Why recline on passover

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All things considered, we commend the view of Rabbi Y. Epstein that everyone should be provided with a pillow precisely because it is an outmoded and outlandish custom. Though most contemporary rabbis sanction the use of three matzot at the seder, the Gaon of Vilna 18th century insisted that only two matzot be used.

For the two-matzah tradition, matzah is primarily a recollection of poverty. While on all other holidays we eat from two whole loaves, here we eat from one broken matzah and one whole one. The concern for the outsider breaks into our family banquet symbolically in the form of a broken matzah marring our sense of wholeness. While even the three-matzah tradition includes one broken matzah, it chiefly emphasizes the seder as a Thanksgiving Dinner. The three matzot recall the minimal thanksgiving offering describedin the Torah Leviticus That offering wasshared within a community of friends and relatives; the hosts praised God who had redeemed them from illness, imprisonment, or danger Psalm However, the freemen had leisure to recline, relax, and take their time at their meals.

Thus, Jews recline when they drink the four cups of wine, and eat the first piece of matzah, the Hillel sandwich, and the Afikomen, in order to show that as they were once slaves to Pharaoh, they are now free and may have leisure to behave as the free. Today, reclining has become less common for several reasons. The reason is that there are two pipes in the throat, one for the air and one for the food.

By leaning on the left side the wind pipe is not hampered by the food. Now in those times eating was not done as we do with a knife and fork, but rather the food was prepared in the kitchen and brought in front of the individual diner on small personal trays which took the place of our table ready for the diner to eat using only his hands. Since the food was pre-prepared in the kitchen, it was possible to recline on the left side, using the left hand to support oneself and use the right hand to eat.

If you try to do this today with our modern knives, forks and spoons, you will have quite a bit of difficulty. Instead, most people put a small pillow on the back of their seat or else lean on the back rest of the adjacent chair while they eat, since the whole business of reclining is not comfortable for us while eating. Others may take a lawn chair to try to copy the act of reclining, but the problem here is that with out several mattresses, it is hard to reach the table and even with several mattresses, it is uncomfortable.

Even if you try to sit on your chair and approximate leaning by using a foot stool and tilt your body on the left side you will still have an uncomfortable time. There is another problem with this custom. In today's modern world no one eats when they recline.