Breaking (Unleavened) Bread
By Stefene Russell
Photograph courtesy of the Missouri Historical Society Photographs and Prints Collection
A Passover seder isn’t a meal. It’s a history lesson, a cultural transmission during which kids are taught to “read” a plate of ritually prepared food as deep story. This matzoh and these bitter herbs represent the struggles of your ancestors, which may not be all that different from your own; Ramses II comes in many guises. Here, a barely teenaged Shoshanna Rimel stands at the mic at an all-faiths seder after explaining “poor man’s bread”—the matzoh that’s pulled from the middle of a stack of three and broken in half, symbolic of the Jews’ slavery. This broken bread is also a symbol of the incompleteness of us all, a reminder of why we need each other, the crack that lets the light in.
