WE’RE NOT ALLOWED to eat chometz for the seven days of Pesach, but you can eat matzah. The technical difference between the two is really just time, because dough becomes chometz and an issur kares (punishable with excision) if it remains unworked for eighteen minutes before baking. Bake it before eighteen minutes and you have matzah, and a mitzvah.
THE MIDRASH SAYS that it took God seven days to “convince” Moshe Rabbeinu to accept his mission of taking the Jewish People out of slavery and to Eretz Yisroel.
SLAVERY AGAIN, and only a whole year later. The good news is that redemption is two parshios away.
KNOWING that his end was near, Ya’akov began preparing for the “continuity of government.” The era of the Avos was going to end with his death, and he wanted to make sure that no one dropped the ball after it did. Thousands of years of history were at stake, and the destiny of the Jewish People yet to exist.
IT IS such a part of who we are, but shouldn’t be. Even “healthy” competition can be a dangerous thing because it can and often does lead to unhealthy competition.
