live, bring two loaves made of two-tenths of an ephah of the finest flour, baked with chametz, as a wave offering of first fruits to the Lord.” (Leviticus 23:15-17)

”For seven days you are to eat bread made without chametz. On the first day remove the chametz from your houses...” (Exodus 12:15)

All the meal offerings come to be offered as matza, with care taken to prevent leavening, except for ten loaves of leavened bread among the forty loaves that accompany the thanks offering, and the meal offering of the two loaves that are brought on the festival of Shavuot, as they come to be offered as leavened bread. (Mishna Menachot 5:1)

That party shall bring his wife to the priest. And he shall bring as an offering for her one-tenth of an ephah of barley flour. No oil shall be poured upon it and no frankincense shall be laid on it, for it is a meal offering of jealousy, a meal offering of remembrance which recalls wrongdoing. (Numbers 5:15)

Reish Lakish said: Let the mitzva of the omer not be insignificant in your eyes, as by means of the mitzva of the omer, the Holy One blessed be He made peace between a man and his wife. That is to say: Due to the merit of barley flour. (Vayikra Rabba 28:6)

While it is typically forbidden to bring leavened bread as a sacrifice, on Shavuot, it is not only permissible, but obligatory. Chametz (leavened bread), which normally has the status of that which is impure, is itself transformed, into something holy. In parashat Emor we are commanded to count the Omer, a 49 day period between Pesach and Shavuot, a period that can be seen as a process of transforming our relationship to leavened bread from one of denial and abstinence to one of elevation and integration. This 49 day Omer period, in which we currently find ourselves as we read the parasha (Emor), serves as preparation for the receiving of the Torah. The Omer sacrifice was one of barley. Thus, we have a a kind of triptych marked by three stages of grain offering: matzah (Pesach), barley (Omer), wheat (Shavuot). Our changing relationship to grain reflects our changing relationship to ourselves and God.

Barley, which was considered animal food, was also the grain brought by a man who suspected his wife of adultery (sotah). The Omer period marks an extended trial period before Israel and God are united at Sinai, corresponding to the process through which husband and wife are reunited at the end of the Sotah process. Likewise, the Omer period was historically a time of plague, in which 24,000 of Rabbi Akiva’s students died, because they demonized one another. Barley represents the hope for peace implicit in the animal’s lack of peace.

We bring the food of animals to show ourselves the damaging consequences of behaving like animals. While we have left Egypt physically, we remain slaves to our base instincts and impulses during the Omer period, not yet able to direct ourselves to a life of flourishing. We remain reactive and addicted. Thus, the period of counting serves as a meditative time in which we seek to create an opening for reflection between stimulus and response. For it is in that small space that our freedom opens up, as Victor Frankl writes. When we left Egypt, we left in haste. Haste was needed because we were not yet deliberative beings. Our desire to leave was just as impulsive as the base desires that lead us astray. We desired our own freedom without even knowing it. How could we? A circular logic prevented us from knowing what we didn’t know.

A poetic thread connects all frayed relationships, from jealous husband and suspected wife, to Rabbi Akiva’s divided students, to the newly freed slaves and God. In all cases, we must eat the food of animals to awaken our desire to be more than animals. Once we pass through that crucible we are ready for chametz. Bread, which symbolizes pride and ego, also represents civilizational advancement and human distinction. When we pass through the gauntlet of barley we ready ourselves for wheat. Our very egos which were a source of impurity and blockage in Egypt become instruments for self-discipline and self-transcendence by the time of Shavuot.

The three stages of redemption (Pesach, Omer, Shavuot), mark stages in our development from passivity to agency. A slave cannot act of his own free will, a free person can. But the extended process of the Omer shows that one can be externally free and internally unfree. One can be ruled by unconscious drives, but cultural influences, by peer pressure. The right to be free does not guarantee that one will use that right. Thus, one must leave unfreedom in haste, and only later process the Exodus. An ignorant person in a terrible state must be like matzah, flat, passive, to be “taken out” of their freedom. But as a person matures they become responsible for their own freedom. They are fit to eat bread, to use their personality for service rather than rely on God to save them, independent of their personality.

We exercised some choice in leaving Egypt, but it was the choice of a refugee, fleeing in the dead of night. Shavuot, however, involves contemplation and preparation, a three-day preparation of purification embedded within a 7 week meditation of counting towards a new life.

If chametz signifies the evil inclination (yetzer hara) or judgment (din), then Sinai marks the moment where we are capable of accepting these elements and reckoning with them. We needed kindness and mercy to leave Egypt, but at Sinai we don’t need to be so infantilized. During the Omer, our evil inclination still bested us, as we behaved like beasts; at Sinai we understand our yetzer hara as part of who we are. Revelation must be a revelation to our entire selves, including our “shadow.”

The blessing over bread acknowledges God as hamotzi lechem min ha-aretz, One who takes bread out of the earth. But the process of making bread is a labor intensive one, involving the coordination of society. God’s ability to draw out bread is a function of our own ability to collaborate and work together. Conversely, famine, in the Torah, represents the breakdown of society. The book of Ruth, which is read on Shavuot, begins with a famine, and is set in a time of social anomie. Ruth and Naomi arrive in the house of bread (Beit Lechem), during the barley season. King David, Ruth’s great grandson, is the son of a Bethlehemite, literally meaning a house-of-bread-ite. Kingship, which restores the broken social order, means that we can eat bread, again; we won’t starve.

Kabbalistically, the day leading into Shavuot occurs on Malchut she’b’malchut (“Kingship within Kingship.” Don’t think of kingship simply in terms of a person on a throne with a scepter, but rather as an expression of trust in institutions and in one’s fellow. The Sotah marks enmity and suspicion, each to his own; so too Rabbi Akiva’s students were fragmented by political polarization and lashon hara (linguistic animosity); and Naomi’s husband, Elimelech (ironically named “my God is King”) leaves Israel because—according to Midrashic sources—he didn’t want to be burdened by his society in a time of famine. But Shavuot involves the elevation of bread because it is the holiday of of Malchut, of trust, agency, and maturity.

The transformation of chametz from forbidden substance to divine obligation mirrors our own journey from slaves to covenant partners. When Ruth and Naomi arrive in Beit Lechem during the barley harvest, they enter a broken society that has forgotten how to make bread together. By Shavuot, not only has Ruth been integrated into the community, but she has laid the foundation for David's kingship—Malchut—which will restore the social fabric. On Shavuot, we celebrate not the elimination of our egos but their transformation through Torah into instruments of holiness, as we figure out how to bring our egos productively into relationship with one another. The chametz offering teaches us that, with proper intention and direciton, we can turn what was once a source of shame and impurity into a gift.

Shabbat Shalom,

Zohar Atkins

Etz Hasadeh