Spirituality Starts With Kindness

a Torah Anytime original series. Then we begin Maggot. And it's worth pointing out something that should immediately jump out at you. We don't begin the way you'd expect Maggot to begin. We don't just jump into the story. We don't start with Egypt. We don't start with slavery. We start by inviting people in. We start by declaring that anyone who wants to come join us should. And what's strange is that we don't do this by any other yant not by not by sukis not by rashana but by the seder night the most structured detailed carefully organized night of the year we suddenly make the first act make sure nobody is alone. Why do that? The answer is because the hag is teaching you something before it even begins. We tend to think that spirituality is what makes a person behave better. First you become religious and then you become kind. First you become elevated and then you can become decent. Hagala is flipping that completely on its head. It's telling you good midos are the doorway to spirituality. You don't become spiritual and then become kind. You become kind and that's what opens the gates of spirituality. A guy with a gar in his hand going into a shaw to learn, but doesn't hold the door open for the guy behind them and lets the door slam in his face probably has his priorities out of whack. A Jewish person who finishes shopping and then just leaves the grocery cart sitting in the middle of a parking spot because it's not my problem might need to hear this lesson loud and clear. A guy I once saw sitting and learning before Shab is deep in all kinds of tis and tikunim and he gets up to tie his shoe. He puts his m muddy foot on the seat next to him, ties his shoe, and then walks away without without brushing off the seat, leaving a dirty seat for the next person like it doesn't exist. That is not what Hashem wants because Hashem is making something very clear at the very beginning of our night of freedom. You can have the greatest spiritual moment in history, but if it's disconnected from basic human decency, then you miss the point entirely. And that is why we immediately call out when all who are hungry come and eat. Before the wine, before the story, before the questions, before anything else becomes meaningful, we set the priority in stone. People first always because a seder where Jews are sitting at table of redemption. While other Jews are sitting alone, hungry or forgotten and lonely outside, it's not just incomplete, it's a contradiction to everything the night is meant to be. Judaism is not a religion where the holier you get, the further you move from people. It's the exact opposite. In other religions, the holy person, he retreats, he goes to monasteries, he goes to mountaintops, away from the world, away from the messy, broken, needy reality of other people. But that's not how it works in our religion. Argaden don't run away from people. They run toward them. Their tables were full. Their homes were open. Their lives were interruptions on behalf of someone else's pain. Because in Judaism, the more spiritual you become, the more responsible you become. When we say at the beginning of the seder, all who are hungry come and eat. It's not just a nice introduction. It's a declaration before we tell the story of freedom, we prove the un that we understand what freedom is. And if we're being honest, really honest, there isn't a person listening who doesn't know someone lonely, someone struggling, someone who could not just enjoy a seat at your table, but would actually be saved by it. So, we don't begin the seder by escaping the world. We begin by opening it. Because only a Judaism that opens its doors to others deserves to speak about freedom.