Hametz is leavening, specifically the yeast that makes dough rise. According to the biblical account of the Israelites exodus from Egypt, they had to depart so quickly, there was no time to allow the bread they were baking to rise. Thus, their first meals in the desert included a flat, hard bread called Matzah. From that time to this very day, one of the foundation pieces of the week-long celebration of Passover is eating matzah and ridding the house of hametz.
Rabbi Kerry Olitzky, in his book “Preparing The Heart For Passover”, teaches “The rabbis suggest that the leaven transcends the physical world. This leaven, this hametz, also symbolizes a puffiness of self, an inflated personality, an egocentricity that threatens to eclipse the essential personality of the individual. Ironically, it is what prevents the individual from rising spiritually and moving closer to holiness. Thus, what hametz effectively does in the material world is exactly what it precludes in the realm of the spirit. That’s why it has to be removed.”
The process of searching out and eventually ridding ourselves of physical hametz can also be understood on a spiritual level. This is a holiday of cleaning, sorting, and throwing out the leaven that has gathered over the year in the hidden corners and recesses of our mind and body. Egocentricity and selfishness are the bloated examples of too much hametz. Passover is a time for re-assessment of priorities, removing the attitudinal tendencies of personal superiority or inferiority.
Chicago-based author Anita Silvert writes, “Hametz is what makes things puff up with air; the difference between matza and Wonder Bread is just air. On a transcendent level, our spiritual selves can be over-inflated, puffed up by our egos. When our egos get too inflated, they erupt and begin seeping into everything we do, and affecting every relationship we have. True too, when a house is filled with the chametz of insensitivity, anger, self-centeredness or indifference, it will also erupt, and the effects will seep out of the very walls of the home.”
The ritual practices of Passover, as with the other celebrations of Jewish life, are not for the sake of an all-powerful deity, but a discipline for those who do them. If I can take the time to purge my home and possessions of any source of leavening agent, how much more so myself? And, if I can be seen ridding myself-both physically and spiritually-of hametz, what sort of ripple-effect might this have on those whose lives I touch?
Rabbi Howard Siegel