One of the long-standing controversies related to the Laws of Passover concerns the kashrut of machine-made matzot. Rabbis in different times and places have offered various arguments for why such matzot should be forbidden or permitted. One small part of the controversy revolves around the question of whether matzot ought to be round or not. As many of my readers know, machine-made matzot are typically square-shaped, not round, yet some have argued that because matzah is associated with the word ugah (often translated as “cake”) in the Bible, matzot must (or at least should) be round. In this essay, we delve into the controversy and also discuss several synonyms to ugah, like the words kikar, gluskos, kugel, and pashtida.

Where do we find that matzah is associated with ugah in the Torah? The answer is that it is actually an explicit verse in Exodus (also recited in the Haggadah shel Pesach): “they baked the dough that they took out from Egypt as ugot matzot — not chametz — because they were chased from Egypt…” (Ex. 12:39). The connection between matzah and ugah is also found in several Midrashic sources: When a war refugee informed Abraham that his nephew Lot was captured, the Midrash (Bereishit Rabbah §42:8) explains that it was Passover time and Abraham was busying himself with “the mitzvah of ugot” (i.e., matzah). As the Midrash explains it, this is why said refugee came to be known as Og (a personal name apparently derived from the same etymological root as ugah).

Later, when Abraham encountered the Three Angels, he told his wife Sarah to “knead [dough] and make ugot” (Gen. 18:6), which the Midrash (Bereishit Rabbah §48:12) sees an allusion to the idea that this happened on Erev Pesach, meaning that Abraham was actually asking his wife to bake matzot. Interestingly, the Bible never reports that those ugot ever materialized, and Rabbi Shalom Shabazi (Chemdat Yamim to Gen. 18:6) explains that this is because Og came along and ate them before Abraham could serve them. He uses this as a different way of explaining the basis for the name Og.

All in all, the word ugah and its related inflections appear exactly seven times throughout the entire Bible (Gen. 18:6, Ex. 12:39, Num. 11:8, I Kgs. 17:13, 19:6, Ezek. 4:12, Hos. 7:8).

But what does the word ugah actually mean?

Rashi and Mechillta D’Rabbi Yishmael (to Ex. 12:39) define the word ugah as chararah. Similarly, Targum (to I Kgs. 17:13) translates ugah as chararah. But what does chararah mean?

In some places in the Mishnah, a chararah refers to some sort of baked good (Shabbat 1:10, Bava Kamma 2:3). Another Mishnah (Peah 5:8) refers to a certain way of stacking produce known as a chararah, with the Jerusalemic Talmud (there) explaining that this term refers to “round stacks” of produce. It is therefore safe to assume that chararh and ugah in the sense of “baked good,” both refer to a round-shaped foodstuff.

We find similar usages of the word ugah referring to round things outside of the context of baked goods. For example, the Mishnah........

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