In the torah matzah is called לֶחֶם עֹנִי – usually rendered in English as poor man’s bread or bread of affliction. In the gemarah (pesachim 115b) shmuel comes up with a creative interpretation of this – he says that it is called lehem oni because we say (עונין) things on it. A baraita is then related that supports shmuel’s position. The second interpretation, that of oni meaning “poor” is then taught anonymously explaining that just as a poor man does not get a whole loaf of bread, so too we do not get a whole loaf of bread (referring, I assume, to the broken middle matzah).

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 25th, 2010 at 9:08 am by Ari and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.