Dating back to the time of Moses, the practice had always been to make matzah by hand. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution in the first half of the 19th century, however, things changed.
In France, in 1838, Isaac Singer invented the first machine for baking matzah. With the popularization of the machine, a major halachic controversy broke out over the kosher status of machine matzah.
The controversy erupted in 1859, when Rabbi Shlomo Kluger of Brody came out in opposition to machine matzah. Some rabbis even contended that machine matzah was no better than chametz. Yet other rabbis, mostly from Central and Western Europe, maintained that machine matzah was actually more kosher than handmade matzah.
Why were some rabbis so opposed to machine matzah? One objection was that since the machinery consisted of many small parts it was impossible to clean it adequately. Dough remnants could potentially become chametz and mix with the newly made Passover dough.
The defenders of the machine maintained that to the contrary, a machine is easier to clean than the equipment used for hand matzah (such as rolling pins and even human hands). The rabbis did concede that round-shaped matzah might lead to problems, determining that machine matzah should be square shaped.
More general concerns were raised as well. Many poor families depended on the matzah bakery for their livelihood. If machines replaced the handmade matzah bakeries these indigent people would lose their source of income. The defenders responded that such an argument was not valid when the machine could arguably raise the kosher status of matzah — and that the use of a machine could result in a price reduction of matzah, which would greatly benefit the poor.
A most interesting objection against the machine did not concern the machine itself but the innovation in general. The argument went as follows: Innovation, even if halachically defensible, should be avoided, as one change leads to another, and eventually serious changes would be made in Jewish life.
This argument reveals much about this period of Jewish history. Halachic Judaism was under constant assault and constantly forced to give ground. More and more Jewish communities and practices were lost to the encroaching modernism.
The halachic concerns mentioned above centered around matzah peshutah — that is, ordinary matzah — for use during Passover. A more heated controversy concerned matzah shemurah, that is, matzah used at the seder to fulfill the mitzvah of achilat matzah, eating matzah.
According to most authorities, the Torah requirement to eat matzah only applies to the seder night. While the Torah forbids one from eating chametz during the rest of Passover, there is no positive requirement to consume matzah on those days. Hence, there are more stringent requirements for matzah shemurah than there are for matzah peshutah.
Thus, matzah shemurah must be made from grain that is guarded (so that it will not come into contact with water) from the time the wheat is reaped. In contrast, matzah peshutah is made from grain that is guarded from the time it is ground into flour. Furthermore, matzah shemurah must be prepared with the intention of fulfilling the mitzvah of achilat matzah. This means that if the cutting, grinding, kneading and baking of the matzah were done without the proper kavanah (intention), then the resulting product may not be used to fulfill the mitzvah at the seder.
This brings us to the primary objection against machine matzah: Matzah shemurah needs to be made by committed Jews who have the proper kavanah, and a machine could obviously have no such kavanah. The defenders of the machine asserted that a machine was a tool, no different than a rolling pin, and therefore, it sufficed if the Jew operating the machine had the correct kavanah.
By the beginning of the 20th century, virtually the entire non-Chassidic world accepted the use of machine matzah peshutah for the eight days of Passover. Most Chassidim continued to disagree. The debate about using machine matzah shemurah at the seder continues until the present day.
Rabbi Shmuel Singer has been the coordinator of Passover supervision for the Orthodox Union for the last 16 years.