Parashat Bo in the Book of Exodus may be one of the most exciting scenes in the Torah and perfect if you are seeking dramatic content for a screenplay. However, for the Jewish people, the protagonists, who were ending centuries of Egyptian slavery and pain and witnessed God punishing Pharaoh and the Egyptians, it was real. For us as Jews thousands of years later, the spiritual connection to those events of God extricating the Israelites from Egypt and the Exodus is ours to re-experience on a yearly basis at the Passover Seder and to recall when we recite the Shema twice a day.
 
The first Passover Seder, observed in the tumult of leaving Egypt and described in the parasha, includes not only eating the Pesach sacrifice but eating unleavened bread, matza.  Exodus 12:18 notes that matza was to be eaten from the fourteenth day of the first month, referring to Nisan, to the twenty first day of that month in the evening. The Hasidic sage, the Otzar HaChaim, Rabbi Yitzhak Isaac of Komarno (1766-1834) comments that the plural form of matza is written in an abbreviated form, without a vav. The Otzar HaChaim noted that the intention here is to allude to an acronym for the words tzedakah tatzil memavet-" the giving of charity saves one from death" referencing that there is a profound spiritual connection between the mitzvah of eating matza and the mitzvah of giving tzedakah.
 
Of course, giving charity cannot save a person physically from death because death is the inevitable path of human beings. However, it is equally true that a life of charity by a person will be reflected spiritually for generations to come in the lives of children and grandchildren.
 
The tradition of connecting the mitzvah of giving tzedakah and the mitzvah of eating matza was mentioned in the Jerusalem Talmud (Bava Batra 1:4) over 1600 years ago.  Maot Hittim (Hebrew) or kimcha d'pascha (Aramaic) meaning "money for wheat" refers to the practice of collecting funds within Jewish communities to help the less fortunate acquire the special foods necessary to observe Passover. Even the Passover Seder refers to matza as the bread of affliction with the ceremonial invitation in Ha Lachma Anya to "all who are hungry, let them come and eat." Such a ceremonial invitation would be a sacrilege if personal invitations hadn't already been extended earlier to join your family Seder and charitable funds contributed in advance-Maot Hittim- to make sure that needy Jewish families had the foods necessary to observe Passover.
 
Connecting the mitzvah of eating matza, with its physical reminder of the miraculous event of God's freeing of the Israelites from Egypt, with concern for fellow Jews who need financial help to observe the Passover festival reveals abiding spiritual truths. Rabbi J.B. Soloveitchik, in his book of essays called Festival of Freedom (2006) notes that the statement in the Haggadah, Ha Lachma Anya, " is the renewal of a pledge of solidarity among the Jewish people- solidarity between individual and individual, and between the individual and the Jewish community as a whole. It is a proclamation that we are one people, and that we are ready to help one another. Pesach night is a time of sharing; if the sense of solidarity, responsibility, unity, and readiness to share and to participate are not manifested and demonstrated, the whole Seder becomes meaningless."
 
Just as Moses and the other Israelite leaders gathered the Israelites together, ate the Passover sacrifice and matza family by family as they prepared to leave Egypt, so too we must insure that our individual family observance of Passover, including seeing ourselves as if we left Egypt, includes the critical component of tzedakah so every Jew is included. Manifesting the connection between matza and tzedakah and modeling it for future generations will insure that your values and commitments will be saved from death and flourish long after your physical presence has left this world.