Let’s turn our attention to shmurah matzah (or matzah m’shumeret). That’s the name for the kind of matzot that many observant Jews insist upon to fulfill the mitzvah of eating unleavened bread (akhilat matzah) at the Seder. Some, in fact, will not eat any other kind of matzah during all of Pesach. Usually (but not necessarily) hand-made, shmurah matzah is extraordinarily expensive;[1] still, it has undeniable aesthetic appeal. As the folks at Chabad put it, shmurah matzot are “similar to the matzot that were baked by the Children of Israel as they left Egypt. It is thus fitting to use shmurah matzah on each of the two Seder nights for the matzot of the Seder plate.”
The weightier reason for shmurah matzah, though, is halakhic. The word shmurah means “watched” or “guarded,” indicating that the grain from which the matzah is baked must be guarded against excessive contact with water so that the leavening process (ḥimutz, חימוץ) does not occur. From what point does this supervision begin? Regular store-bought matzah is made out of grain that is “guarded” from the time it is ground into flour or from the time it is mixed with water as part of the kneading process. But according to the Shulḥan Arukh, while that standard may be acceptable, “it is best to make sure that water does not fall upon it from the time it is harvested.”[2] Shmurah matzah meets this more stringent requirement. Some authorities go even farther, ruling that “guarding from the time of harvest” is not merely a stringency but a minimum acceptable standard, so that shmurah matzah is the only matzah that fulfills the requirement of the holiday. [3] That, ultimately, is why many observant Jews insist upon shmurah matzah: if there is any doubt as to which standard of “guarding” is required for matzah, we should adopt the most stringent standard in order to be sure that we’ve done the mitzvah right. That would surely raise a doubt in the minds of the rest of us: have we, who don’t fork out those sky-high sums for shmurah matzah, ever done the mitzvah right?
It’s a good thing, then, that we can turn to Rabbi Daniel Sperber, whose eight-volume “Minhagei Yisrael” is a masterful treatment of the history and development of Jewish ritual practice. In the very first of those volumes,[4] R. Sperber shows us that the institution of shmurah matzah as we know it originated in… well, a mistake. The requirement that the grain must be watched from the time it is harvested is first mentioned by R. Yitzḥak Alfasi (the Rif; 11th century) in his discussion of the critical Talmudic passage B. Pesaḥim 40a. His ruling is adopted, in turn, by a chain of authorities that lead right up to the Shulḥan Arukh. And yet, as Sperber demonstrates, the Rif misunderstands the Talmudic passage, which is not referring to the harvest of the grain but to a set of special circumstances following the harvest. What this means is that there is no general requirement based in the Talmud that matzah be baked out of grain that was “guarded” from the moment of its harvest. It’s one of the ironies of halakhic history that Alfasi’s misreading is picked up by many later poskim and has become the standard of practice in ḥaredi circles. Yet it would seem that according to the plain meaning of the Talmudic text, regular store-bought matzah, made of grain that is “guarded” from fermentation from the time of grinding or from the time of kneading, easily fulfills the mitzvah to eat matzah at the Seder.
Moral of the story: as we’ve said before, there’s nothing wrong per se with stringency in religious observance. But don’t let people tell you, as some (many?) seem to do especially at this time of year, that the most stringent standard of observance is the “correct” standard. If anything, shmurah matzah is a classic example of “stringency inflation,” a piece of piety based in nothing more solid than a bad interpretation of the Talmudic text. If one wishes to purchase shmurah matzah because of its aesthetic appeal (hidur mitzvah) or “traditional” cachet, that is certainly one’s right. But one should at least acknowledge that this stringency (ḥumrah) is an unnecessary one… if not a totally erroneous one. In the meantime, the rest of us will eat our store-bought matzah with a perfectly good conscience!
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[1] Careful, though: if you order shmurah matzah through the mail, be prepared for the possibility that the pieces will break during shipment. An already-broken matzah cannot be used at the Seder, since we are required to break the middle matzah (during the ritual step known as yaḥatz) and save one piece for the afikoman.
[2] Oraḥ Ḥayyim 453:4: החטים שעושים בהם מצת מצוה טוב לשמרן שלא יפלו עליהם מים משעת קצירה, ולפחות משעת טחינה. ובשעת הדחק מותר ליקח קמח מן השוק.
[3] As summarized in Mishnah B’rurah, Bi’ur Halakhah, Oraḥ Ḥayyim 453, s.v. tov.
[4] Daniel Sperber, Minhagei Yisrael [Heb.], vol. 1. Jerusalem: Mosad Harav Kook, 1989, pp. 92-97.