Kosher for Passover matzo must be made in 18 minutes or less, from start to finish. The result is the basic matzah you know and either love or hate—flat, dry, and reminiscent of cardboard. Shmurah matzah, or matzah that has been guarded, is made the same way that regular matzah is made—except that it's watched from the day the grains are planted in the field to the moment it comes out of the oven. And while there’s certainly a long tradition of eating this kind of matzo, it’s not what is described in the Bible as the Jews left Egypt.
Manischewitz: not the original matzah
First of all, bread made in ancient Egypt would almost certainly have been something like the sourdough bread of today. A starter piece of bread was kept from an old loaf and used to make the dough for new loaves. (For more information and instructions on how to make your own bread this way, click here.) This process did take a reasonable amount of time—certainly a few days—but if you bake sourdough bread before it’s fully risen it will just be denser and sourer. The result would likely be something like a heavy pita, not shmurah matzah.

This isn’t the only discrepancy between the story we’re told and the particulars we can deduce. If you look closely at the text of the Exodus story, the Jews had a full two weeks to prepare for their departure. They didn’t eat unleavened bread because they had to get out quickly, they ate unleavened bread because it’s commanded in Exodus 12:8: And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it. This eating of matzo happened well before the Jews actually left Egypt. It’s part of the eating of the pascal sacrifice, which comes before the final plague, the killing of the firstborn sons. This implies that the Jews were specifically told to make matzah, it wasn’t just an accidental result of their flight. Later in Exodus 12:34, and again in Deuteronomy 16:3, the Torah explains that we eat matzah to remind us of how quickly we went out of Egypt, but the actual eating of matzah happened before the Exodus.

I haven’t been able to find much on the history of matzo, so I don’t know when the matzo we know today became the standard unleavened bread for Passover, but what you pull out of your Manischewitz box probably has very little resemblance to what was eaten in the desert as the Jews fled Egypt.

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And Moses Said: i am a golden god!People have sure leapt on the story about how Moses may have been under the influence when he went up Mount Sinai, but while it is interesting to note the importance given to one possibly psychoactive plant—acacia—in the Bible, there are a lot of gaps. Israeli Researcher Benny Shanon—author of one of the best phenomenological studies of the psychedelic experience—has suggested in an academic article (and a resultant slew of radio interviews) that certain plants native to Sinai contain the same psychoactive ingredients as the Amazonian shamanic plant medicine ayahuasca (described in a recent Jewcy article by yours truly). Whoa, Nellie—here are three simple reasons why the "Moses on Drugs" theory is nothing to get high about:

1. Most (secular) Biblical scholars say the Exodus never happened anyway; it was a legend told by one group of Canaanites to create a distinct identity for themselves. Shanon has taken the weird position that the Exodus did happen, though it was not supernatural. Ergo, some explanation is needed. Ergo, ergot (or DMT).
2. The "similarities" between the ayahuasca experience and Mount Sinai are slim and stretched. Yes, ayahuasca leads to visions and spiritual epiphanies. It also leads to apparent encounters with spirits (forbidden by the Torah), complex visual revelations (mostly absent in the Torah, but present in Ezekiel and Hechalot mysticism), and a lot of nausea (curiously absent in the Torah's narrative). Worse, many popular press reports on Shanon's article have lumped the psilocybin and ayahuasca experiences together, when actually they're very different.
3. What is all this trying to prove? That Moses was "merely" stoned? That Western religion came from a psychedelic experience? (Terrence McKenna said that decades ago.) Or, conversely, that psychedelics lead to God? (Ram Dass got that one.) None of this is new: I've seen articles suggesting the knei bosem in the sacred incense is cannabis, and McKenna has an interesting riff that the tree of life is a mushroom. Is this supposed to "explain" the Exodus narrative like low tides "explain" the parting of the Red Sea? Why is such an "explanation" useful? Isn't it easier to just assume the whole thing is a legend?

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Sirak Sabahat is cute, but he's no Paul Newman: Two of the stars of "Live and Become"Exodus is practically a sixth book of Moses for many American Jews, but we can probably all agree that its vision of Israel could use an update. I’m not even talking about the film’s depiction of Israeli Arabs (all both of them) – I just mean that Israel’s modern population consists of people whose parents fled continents other than Europe. So when The New York Times says Live and Become, an Israeli epic about an African immigrant, “aspires to be something like a contemporary Exodus from an outsider’s point of view,” that sounds like a good thing.

Unfortunately, the Times isn’t convinced – a shame not only because we could use some good Ethiopian Jewish stories, but also because the movie LOOKS really excellent. Its hero is a Sudanese boy whose mother, in a desperate attempt to help him escape their refugee camp, sneaks him onto an Israel-bound plane of Ethiopian Jews. The boy, now called Shlomo, gets adopted by a French-Israeli couple and grows up as a black Jew, facing casual racism and ongoing questions about his Jewish identity.

On Rotten Tomatoes the film garnered an average rating of 84 out of 100 from an audience of mostly international reviewers, which gives me hope because I really want to like this movie. But it’s hard to get past details like this:

Armand Amar’s score, a wailing pastiche of Middle Eastern and Western styles, helps evoke his suffering and longing, but it is both annoyingly repetitive and, like Shlomo’s monologues to the moon, mawkish.

Monologues to the moon? Really? Maybe for now we should stick to Paul Newman.

Freud: Let my people go!There's a really interesting, if meandering, Op-Ed today at the JPost.  About Sigmund Freud's research and analysis of Moses, and the Exodus.  His thoughts on the Jewish people.

To me, it feels dated, as all things psychoanalytical feel dated.  Simplified.  Boxed in.

But it also feels smart, and curious, and it's not something I've thought much about:

So what was the essence of Judaism that Freud held on to? He believed in the chain of tradition which has to have an anchor, what he would call a collective repressed memory. The repression was due to the fact that the Children of Israel, according to Freud, eventually rose up and killed Moses, their harsh tormentor, and then regretted the act, but necessarily repressed the memory of it. Freud related that to the case of the first humans, who lived in small groups where the sons were totally subservient to the one dominant father, who alone has all the females and against whom the sons eventually rise up to kill and consume his flesh.

The question then remains as to how to focus on this whole drama of Moses and the Israelites. This is where Freud insists on the centrality of the Exodus. It is the one over-arching piece of folk history that binds all the sons of Israel together. It is the story of the coming out of Egypt that binds us to the story of Moses, and the belief in the one and only God that Moses, the giver of harsh laws, discovered for us.

It is the essential piece of mnemo-history that we believe and repeat together each year, and throughout the year - the going out of Egypt, when God and the Children of Israel had the purest of relationships in the desert, before the death of Moses and the temporary reversion to other cults.

And it resonates for me. Because it's true that the Exodus (however historically acurate it may or may not be) resonates for me.  Such a narrative-- a story about freedom from tyranny, the breaking of one's own chains, and also the assistance of a greater force--seems to me to be necessary.  We need it.

We need to believe in our own ability to free ourselves, to speak truth to power, to shout down Pharoah... and the same time we need to believe that we won't HAVE to free ourselves.  We want to think someone is watching over us, parting the sea at our feet.

But I also find myself ruminating about Freud's desire to believe in Moses.  About how Freud might have seen himself as a Moses-figure... setting his people free from a tradition he believed to be a falsehood. A liberator in his own right.  Living (as Moses lived) in a time of tyranny, fiercely aware of how much his people were tied to their myths.... how much they needed them.

Too complicated for me to unpack this minute.  Go read the story!

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This week, in the portion called “B’Shalach,” the great escape known as the Exodus continues, and the Hebrew runaways wade in the waters of the Sea of Reeds. (It is not the “Red Sea” – that is also one of the most infamous mistranslations in biblical history.)Sea of Reeds: The Hebrews flee from fish and Egyptians as they cross the Sea of Reeds.

No matter what you imagine the Exodus to be – historical, mythical, both or neither – the powerful image of a mass of humans fleeing towards freedom while being chased by soldiers is painfully familiar, as we see this today in war-torn areas worldwide. Like many modern attempts to personalize the stories of mass migrations, we focus on the plight of individuals, capturing the image of one person or one family. Sometimes intimate details can most effectively portray the bigger, often incomprehensible tales of our lives.

In this story, we focus on one word which describes what the Hebrews brought along on their journey, and/or who they left behind.

Exodus 13:18: “But God led the people about, by the way of the wilderness by the Red Sea; and the children of Israel went up armed out of the land of Egypt” (JPS Bible).

The Hebrew word “chamushim” is most often translated as “armed,” “harnessed,” “equipped for battle,” or “bearing weapons.” Though many Jews today carry weapons (I’m thinking of Israeli soldiers but also Sandra Froman, the new president of the NRA – a Jewish woman!), Bible readers prior to 1948 may have found this concept startling. But weapons may not have been the only things that they carried. Later in the story, after they cross the sea, Miriam leads the people in song, accompanied by drums. It is comforting to know that our ancestral runaways packed musical instruments, and not just weapons (and matza), for the road. Music Comforts the Hebrews on their Journey: They may have brought weapons, but they packed instruments, too.

But there is another way to translate the word “chamushim.” It could also be derived from the word for the number five: “chamesh.” Many Jewish commentaries and translators use this translation, suggesting that the Hebrews were divided into groups of five. For example, the Pseudo-Jonathan translates the verse this way: “…and every one of the sons of Israel left Egypt, with five children each."

The 11th century commentator Rashi, who quotes Rabbinic sources, has another interpretation: “Only one of five Hebrews left Egypt, while the other four, who refused to leave, died during the three days of darkness.”

According to this version, the Hebrews are not leaving with weapons, they are leaving in diminished numbers. How many preferred to stay behind in familiar territory, even if death awaited them? How many chose to leap into the unknown?

One of out five, or groups of five, with weapons and with drums, the heroes and heroines of this ancient journey sing their way across the Sea of Reeds, discover Manna, thirst for water, and win their first battle, all within four chapters. Next stop: Mount Sinai.

What do we pack for our own journeys across the threshold of new possibilities? And what or who, this time around, do we leave behind?