Matzah

Matzah is unleavened bread, made from nothing more than flour and water, eaten during Passover in direct commemoration of the exodus from Egypt, when the Israelites, according to the biblical account, left in such haste that their dough had no time to rise before they departed. The Talmud, in tractate Pesachim, sets out detailed regulations governing exactly how matzah intended for the seder must be prepared, and traditional Orthodox practice, following this discussion, imposes a strict eighteen minute limit from the moment water first touches the flour to the moment the dough finishes baking, since any longer interval risks the beginning of fermentation that would render the bread leavened, chametz, and therefore forbidden for Passover use. This tight production window has shaped matzah baking as a genuinely specialised, time pressured craft, historically requiring dedicated ovens, trained bakers working in coordinated teams, and careful advance preparation of both ingredients and equipment to guarantee the process can be completed correctly within the permitted time for every batch produced ahead of the holiday. Communities producing matzah for sale generally undergo rabbinic supervision confirming the timing and ingredients meet the required standard, a certification many observant households look for specifically before buying matzah for their own seder table.

Beyond its dietary role across the full eight days of Passover, matzah is woven into the structure of the seder itself, the ritual meal that opens the holiday, where a specific piece, the afikoman, is broken off, hidden by the leader of the seder, and searched for by the children present, who traditionally negotiate a small reward for its return since the seder cannot properly conclude until the afikoman is found and eaten as the meal's final taste. Three matzot are placed together at the start of a traditional seder, and the middle one is the piece from which the afikoman is broken, a practice tied to the seder's broader use of matzah as what the Passover Haggadah itself calls the bread of affliction, an object that carries the holiday's central themes of slavery, liberation and memory in physical, edible form rather than only in spoken narrative.

Machine made matzah, standardised and widely available, exists alongside a smaller, more labour intensive market for hand made shmurah matzah, watched matzah, whose wheat is monitored from the time of harvest specifically to guard against any premature contact with moisture. Some families extend the game with a small prize for whichever child locates the afikoman, a practice that has no fixed halakhic requirement but that has become nearly universal across households that host a family seder with young children present.