In the 3,000 years since the Jews fled Egypt with their unleavened dough, no one has come up with anything better to do with it than eat it. And even that’s not such a good idea.

That is why it was such a joy to attend the world’s first Matzo Sculpture Competition on Monday night at New York University’s Bronfman Center. The sponsor — big surprise — was Manischewitz, the country’s foremost matzo maker (which, by the way, is now owned by the same holding company that also owns Horowitz Margareten and Goodman’s matzo. So much for competition in the kosher aisle).

Matzo, fyi, is the flat, hard “bread of affliction” Jews are commanded to eat on Passover to remind them of the Exodus, when there wasn’t time to let the dough rise (or, apparently, acquire any taste).

What can one fashion out of oversize crackers? The finalists in Monday’s contest came forth with matzo candlesticks, a matzo Wailing Wall, even a matzo video game, complete with mini matzo Mario. “Super Mario Brothers is a game of conquest but more notably of oppression,” the artist’s statement read. “You thought it was a game about pizza-eating plumbers? How could you be so naïve?”

Uh, easy. Anyway, as a large crowd milled around, examining the sculptures (and, truth be told, also a far more normal art opening going on at the same time), the artists were only too happy to discuss their inspiration.

The official theme was “Home,” contestant Eric Goldberg said, and his three little matzo dioramas were meant to represent his parents’ home, his grandparents’ home, and now (the one with the matzo futon), his own home, as an NYU student.

“They gave me a foundation,” he said of his family, and you just know that somewhere out there, there are two generations of Goldbergs very proud that their boy is spending his $39,000 education gluing matzos together.

Erica Dobin had glued her matzos together to make two living rooms representing the homes she had helped salvage as a volunteer in New Orleans. Her work was hauntingly lovely. For his part, art student James Donovan had made an impressive Washington Square Arch — his home away from home — which ended up winning the $1,000 prize.

The idea was “to bring matzo back to people and let them really interact with it on a personal level,” a Manischewitz assistant brand manager, Arye Weigensberg, said. But if the folks visiting the exhibit were any indication (and who’s to say they were?), matzo is already very personal, as laden with memories as Passover itself.

“One time,” business student Israel Aboud recalled, “we hid the afikomen under my grandfather’s mattress.” The afikomen is a piece of matzo that is traditionally hidden for the children to find, and whoever does gets a prize. But sometimes, as in Mr. Aboud’s family, the children hide it from the adults.

The problem was that Mr. Aboud’s grandfather fell asleep on the mattress, unaware of the matzo beneath him. “We didn’t want to wake him up,” Mr. Aboud said. “So we sat there and felt really bad. We kept on making noises — banging and stuff — to wake him, and once he sat up, we said, ‘We’ve got to get the matzo from under you!'” The afikomen is supposed to be the last morsel eaten at the Passover meal. “But my parents didn’t want to use it after that,” he said.

A student in Jewish history, Andrew Scheer, recalled another problematic matzo: “My father always tries to be more Jewish every year, and one year he got shmurah matzo” — handmade matzo that’s as expensive as it is hard. “My grandmother tasted it and she went off on him: ‘What is this? Cardboard?’ And then, when she found out what it cost, she went off on my mom: ‘This is what you spend your money on?’ We had a whole fight at the table.”

Other visitors had happier matzo memories, chiefly focused on the joy of eating it with butter, or — in the case of student Paula Pulizzi — with olive oil and Parmesan. “I’m Italian from Queens and I was always curious about it,” she said. Once she finally bought a box, “I wound up having it every day after school. My parents were like, ‘Are you okay? You sure you don’t want Italian bread?'”

Scrumptious, crusty Italian bread? Who’d want that when you can have the bread of affliction?

Besides, Italian bread would make a really lousy Washington Square Arch.