Unleavened Bread... the emblem of the Israelites’ suffering in Egypt and the symbol of the haste—that is, the joyous eagerness—which marked their departure. When we eat the Unleavened Bread on the Festival we, in a sense, eat the bread of sorrow with our toiling, suffering ancestors, and for the moment share the sorrow itself.

Joseph frames matzah (unleavened bread) as a ritual object that holds two intertwined memories of the Exodus: the degradation of slavery (“bread of sorrow”) and the urgent, hopeful momentum of liberation (“haste” as “joyous eagerness”). The act of eating becomes a form of historical empathy—participants do not merely recall the Israelites’ suffering intellectually but symbolically “share” it, briefly entering the emotional world of their ancestors. The passage also suggests that Jewish festival observance is pedagogical and moral: remembrance of affliction is meant to shape present identity, gratitude, and responsibility, while the same symbol simultaneously affirms redemption and collective endurance.