Secret Behind Round Matzah & Mark Twain concerning The Jews

Did you ever pay attention to the fact that that all our matzots are always circle? Well, if you look at halacha in the Gemara, you're never going to find the any literature written about the fact that they have to be a circle. Of course, when we buy machine matzahs, they're made into perfect squares, but many people eat circle matzahs the whole entire week. Some people and all of us eat it on the first night, circle matzahs. Hand matzahs are always circle. What's the purpose of such a phenomenon? So, like I said, there's not much written on it, but I want to quote to you the Partis Yosef, which quotes a safer called the Avnei Nezer, which says that the Yerushalmi says the idea of a circle is very chovev to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. It's very beloved to Hakadosh Baruch and it says it's holy and beloved and it's very, very important to him because all ma'aseh Bereishit, Bereishit betzivyon all entire ma'aseh Bereishit all entire creation is one big circle. You ever pay attention to that? The planets, they're circles. The galaxies are basically circles. The sun, the moon, the stars, everything's a circle. Things around us are circles. The trees, a drop of water is a perfect sphere. It's basically a circle. Any natural phenomenon are always in a circular formation. The truth is even a person, we're more or less circle. We have a few, you know, upgrades within us. We have a few levels of being a circle and I know you know some people that are blockheads, but usually the formation of a person is usually a circle. So, the idea of a circle seems to be very important to Hakadosh Baruch Hu because everything in existence, fruits, vegetables, everything's round. You know why? With no corners. You know why? Because the circle is always the representation of something that has no beginning and no end. The when something has a corner, so you always have a place where it starts from and ends. But anything that's a circle is always equidistant from the center. Everything is perfect and that's why everything in creation in general is always in the formation of a circle. The whole entire rain cycle, all the seasons, all the day cycles, the water cycle, the life cycles, everything is a big cycle of life. Everything goes in a circular formation. All this is here to represent one and important idea. Hakadosh Baruch Hu is eternal. Hakadosh Baruch Hu has no beginning and no end and everything that he creates keviyachol is ever present. It's something that is that's existent eternally. And therefore, Hashem desires to create everything specifically in a circle as opposed to man-made objects, which are made in formations of squares or whatever with corners. Every refrigerator you own, every chair and every table and and etc. etc. They always work best in in in the dynamics of being a square. It's funny, there's a city over here in in Yerushalayim, it's known as Ramot Polin. It's a place in Yerushalayim where they actually tried to make the front of every room, meaning the front of the building in front of the living room, in a circle. They didn't make it in the normal formation. They thought it would be very fancy. It was one of the biggest fiascos, one of the big mess-ups that they had in the country. And it was meant to be very regal for aristocratic people. Nobody bought it. Went to the Charedim and the Charedim ended up taking over the whole city in the end of the day. Okay, that's how it works over here. But [clears throat] it was it's very it's very impractical. It was it was very it was it was an as you say an architectural disaster. But anyways, that is the idea of things that are circles because they represent etern eternity and things that last forever as opposed to by things that are man-made, which have everything. That's why the matzah that we like to eat on the night of Pesach is because and hopefully the whole 7 days if you're able to, is a circle because it's coming to represent the eternity of Klal Yisrael that we live it forever. We are existent and we never die. People die, Klal Yisrael never dies. We live on forever. No matter what we've been through, no matter how many difficulties we've been through, we've always cleaned ourself up and bounced back. We've always had the capabilities of being able to shoot ourselves back and become better than ever. We've gone through ghettos, cattle cars, as we know, gas chambers and DP camps. We've been through the pogroms and the exiles and and everything that occurred to us from left and right. And each and every time, the miracle of the Jews is here to come back and say, "Wow, they're able to survive." Not just survive, but we come back better than ever. Who would have thought that after the Holocaust that we would exist? If anything, they were busy building museums. The Vakhtang Mother Russia was building a museum in a remembrance of Judah Rein of the Jews who are gone. And in the end of the day, he's the one in the museum and we're the ones still talking about him. That is the power of the eternity of Klal Yisrael. That's really what the word Pesach means. If you think about the whole chag is called Pesach referring to the korban Pesach, but the the holiday itself is called Pesach cuz Hashem, as we know, jumped from one house to the next, meaning he went from one nation to the next nation. The malach hamavet the mashchit the destroyer went from every single nation to another nation, another nation and he always skipped us. We were always the ones who were skipped over because we always stayed alive. You know why? Yes, there was a little bit of blood on the door and yes, we've had casualties rachmana litzlan and in the past 2 years, we've lost a lot of casualties ledavoinenu. There is blood on the door, but in the end of the day, the people inside the house survive. Klal Yisrael survives. I don't care how many nations have had their ups and downs, whether it's modern Egypt or it's olden Egypt, whether it's Rome, the powerful Rome who no one ever would have dreamed it would have came falling to shambles and they're still not sure how it happened. The great Greeks that were followed because of Alexander the Great found its demise very soon and not far afterwards. Ancient Persia's gone, modern Persia's on its way. Tomorrow, it's going to be gone. Amen. Every single every single population, everything. The great Spain that threw us out by the Spanish Inquisition, our history. The Christians, the power of the Christians and even the Muslims or whatever you want to say about them, they're not around. All the isms, whether it's communism, Marxism, socialism and all the other isms that we are quite familiar with have found their end, but there's only one thing that's still around, Judaism. The Jews are still around to be able to sit and talk about it, to be able to make that claim to fame that we are familiar with. I have to quote to you the words of Rabbi Yaakov Emden in his Siddur Ayevet. Rabbi Yaakov Emden lived in the early 1700s. The best is if I could read it in Hebrew. But he said he basically says over there, "How can someone not be embarrassed to see hashgacha Hashem?" He says, "All the scientists, you could talk from here till tomorrow, but the biggest scientific proof to the existence of God is Klal Yisrael." The fact that we are still here, ein um uma ba'olam she'nirdaf kimoteinu. We are the most chastened, beaten, bullied nation that has been around. Uvechol zeh lo yuchlu la'avdeinu and with all this, they have not been able to destroy us ul'chaltoteinu. V'heishim davar teinu, which is exactly what we've been claiming over here by the Seder night, the incredible fact that we've been around, shelo echad bilvad. Amad aleinu l'chaltoteinu and here we are still around. As he brings down there, Sartzilim Ivnei Zachar, they've been destroyed, their memory is gone. Who talks about it? You want to talk about the Greeks? I'll talk about a Greek salad, baby. Or you're speaking Greek and I understand that. I've no idea what a Greek is. That's something that doesn't exist. And these are the beautiful words that he says, "Chai nafshi." He makes an oath to God, "Kivdoni biniflaot eleh." The more I think about this incredible wonder of the existence of the Jews, gadlu etzli kol yoter mikol nisim niflaot. It's bigger than any of the nisim of yetziat Mitzrayim, kriat Yam Suf and everything around it and the midbar and everything else. It is the biggest miracle that exists cuz let me tell you something. The Rambam says, "Every miracle is temporary." By default, a a miracle can't last, otherwise it becomes nature. Something that lasts all the time suddenly becomes nature. Everything's everything in life is is is a miracle. Just we get used to it because it's repetitive. A miracle is always for a small period of time. If you want the makot, each one was a week. Kriat Yam Suf, for a few hours. Every type of miracle didn't last very long. There's one miracle that lasted for a number of time and that's why it's considered one of the biggest miracles is actually the 40 years in the midbar. The fact that you have manna, food falling from the sky and water coming out of rocks. Seder, you feel me? Those 40 years is the biggest miracle that ever exists. As it [clears throat] says in the end of Sefer Yehoshua, but there's a bigger miracle than that and that's what the Ayevet is telling us. Us us sitting here and talking about this miracle right now. The fact that we go through every Seder night and the fact that we're able to go ahead and advertise something that 90% of Yidden in the world are doing, no matter how non-religious you are, this Seder night is the representation of something that lasts from year to year and has not been lost because that is the biggest miracle of all miracles. Bigger than any of the miracles you spoke about by the Haggadah. And that's what he writes over there. That the longer this lasts, and he's writing this 300 years ago, kol she'over shanim, the more that it goes, ki Elohai Olam Hashem, that I am able to see this miracle, it becomes bigger and bigger and bigger. This is the great, incredible, wondrous idea that we have to appreciate in this tremendous hug what we have to make us realize that there is nothing that is greater than us. I'll end with a story of a friend of mine when I was a bachelor he told me that his grandmother his grandmother was in Bergen-Belsen and she was suffering there and she was going through a very tough time and she got more or less to a stage of almost used giving up. She couldn't handle anymore. She was ready to as they say throw in the towel we know what that means over there and she said she couldn't handle all the anguish and all the pain. She said you know what kept me going to finish up and be able to last and create a tremendous family that she did. One time she was passing by one of the German barracks and she heard something that nobody was allowed to hear there. The radio was on. She heard him listening to the radio and she eavesdropped which was in a big offense back then and she was eavesdropping through the window to hear what was saying on the radio and she heard it so rare. She heard the rush of the Yom Kippur. Hitler himself was talking and he was screaming at the top of his lungs and saying I will not rest and I will not die until all of Europe is Judenrein. I will make sure to get every Jew across the globe. The Jews will be smitten. They will be wiped off off the globe and then we will never see them again. Until I'm finished this will be what will happen. Those were his words and you know what happened when she heard those words? She was appeased. She was at ease with herself. You know why? Because she finally realized oh, we're going to win. He's finished. She realized that this person is not going to succeed at all because we have a promise that we have a promise that we said in our God of and the that we will last forever and we will never perish and the second someone comes and wants to kill one Jew or two or three then he might succeed but someone whose whole interest is to completely destroy all the Jews we know that he will fall like everybody else has fallen in ahead of him and he will never last and that is exactly what we are witnessing with our eyes during this extensive time during this a tremendous time of Passover. Mark Twain, the great author which we are familiar with was a rabbit anti-Semite as you might be familiar and I want to conclude conclude by reading to you one piece that he wrote about the Jews. If the statistics are right the Jews constitute but 1% of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of stardust in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of but he is heard of. Has always been heard of. He is prominent on the planet as any other people and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine and abstruse learning are also what he means by abstruse learning means our learning of Gamara obviously are also way out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in his world in all ages and has done so with his hands tied behind his back. He could be vain of himself and be excused for it. The Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Persians rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor then faded to the dream stuff and passed away. The Greek and the Romans followed and made a vast noise and now they are gone. Other peoples have sprung up and held their torches high up for a time but it's burnt out and they sit in twilight now or have vanished. The Jew saw them all. He beat them all and is now what he always was exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energy, no dulling of his alert and an aggressive mind. And this is the line this is the clincher. All things are mortal but the Jew. All other forces pass but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality? I think the two of us know exactly what that secret is. The secret are those circle matzos that we've been eating every Passover. The ones that represent the immortality of the Jews because we are connected to the immortal one himself.