על החוקים לפרטיהם, ספר ב כ״חOn the Special Laws, Book II 28
א׳
1[150] With the Crossing-feast he combines one in which the food consumed is of a different and unfamiliar kind, namely, unleavened bread, which also gives its name to the feast. This may be regarded from two points of view, one peculiar to the nation, referring to the migration just mentioned, the other universal, following the lead of nature, and in agreement with the general cosmic order. To show that this affirmation is absolutely true, will require some examination. This month comes seventh in order and number as judged by the cycle of the sun, but in importance it is first, and therefore is described as first in the sacred books.
ב׳
2[151] The reason for this I believe to be as follows. In the spring equinox we have a kind of likeness and portraiture of that first epoch in which this world was created. The elements were then separated and placed in harmonious order with reference to themselves and each other. The heaven was adorned with sun and moon and the rhythmic movements and circlings of the other stars, both fixed and planetary. So too the earth was adorned with every manner of plants, and the uplands and lowlands, wherever the soil had depth and goodness, became luxuriant and verdant.
ג׳
3[152] So every year God reminds us of the creation of the world by setting before our eyes the spring when everything blooms and flowers. And therefore there is good reason for describing it in the laws as the first month because in a sense it is an image of the primal origin reproduced from it like the imprint from an archetypal seal.
ד׳
4[153] But the month of the autumnal equinox, though first in order as measured by the course of the sun, is not called first in the law, because at that time all the fruits have been gathered in and the trees are shedding their leaves and all the bloom which the spring brought in its prime already scorched by the heat of the summer sun is wilting under the dry currents of air.
ה׳
5[154] And so to give the name of “first” to a month in which both uplands and lowlands are sterilized and unfruitful seemed to him altogether unsuitable and incongruous. For things which come first and head the list should be associated with all the fairest and most desirable things which are the sources of birth and increase to animals and fruits and plants, not with the processes of destruction and the dark thoughts which it suggests.
ו׳
6[155] The feast begins at the middle of the month, on the fifteenth day, when the moon is full, a day purposely chosen because then there is no darkness, but everything is continuously lighted up as the sun shines from morning to evening and the moon from evening to morning and while the stars give place to each other no shadow is cast upon their brightness.
ז׳
7[156] Again, the feast is held for seven days to mark the precedence and honour which the number holds in the universe, indicating that nothing which tends to cheerfulness and public mirth and thankfulness to God should fail to be accompanied with memories of the sacred seven which He intended to be the source and fountain to men of all good things.
ח׳
8[157] Two days out of the seven, the first and the last, are declared holy. In this way he gave a natural precedence to the beginning and the end; but he also wished to create a harmony as on a musical instrument between the intermediates and the extremes. Perhaps too he wished to harmonize the feast with a past which adjoins the first day and a future which adjoins the last. These two, the first and the last, have each the other’s properties in addition to their own. The first is the beginning of the feast and the end of the preceding past, the seventh is the end of the feast and the beginning of the coming future. Thus, as I have said before, the whole life of the man of worth may be regarded as equivalent to a feast held by one who has expelled grief and fear and desire and the other passions and distempers of the soul.
ט׳
9[158] The bread is unleavened either because our forefathers, when under divine guidance they were starting on their migration, were so intensely hurried that they brought the lumps of dough unleavened, or else because at that season, namely, the springtime, when the feast is held, the fruit of the corn has not reached its perfection, for the fields are in the ear stage and not yet mature for harvest. It was the imperfection of this fruit which belonged to the future, though it was to reach its perfection very shortly, that he considered might be paralleled by the unleavened food, which is also imperfect, and serves to remind us of the comforting hope that nature, possessing as she does a superabundant wealth of things needful, is already preparing her yearly gifts to the human race.
י׳
10[159] Another suggestion made by the interpreters of the holy scriptures is that food, when unleavened, is a gift of nature, when leavened is a work of art. For men in their eagerness to temper the barely necessary with the pleasant, have learned through practice to soften by art what nature has made hard.
י״א
11[160] Since, then, the spring-time feast, as I have laid down, is a reminder of the creation of the world, and its earliest inhabitants, children of earth in the first or second generation, must have used the gifts of the universe in their unperverted state before pleasure had got the mastery, he ordained for use on this occasion the food most fully in accordance with the season. He wished every year to rekindle the embers of the serious and ascetic mode of faring, and to employ the leisure of a festal assembly to confer admiration and honour on the old-time life of frugality and economy, and as far as possible to assimilate our present-day life to that of the distant past.
י״ב
12[161] These statements are especially guaranteed by the exposure of the twelve loaves corresponding in number to the tribes, on the holy table. They are all unleavened, the clearest possible example of a food free from admixture, in the preparation of which art for the sake of pleasure has no place, but only nature, providing nothing save what is indispensable for its use. So much for this.