More information on the Voyage into Matza Interior

1. An extended comparison of the "round" hand-kneaded matza and the full moon. Extreme close-ups of the matza texture turn into a remarkable lunar landscape replete with crevices and craggy mountains. The micro becomes the macro and vice versa. 

A deeper intention is implied when we reflect that we are essentially a "moon" people and almost all of our major holidays, such as Pesach and Succot, are connected with the appearance of the full moon. The moon with its cyclic fluctuations of size and light represents the feminine aspect of the Deity, the Shechina, or what is called by the Kabbalah, the Or Chozar, the Reflecting Light. This state, the realization that one is not the Source of Light, but merely its receiver, is conducive to an inherent humbleness and the creation of a proper vessel for spiritual influx. The same effect is achieved hopefully when we eat on Pesach the matza, the "humble bread", which is completely flat and without the "yeasty" and puffed up pretensions of ego.


2. The seder ceremony according to the mystics is actually applied Kabbalah, reenacting the formation of the worlds and its tikun, or rectification. All of the curious customs and rituals in the seder have the deepest mystical significance.

One of them, Yachatz, the breaking up of the matza into four or five parts, represents the Shevirat Hakalim, the Shattering of the Primordial Vessels, which were too fragile to contain the powerful lights of Tohu, or Chaos.

The rectification occurs almost at the end of the seder during Tzafon and the eating of the afikoman. This process can be seen as a paradigm for all spiritual and intellectual growth, the necessity to break up old forms and habits in order to create something new and higher. In the video this idea is "illustrated" by the deliberate breaking up of the screen image almost to the point where one thinks that something is going "wrong" with the video machine or oneself.

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