The austere taste of matzah alters one's consciousness.
How can nothing but flour and water combined and baked before eighteen minutes has elapsed become such an elevating substance?
Volumes have been written on the significance of this food. How it is a deliberate negation of ego, that it's an important lesson in humility.... Yet every year eating this easily broken board of wheat [made from one of the very grains we must not eat for eight days!?] makes me wonder about the manna we ate in the wilderness. The food of angels that they say could taste like anything you wanted it to. Can you even imagine? But with matzah, you slather it will all manner of things to GIVE it a taste. However, that isn't strictly true. There's something that happens when you eat matzah. The 'flavor' bypasses your tastebuds entirely and goes directly to your olfactory sensorium.
And there my friends, is where the secret of the matter resides.
Chazal* say, that fragrances are the only 'food' that feeds the soul. So if you want to be a literalist for the purposes of our discussion, Pesach is the time of year when our soul is feasting on what one could say is the earthly equivalent of manna. Only thing is I wish my matzah tasted like baklava. Maybe next year in Jerusalem it will.
*Chazal : Our teachers of blessed memory.
