The Alligator Chase

I once found myself in Gatorland, which is a theme park in Orlando, a park that boasts more alligators and crocodiles than almost any other place on Earth. And after strolling through its massive grounds, looking at all the alligators from every corner of the globe, seeing them swallow whole chickens in one bite, watching thrill-seekers zipline over a pond filled with these 15-ft 1,000-lb beasts, and trying to stop my 4-year-old from dumping his entire bag of Bomb Bites in the mouth of one of them, we made our way to the park's main attraction, the alligator wrestling show. So, we're in the arena packed with people, and a trainer enters the pit. He's facing off with a massive gator, and with a mixture of skill and craziness, he managed to climb on top of the alligator's back and hold its powerful jaws shut. And the crowd is a mix of awe and horror. My kid has his hands over his eyes tighter than a rich man holds his $10,000 estrogon soup as And then the trainer, who's calmer than someone having tea with the Queen of England, he turns to the audience and he asks a famous alligator question. "If an alligator is chasing you, what should you do?" So, hands in the crowd shot up. One kid shouted, "Poke it in the eye!" A woman yells, "Hit its tail!" And a man screams, "Throw something at its snout!" Someone else says, "Freeze and wave your hands to look really strong!" Another guy calls out, "Start whistling in a low low whistle then retract in a 45° angle in a zigzag pattern." So, everyone has a theory, everyone has a strategy, and the trainer just laughs. And he shakes his head. And he says, "Folks, it ain't that complicated. You want to survive an alligator chasing you? There's only one thing you do. You just run as fast as your two feet can take you." Sometimes in life we search for complicated and sophisticated solutions to our spiritual struggles. Siguls, inspiration hacks, graves in far-flung countries, Matzah teaches us something else. It whispers a quiet truth. Try making things simpler. Try going back to the basics. How many of us can truly claim to have souls free to live the spiritual lives that they want to live? How many of us are holding our own souls hostage in prisons built on money and food and ego and the illusion that we can conquer the world if we just work a little bit harder? Pesach isn't just a celebration of Hashem freeing us from physical slavery. It's a celebration of being freed from the mindset of slavery. Pesach is the yom tov in which we are spiritually reborn both collectively and individually. The avodah is to go back to the basics, to stare at the increasingly complicated world and choose to see through the illusion, to ask ourselves, are we slaves to our pleasure-hungry, hyper-stimulated, overly complicated bodies? Or are we governed by our souls, pure, calm, and free? Chametz is banned on Pesach in the harshest of terms because Hashem wants us to rediscover the pleasure of simply being a neshama. And our neshamas can't breathe when they're trapped in a dungeon of complicated materialism. Yes, we're a people that have rich rituals and depth and nuance, and there's beauty in that. But there's a reason the symbol of our freedom, perhaps the most famous spiritual symbol in the world, is nothing more than 2 oz of flour and an oz of water because a real freedom isn't flashy, it's not complicated, it's honest, it's immediate. You just have to pick up your matzah and run.