Yes, you read the headline correctly, and no, it’s not a mistake.
Pesach has already finished.
Pesach began on the afternoon of the fourteenth of Nissan, the day on which we [are commanded to] slaughter the Pesach-sacrifice, roast it, and eat it in Jerusalem, and continued until midnight of the Seder Night, the latest time for eating the Pesach sacrifice.
And then follows a separate though intimately-connected Festival, חַג הַמַּצּוֹת, the Festival of Matzot, which lasts for seven days, from the fifteenth to the twenty-first of Nissan.
This is what the Torah commands us:
“In the first month, on the fourteenth of the month in the afternoon, is Hashem’s Pesach; and on the fifteenth day of the month is Hashem’s Festival of Matzot, for seven days you will eat matzot” (Leviticus 23:5-6).
And again:
“In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, is Hashem’s Pesach; and on the fifteenth day of this month is a seven-day Festival, on which Matzot are to be eaten” (Numbers 28:16-17).
And the Tanach describes the Festival which the Children of Israel celebrated in the days of King Yoshiyahu (Josiah) after he destroyed the idols which had plagued and defiled Judea and restored the Holy Temple to its former glory:
“The Children of Israel who were there made the Pesach at that time, and the Festival of Matzot for seven days” (2 Chronicles 35:17).
Clearly, Pesach on the 14th of Nissan and the Festival of Matzot which begins on the 15th and lasts for seven days are two separate Festivals. To be sure, we commonly refer to the Festival of Matzot as “Pesach”, but this is an inaccurate colloquialism.
For a short period, from sunset on the 14th of Nissan until midnight a few hours later, Pesach and the Festival of Matzot are simultaneous. But then. Once midnight has passed, Pesach is over and the Festival of Matzot continues.
Indeed, in our Prayers we invariably refer to the seven-day Festival as חַג הַמַּצּוֹת.
The Torah gives the reason for the seven-day Festival of Matzot:
“This day will be your day of remembrance, and you will celebrate it as a festival to Hashem for all your generations... For seven days you will eat matzot…. So you will safeguard the matzot, because on this very day I have taken your legions out of the land of Egypt, so you will safeguard this day throughout your generations as an eternal decree” (Exodus 12:14-17).
We all know the story perfectly well: “They baked the dough that they had brought out of Egypt into cakes of matzot because it had not leavened, because they had been driven out from Egypt, and they could not wait; neither had they brought any provisions with them” (v. 39).
These matzot that we brought with us out of Egypt would last us for the first month in the Sinai Desert (see Rashi on Kiddushin 38a, s.v. חסר שלושים).
“They travelled from Elim, then they came…to the Wilderness of Sin…on the fifteenth day of the second month... And…the Children of Israel complained against Moshe and Aaron…saying to them: If only we had died at Hashem’s hand in the land of Egypt, while we were dwelling by the flesh-pots, when we were eating bread to satiety! But you have brought us out to this wilderness to put this entire assembly to death by starvation” (Exodus 16:1-3).
The people complained about the lack of food in the desert when the matzot they had brought with them were depleted; they had lasted for thirty days, from the fifteenth of the first month (Nisan) until the fifteenth of the second month (Iyyar). And G-d’s response to their fear of starvation was to tell Moshe: “Behold! I am about to rain food from heaven down on you” (Exodus 16:4).
This food from heaven was what the Israelites called Manna: “When the layer of dew rose, behold! on the surface of the wilderness there was something thin and wafery, thin as the frost on the ground. And the Children of Israel saw, and they said to one another: מָן הוּא (man hu) because they did not know what it was” (verses 14-15).
The phrase מָן הוּא could mean “This is preparation for food” (Rashi, Metzudat Zion to Psalms 68:24); or “What is this?” (Rashbam); or “It is food” (Ibn Ezra); or “It is a gift” (Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch).
In any event, “the House of Israel called itמָן [manna]” (Exodus 16:31); “and the Children of Israel ate the מָן for forty years, until their arrival in a settled land; they ate the מָן until their arrival at the edge of the Land of Canaan” (verse 35).
The Talmud notes the difficulty here:
“Did they really eat it for forty full years? Actually they ate it for forty years less thirty days!” (Kiddushin 38a).
The calculation is simple (see Rashi on Exodus 16:35): the manna began falling for the Children of Israel on the 16th of Iyyar. Forty years later they entered the Land of Israel on the 10th of Nissan (Joshua 4:19).
And then “the Children of Israel encamped in Gilgal, and they carried out the Pesach-sacrifice on the fourteenth day of the month in the evening, in the plains of Jericho. And they ate of the grain of the Land on the day after the Pesach-sacrifice, matzot and roasted grain, on this very day. And the manna desisted the next day, when they ate of the grain of the Land; there was no more manna for the Children of Israel, and they ate of the produce of the Land of Canaan in that year” (Joshua 5:10-12).
Hence the manna stopped falling on the 16th of Nissan – forty years less thirty days after it began.
The Talmud (ibid.) resolves this apparent contradiction: “This tells you that the taste of the cakes which they had brought out of Egypt was the taste of manna”.
This makes the mitzvah of eating matzot on Chag ha-Matzot far more powerful than merely eating crackers for a week. The matzot were the food that we ate for a month after leaving Egypt – and they had the taste of manna, no less. חַג הַמַּצּוֹת, the Festival of Matzot, is our annual celebration of eating the original matzot that we had baked while still in Egypt – and which had the taste of the manna with which G-d would feed us for almost forty years in the desert while travelling to Israel.
And the manna itself, holy and spiritual though it certainly was, was but a substitute for the produce of the Land of Israel.
And the produce of the Land of Israel, the truly holy and spiritual food, is what we begin to celebrate on the second day of חַג הַמַּצּוֹת, when we begin to count the Omer – the beginning of the harvest.
What a truly awe-inspiring thought to chew over while chewing the matzot!