Originally published in the Jewish Journal · Table for Five
The people picked up their dough when it was not yet leavened, their leftovers bound in their garments on their shoulders. -Ex. 12:34
How many of us have this snapshot burned in our imaginations, if not of our own grandparents coming to America then of countless others through history? It’s the iconic image of the refugee, exile, and runaway, what they could salvage bundled in clothing slung over their shoulders fleeing in the nick of time. But in that bundle the Torah here hides a dire prophecy, a gift, for us. As Shabtai ben Yosef Bass put it, “The Egyptians did not let them procrastinate long enough to become chametz.”
He probably meant their matzah, but it applies to the Hebrews, those remnants and the half-baked. Don’t stay long enough to leaven yourselves into comfortable arrogance in that fatal fourth or fifth generation in exile. Pharaoh is tuned to all the media channels showing your inflation and self-satisfaction, you media moguls and university presidents and scientists and artists and writers and billionaires and entrepreneurs and influencers, and he sees a whole population of Josephs, if not Benjamins, replacing his people in the marketplace. If you don’t run of your own accord, trust me, your hosts won’t let you dally. Neither you nor your matzah shall rise. And don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
Needless to stay, the millennia have taught us this lesson too many times. We will never feel the time is right. Yes, the bread’s still bakin’, but grab yourselves, the half-baked dough, the remnants, and go.
