(This is my first post - I've been reading YY and AITG and this forum, and listening the SM show, for about 6 months now, and I've finally got my forum account working. FYI, my moderately religious wife thinks I'm going overboard with, as she puts it, "the whole Old Testament thing", and my deeply religious mother-in-law, whom I pointed to blessyahowah.com, thinks I'm in some kind of cult. :) )
I think there's an analogy to be drawn between this sitaution: absentmindedly or accidentally eating chametz during Matzah, and the story of the man who was executed for gathering sticks on the Shabbat. In both cases Yahowah said that a person in that situation shall be cut off form his people, by whch He means His covenant.
Yada expressed a personal opionion at one point regarding the guy picking up sticks on the Shabbat that he figured there must have been a spiteful, rebelious character to the man's working on the Shabbat to prompt his execution, and I'm inclined to agree. Moreover, I think we can determine that using another line of reasoning, that will also bear on the issue of abentmindedly or accidentally eating chametz during Matzah.
We know that Hebrew verbs are for the most part unbound in time. When the Towrah says that, in response to a certain action, a person will be cut off from his people , it might just as well be saying that that person is cut off from the covenent, or indeed has already been cut off from the covenant. If a person is intentionally, rebelliously working on the Shabbath, or eating chametz during Matzah, with the attitude that they don't give a rip about Shabbath or Matzah, respectively, then they aren't in the covenant, if indeed they ever were. Shabbath and Matzah aren't magical rituals we carry out to put ourselves in the covenant or keep ourselves there, and working or eating chametz doesn't break the spell or disrupt the ritual. It isn't a specific action that removes a person from the covenent - the action is merely the visible consequence of an attitude that has already removed the person from the covenant, or more likely prevented the person from ever being in the covenant in the first place.
The upshot being that, if you are observing Unleavened Bread, and absentlymindedly swallow a bite or two of bread before stopping yourself, I don't think even theocratic Israel would stone you at the town gates for that. You understand what Yahowah is asking of us, and you care. That makes you one in less-than-a-million already. And that's before you consider that these are the Miqray that have already been fulfilled by Yahowsha. Whatever requirement there was for perfection in their fulfillment got taken care of by Him. Which is good for all of us because, while I can't speak for you, I know I didn't sacrifice my own lamb this year :) If our perfection mattered, then compared to that omission, I can't see accidentally eating some leaven making much of a difference.
Bubsy: you think that's bad? I went to my wife's aunt's on Sunday for the mainstream traditional dinner. My wife's family is very religious, and communion was served with little cups of wine and leavened bread to break and share. Normally I'm ok following Yahosha's instructions to eat bread and remember Him, particularly in a noninstitutional context, and I recogize that Yahowah isn't a religious deity and wants us to understand and relate to Him without just blindly carrying our rituals and laws, but taking communion (in itself iffy) with leavened bread in direct contravention of Matzah just seemed ridiculously beyond the pale, though I felt very awkward discretely pocketing the bread to dispose of later. (I've come to realize, of course, that when Yahowsha said we were to eat His flesh he was referring to the Passover lamb, and not the unleavened bread at all, but I don't anticipate my wife's family ever seeing that.)