When Can You Eat Your Matzah Ball?

Its a few days before Pesach and to my credit we are rolling smoothly into the holiday. I’ve cleaned just about everything possible in and outside of my house including my dog’s ears (she needs to be highly attentive during the telling of the exodus story which lands her some chicken soup). Anyway, my husband doesn’t eat “gebrokts” which is a stringency to not eat cooked grain products (such as matzah combined with water). It has a fancy name and a good reason but basically it means no matzah balls…or so I thought. The custom is to eat matzah balls the 8^th night as to demonstrate it is only a minhag (custom) and not halacha (law). Usually the matza balls are made on the 8th night and then eaten.  This year the 8^th night is Shabbos so they have to be made ahead of time.  But when? It seems that actually there is a loophole that you can eat them on the 8^th night (the cooked matzah) if they are cooked prior to the holiday, but after having koshered your kitchen. So you can un-do the stringency (sort of like a double negative becoming a positive). I get that he gets this. You know how Oprah has those “Ah ha” moments. Well I tend to have a lot of “uh… huh” moments. Which leads me to the question that I have most recently posed to my family (and when not getting an adequate answer) and then to our rabbi: 

So why did G-d take us out of Egypt? I’m sure you have your own answer to this and for some of you it might seem quite evident, but my question really asks, “What was His intention with us?” It wasn’t exactly a walk in the park after we left (oh gee thanks for the freedom, now can I please have some water??) and then we were pretty much coerced into accepting a whole plethora of rules, dehydration, battles, wandering in the dessert, ya da ya da. The answer is quite lengthy (albeit a very excellent response from my rabbi), that included an explanation about nationhood and relationships. It seems to have a lasting nationhood, G-d didn't just have us put a flag in the ground (those don't last too long). But instead, our nationhood was built on a set of principals. This created a permanent nationhood, tied to its creator. Not to degrade the experience, but you can think of it as a well trained pet, that is loyal to its master. 

My take away was that good relationships (the real ones) require hard work and commitment. We all want someone to know that we exist because that makes our relationships real. G-d perhaps wants the same: for the world to know He exists. And as our rabbi put it, we are His sales reps. So back to my husband and his eating (dis)order. Somehow where and when he eats his matzah balls matters. It is a far stretch and one that I can’t exactly intellectualize or relate to, but you got to respect it on one level. The commitment is there and really we are all here for one reason: to build the relationship.