The Hagadah On Fire

This Torah class is brought [music] to you by tora anytime.com. This year she is dedicated to the Yehudis. She should have a speedy. I'd like to share some thoughts on the Hagada to give a little perspective that I hope can add a little bit of fire to the Hagada experience. And I'd like to begin with a question. The holiday of Pesak is the oldest and longest continuously observed major holiday in the world. No other event in world history has been commemorated for anywhere near 3500 years. Pesak is also without a question the most famous Jewish holiday in the world. Pew research found that only 23% of Jews go to Yumkipper services, but close to 70% of Jews go to Pesakarim. More irreligious Jews know about Pesak and celebrate it than any other holiday by far. You find a Jew in a high school in the middle of Alabama and you ask him what Pesak is, he'll know all about it. He won't know what a lulanastric is. He's never heard of Shabu. But Pes knows about Jews from all over the world. Even if they have nothing to do with Judaism, even if they are actively distancing themselves from Judaism, show up at a Pesak seder. The largest pesos theater in the world takes place in Kathmandu, Nepal, attended by over a thousand people with over a thousand pounds of matzah. These are people who are actively looking to leave Judaism and explore Hinduism or Buddhism. And yet they show up to the seder. Which leads me to a question. What is it about Pesak, about the seder that cuts so deep to the soul of a Jew that no matter who they are or where they are or how far they've drifted, they show up? What is it about this night that pulls in every single Jew? to even the ones who are actively trying to walk away. The answer is that Pesak is a reminder of who we are. It is the telling of a story passed down from grandparents to grandchildren despite the fact that as noted by historian Joshua Fishman that the majority of Jewish grandparents in Jewish history did not speak the same language as their grandchildren. And yet the message at the Pesaka was always clear that you are not just another nation. You are the carriers of something bigger than some something better. Some you are the flag barriers of spirituality. The torch holders of a world built on ethics and purpose and harmony and peace. Pes is the reminder that we were taken out of Isra not just any society but arguably one of the most powerful and advanced civilizations of its time and at the same time deeply immoral. And Hashem looked at a broken nation of slaves and chose them as if to say you are meant to rise above this. You are meant to soar. You are not chickens. You are eagles. Pesak is not just a story of us leaving Egypt. It is the birth of the greatest way of life the world has ever seen. And because we're trying to instill this into ourselves every single year. Pes is different than every other holiday. We don't just have a sudo like every other yam. We have a seder with a which if you think about it, it's actually pretty strange. Why don't we do this for the other sukus? We sit down in the suka and we eat. We sit down and we eat. Rajashana for the most part we sit down and we eat. Sodom pes. It's a full production. We don't just sit down and eat. We sing. We ask questions. We eat specific foods. We lean. We open doors. We pour cups. We do things that clearly are designed to get reactions, to spark curiosity, to make people stop and ask, "What in the world is going on here?" It almost feels like a play, like we're stepping into some kind of interactive experience. And the question is, why? Why does Pesak turn into this full-blown reenactment in a way that no other Yantub does? What is it about this night that demands not just telling the story, but literally living it? The answer is that the Hagada exists for one reason and one reason only, to increase and reaffirm our belief that Hashem chose us to be his people, his ambassadors in this world, his carriers of truth and meaning. And that amuna we're trying to strengthen doesn't come through quiet reflection alone. It comes through experience through action and sound and questions and song and story. It needs a full sensory moment because that's how amuna takes root in a person. And once you understand that, it changes the way you look at the entire hag. And allow me to explain. Let's ask one of Judaism's oldest questions. A question that nobody really asks out loud, but everyone is thinking. If people really believe in Hashem, then why do they sin? If people really believe in ganam, why do they sin? If people really believe that Hashem is watching their every single move, then why do people sometimes not follow Hashem's words? Think about it. If someone told you, "Touch this stove and you will immediately get thirdderee burns." You're not going to touch the stove because you're not an idiot. So, if people believe there's a creator watching and punishes people who do a veros, then why do we still sin? The answer is actually something pretty simple. The answer is that your brain and your heart are not always on the same team. And just because you know something in your brain does not at all automatically mean that you know it in your heart. Let me give you an example. You're watching a play. You know the play is fake. The actors are pretending. The sad violin music is literally designed by a sound engineer to manipulate your emotions. You know all this. And yet the actor dies and you're crying. Why? Because your brain knows it's fake, but your heart thinks it's real. Your brain understands reality, but your heart reacts to the story that it's experiencing in front of it. I'll give you another example. You know, a roller coaster is safe. Thousands of engineers designed it. Millions of people ride it every year. Statistically, it is one of the safest things you can do. Your brain knows this. But the second the car starts climbing, your heart is like, "Okay, this is a terrible idea." And your palms start sweating and your stomach drops and you start questioning every life decision that led you to that moment. Why? Because your brain understands the statistics, but your heart doesn't. Your heart feels like you're about to die. Or take speaking in public. Speaking in front of a thousand people is terrifying. But speaking in front of a camera, even knowing that a thousand people are watching live, feels completely different because your brain knows the number, but your heart doesn't feel the crowd. It's the same reason why you can listen to a shear once and then move on and you'll never listen to it again. But you can listen to a song 10 million times because a shear is processed by the mind, but a song hits the heart and the brain and the heart do not operate in the same way. And that right there might be the secret to understanding sin. A person can know that Hashem exists. A person can know right from wrong. A person can even know that actions have consequences. But in the moment, their heart is responding to a completely different story. The temptation is front in front of them feels real. The pleasure feels immediate. The consequences feel distant and abstract. Your brain can understand the repercussions of sin. Your brain can process ideas like judgment and accountability and even to a certain extent gem, but your heart isn't experiencing those things right now. To the heart, those ideas can feel distant, theoretical, like trivia. It's almost like Pluto. You believe Pluto exists. You've seen pictures of it. You learned about it in school, but it means absolutely nothing to your day-to-day life. You don't wake up in the morning thinking, "Wow, Pluto." Because it's just so far away that it doesn't feel real. And sometimes belief in consequences can be a little bit like that. The brain says, "Yes, this is wrong. Yes, this matters." But the heart is focused on what it feels right now. And that's what the atahara is stepping in and starts whispering to the heart that relax. It's not such a big deal. Just this once, you'll fix it later. Everyone does it. And for a moment, the heart believes that story even though the brain knows a lot better. That is the root cause of most sin, the disconnect between the brain and the heart. That is why many of the great thinkers of Judaism explain that the real struggle in amuna isn't that people don't believe. It's the fact that people that belief often stays in the brain and never fully reaches the heart. It reminds me of a time that I had to pull over to the side of the road and in front of me was a huge gasoline tanker truck and the driver looked like he was in trouble. So I walked over and I asked him and I said, "What's going on?" He said, "I ran out of gas." I said, "What do you mean you ran out of gas? You're literally driving a gas tanker. Don't you have like 10,000 gallons sitting right behind you? Why can't you just pour some of your truck's gas into your tank? So, the driver shook his head and he said, "Yeah, I've got plenty of gas back there. The problem is that I don't have the right pump to get it into my tank. I deliver gas to stations, gas stations with these big industrial hoses, but my truck needs a small pump and I don't have one." Isn't that amazing when you think about it? Here's a man sitting on top of 10,000 gallons of gasoline and he's still stuck on the side of the road with an empty tank. But in a way, that's exactly what happens to many of us spiritually. We have so much knowledge and so many shurim and so many books and sorum and podcasts. We know the ideas. We know the information. The tanker behind us is full. But sometimes we're still sitting on the side of the road out of gas because we simply do not have a way of bridging the gap between the oil tanker and the gas tank between what we know in our minds and what actually fuels our hearts. So the question is how do you actually bridge that gap? How do you take something you believe in your head and you turn it into something that your heart actually feels? The answer is simple. You have to speak to the heart in its own language. The heart does not really care about proofs or arguments. It doesn't move for logic. The heart moves for experience, for story, for emotion, for repetition, for moments that grab it and don't let it go. It responds to sound and to song, and to curiosity, to things that feel alive and real in the moment. And that is exactly what the seder is. Because once a year, Judaism basically changes form. It stops being just a system of rules and becomes an experience. Think about it. Most of Judaism is structured. It's predictable. Make a braha. Eat. Continue your diet. Clear, defined, controlled. And then suddenly, sad or night, we're leaning. We're dipping. We hide mata like it's some sort of ancient treasure hunt. We spill wine on purpose. We're singing instead of just speaking. We ask questions instead of giving answers. It's structured, but it feels almost like controlled chaos. If someone walked in from outside, from outer space, they'd probably say like, "This is a religion or is this some sort of performance? This is the religion of of intellect as you claim." But that's exactly the point because the seder is not trying to win an argument with your brain. It's trying to break through to your heart. The heart doesn't change from information. It changes from experience, from story, emotion, and repetition, and immersion. That is the deeper design of the cedar. It's not just speaking to your mind. It's grabbing your attention and it's pulling you in and saying this isn't a story you're studying. This is a story that you're in. And once the heart is in, everything else follows. And that is exactly what we are trying to accomplish with the Hagada and all its theatrics to bridge the gap between brain and heart. We don't call it a sepur, we call it a hagada. The word hagada also carries the idea of binding. Perhaps the deeper point is meant to bind the mind to the heart to connect what we know with what we feel. Because information can sit in your mind for a lifetime and change nothing. But the moment it binds to your heart, it stops being something you know and it starts being something that you are. And that's the power of the Hagada. Not to inform you, but to transform you. To take a story from 3,000 years ago and make it beat inside of you tonight. Because when the mind and heart finally lock in together, that's not inspiration. It becomes identity. The seder begins with kdish. Let's ask an obvious question. There is an unusual amount of wine at the pesak seder. Why is that? Why is there far more wine at the cedar than there is an other sudas? The answer comes from exploring what kdish really is. Every Friday night and before every YT suda, Jews across the world lift a cup of wine and recite kdish declaring that Shabas and Yantiff is holy. We do it instinctively. We do it confidently. We rarely pause to ask what that declaration is trying to do. Why does that declaration need to be made holding a cup of wine? Ever thought about it? Why does kdish need to be made while holding a cup of wine? What is the wine doing? We have been doing it for so long that we convinced ourselves that that's normal. But is it? We we don't blow the sh for holding a cup of wine. We don't shake a lul of an es for holding a cup of wine. We don't read the migilla holding a cup of wine. If I told you I only give stuck while holding a cup of wine, you'd think I'm crazy. But why is kesh any different? There's a mitzvah to declare shamish holy. Why must that be done while holding a cup of wine? It's a simple question. The answer is not mystical. It's not symbolic. It's actually deeply practical. Wine is not being used because it contains some sort of hidden spiritual energy. Wine is being used because it creates sim because there is a principle teach and that is Hashem's presence only rests where there is joy. Not forced happiness, not wild intoxication. Soft, open, uplifted state. The same way a person naturally pulls back from someone who's closed and heavy and depressed and shut down. So to does not settle into a constricted tense soul. Hashem's presence rests where there's openness and sim is what creates that openness. Wine then is not the point. It's the tool. It loosens something inside a person. It moves you out of survival mode and into receptivity. And when it comes to receptivity is everything. The only rests on people who are happy enough to receive it. That's why when we rise to say kdesh we hold a cup of wine. Not because shabas or needs to be sanctified. They're already holy. But because we need to become the kind of people who can receive it. Kdesh is not sanctifying the day. It's sanctifying the person. Jive brings presence. But presence and schina cannot land in a clenched heart. It can't settle into a tight guarded inner world. Presence needs space and sim creates that space. That's why the itself reveals the deeper truth. If a person doesn't enjoy wine, kish can be made on bread because the wine is not essential. The joy is essential. The object can change but the emotional state cannot. And once you see this, a pattern emerges. Most mitzvah are about obedience. Hashem says do it and we do it. But there are a small exclusive group category that require a cup of wine while performing those brisma weddings. The reason is because these are not just mitzvah of action. They are mitzvah of encounter. They are the coming into someone's world and the only comes with happiness. A bris is not just a commandment. It's hashem entering into a covenant with a child. A wedding is not just a legal union. It's hashem dwelling within a new home for the first time. And it's not just gratitude. It is inviting and presence and onto your table into your house. It's not just ending shabas. It's holding on to the as it withdraws and bringing it into the week. These are threshold moments. Moments where Hashem is so to speak stepping in. And thresholds require the right conditions. They require because so every cup of wine, every song, every moment of of uplifting, it's not decoration. It's preparation. It's making space. Wine is the signal that there's room for you here. And the same is true for every they're not just days on the calendar. They are moments of arrival, moments where the comes closer, enters our homes, enters our lives, but only if we're in a state to receive it. Only if there is because in the end, the rule is simple and absolute. No, no. Which brings us to the sedite. If there is ever a moment in the Jewish calendar defined as an encounter with the Schina, it's the seder night. The night that we become a nation, the night of mitz, the night Hashem took us out and defined who we are forever. This is not just history. This is identity being formed in real time year after year. So the emotional register cannot be ordinary. One cup of wine is not enough because one layer of emotional openness and happiness is not enough. The night is just too big for that. The seder is built on overflowing experience. Not minimal expression, multiple cups, multiple stages, multiple moments of raising the cup again and again. Because the goal is not just to say something holy happened. The goal is to feel that we are inside of it, to sit at a table and not just remember the exodus, but to step into it. And for that, the hurt has to be open wider than usual. So we don't just drink wine at the seder. We build the entire night around it. Because when Hashem is this present, when the moment is this loaded, when the story is this alive, joy is not a decoration, it is the condition that makes this encounter possible. That is exactly what the seder is trying to accomplish. We are not just telling a story. We're not just eating symbolic foods. We are reconstructing ourselves. We are rebuilding the identity of who we are supposed to be. That is why the sedu night is called le shurum, a guarded night. A night saturated withina, a night where in a sense the boundary between heaven and earth feels a little thinner than usual. That's why some say Elio Anavi could show up specifically on this night. Because when a Jew fully steps into the seder, he is not just remembering who he is, he is re-entering who he is. We are reestablishing ourselves as Hashem ambassadors in the world. That is why there are four cups of wine at the seder because one moment of joy can open the heart. But this night isn't one moment. It's wave after wave of presence. It's an overflow of entering the home over and over again. So, we don't rely on a single spark. We raise the cup again and again four times because the night demands more openness, more feeling, more space for Hashem to enter. It's as if we're saying, "If you're coming this close, then we're not staying small. We're expanding ourselves to meet you." Seder night we have four cups of wine because on a night when the is pouring in a little bit of joy just isn't enough. Right after kadesh we have or kadesh. We declare ourselves holy. We say hashem sanctified us through mitzvah through being chosen and guided. We remind ourselves our holiness is not self-generated. It comes from connection from alignment from following hashem's word. And then immediately comes or washing your hands. What's striking is that it doesn't feel like a new stage. It feels connected to kadesh. The vav in or is telling you don't separate these two. There's kadesh and then immediately or why are they connected? Holiness and cleansing are part of the same movement. But why? So there's a powerful idea told over from Dr. Abraham Torski. He would often speak to people who had completely lost faith in themselves. people from boke broken homes and prison brack back backgrounds people who felt written off by life and he was once speaking in a jail and one man comes up to him and says bluntly you don't know me everything you're saying is nonsense I grew up in abuse I was in and out of jail I'm not someone who can change and looked at him and said something simple he said have you ever seen a diamond and the man replied of course I've even stolen a few diamonds said do you know where diamonds come from. They come from the deepest, dirtiest, most pressurized places on Earth. In fact, the majority of diamonds are mined in places like Batswana. And to extract a single carrot, you often have to move hundreds of thousands of pounds of dirt. But when you remove the dirt, what you are left with is one of the strongest, most valuable substances in existence. That is a human being. And more specifically, that's a Jew. A soul is not fragile. It's not broken beyond repair. It's a diamond buried underneath layers of life and confusion and noise. And sometimes the first step isn't transformation. It's just washing. Sometimes the first step to kadesh is or it's not becoming someone new. Just uncovering who you really are. That is exactly the bridge from kadesh to or kadesh tells you that you are meant to be wholly chosen connected to Hashem. Or tells you how to get there. Not by becoming something else, but by cleansing off what is covering you. First wash off the dirt, then the diamond can shine. And that is why there is a VV between them because they are not two ideas. They are one single journey. And as you get up to do or pause for a second and ask yourself a very simple question. Do you actually know what we are trying to accomplish when we wash our hands right now? Why does Judaism seem to have this constant water moment built into life? The Jewish people seem to have a little obsession with water. We wake up in the morning and we wash our hands. We walk into Schultav and we wash our hands. We go out of a bathroom and wash our hands. We sit down to eat bread and we wash our hands. We sit down to eat anything dipped in a liquid and we wash our hands. We touch our shoes. We wash our hands. We scratch scratch our head. We wash our hands. We run to immerse in a mikvah. Some people yearly, some people monthly, some people daily, some people three times a day. What does pouring water over our hands accomplish? What does immersing in water do? So the in his second explanation to the he writes that we wash our hands because we are charged as a nation with being holy and by pouring water over our hands we are internalizing that idea. Now what does pouring water over our hands have to do with being holy? What does washing our hands after we scratch our heads or touch our shoes have to do with sanctity? It isn't merely for cleanliness because we are obligated to wash our hands even if they aren't noticeably dirty. So why are we doing it exactly? The answer lies in the translation of the word nitilas. The word nto as hersh explains it means to raise. When you pour water over your hands you're not just washing, you are lifting yourself. You're reminding yourself I'm not the same as everything around me. I am higher. I am meant to live differently. And why water? Because water is its own world. It's a place where the normal rules of human life do not apply. You can't just exist in water naturally. That's the message. We're not here just to exist naturally. We're here to rise above it like the sea, separate, defined, its own domain. That is what a Jew is meant to be. Not swept up in the current, but standing apart from it. Or hits us before anything even begins because it sets the tone immediately that we are not acting out of instinct or habit or autopilot. We are elevating. We are carrying. We are carving out an island of purity in the middle of a raging ocean of profanity. It's as if the cedar is telling you before you eat the matzah before you tell the story, decide who you are tonight, are you just flowing with everything around you or are you someone who can step above it because the water isn't cleaning your hands. It's drawing a line. It's saying you don't belong to the current. You rise above it. And that's what you should have in mind during or I'm not staying where I am. I'm not living on autopilot. I am stepping out of the current and stepping up. That is how we start our seder. Which brings us to karpass, a small almost insignificant vegetable dipped in something slightly unusual. And suddenly the question begins. Now yes, there are explanations brought in the rishim about saltwater and the tears and so on. But at its core, karpas is about one thing. Getting you to ask questions. Kazal build the entire opening structure of the seder around a principle stated in the we deliberately create unusual actions so that the children will ask questions and the reason we do this is because the seder is not a lecture it's an experience designed around curiosity and karpass is the opening move of that experience before we talk about slavery before we talk about redemption before we even begin the story we establish something foundational you don't sit here As a listener, you sit here as someone who asks. And this is not a side point in Judaism. This is the DNA of Judaism itself. Judaism built its entire religion on questions. Jewish children are trained to ask questions from the earliest age. The entire structure of the Gomorrah is question, answer, challenge, response, refinement, contradiction, resolution. There is no serious learning in Tyra without questioning. In fact, the litmus test of yeshiva Bakar is not how well he can repeat or memorize. It's how well he can ask questions, how sharp his questions are, how deeply he thinks, how unwilling he is to settle for surface level understanding. Because truth in Tyra is not threatened by questions. It's revealed through them. And if you zoom out in world history, the contrast between Judaism and other religions with regards to questions becomes impossible to ignore. Judaism is a tradition that puts questioning front and center. Even its holiest night begins with questions. Other religions are completely terrified of them. And Christianity for much of history questioning core doctrine was not only not encouraged, it was shunned. Interpretations of text was tightly controlled. Theological inquiry was often restricted within defined boundaries for the majority of its history. Only a handful of people actually knew the Latin that the New Testament was written in. And you were not allowed to translate it. Oh no. When it comes to Islam, the Quran itself is held as the direct, unchangeable word of God in Arabic, and questions are not welcome. The contrast is sharp. One world builds itself around structured questioning, even institutionalized questioning and arguments, and the others are petrified of questions. Because when you're not confident that you possess truth, you tend to protect it from questioning. You police it. You shut outsiders down the second they get too close. But when you believe you have the truth, you don't fear questions. You welcome them. And that is exactly what Karpas is telling you. The moment the seder begins before answers, before explanations, before anything else in Judaism, don't accept. Don't assume, don't drift. In Judaism, we ask away because we're not afraid of questions. We're built on truth. And when you know you have the truth, questions don't weaken it. They wake it up. They make it sharper. They make it clearer. They make the truth more alive. Next comes. We break the matzah in two. We declare one as and one as the symbol of our freedom. One is the one of the most powerful lessons that we can take with us as we leave Pes and march down the road of life is the seemingly bizarre contradiction that is found in matzah. [snorts] We begin the seder by saying this is the bread of affliction we ate in. The Ebenezer explains that the reason it's called this is because the mitsim would feed us only matzah because it's harder to digest and therefore less of it was needed to feed the Jewish slaves. But on the other hand, matzah is the it's the ultimate symbol of freedom. Now, how could the same object be both the symbol of affliction and pain and also the symbol of triumph and freedom? The answer is a major lesson matzah that screams out to us and that is like Jonathan Saxs eloquently put it that in life it's not about the type of food you eat in life but rather the attitude you have while you eat it. We begin our story of by dramatically taking a piece of matzah and splitting it in half and declaring that the same way the same matzah could be both and so to the ticket to spiritual freedom and happiness is not about the type of life we're being given but rather it's about the mentality and perspective we have while living it. We are trying to instill that leaving slavery is less about physical surroundings and more a mental shift. The same world can feel like slavery or redemption depending on how you stand inside of it. It's kind of like kesh immediately as a nation we got the mitzvah of kesh and even today at the beginning of every month we go out and we look up at the moon and we get inspired to change. We say the same way the moon grows bigger and smaller so too we must change ourselves and reinvigorate ourselves. Now there is an obvious glaring question that you can ask and that is how is the moon our symbol of change? Virtually everything in the entire universe changes. The Earth has four seasons. The sun is forever burning up. Stars are always moving to and fro. The moon just sits there. There's no wind. There's no water on the moon. There's no gravity. There's no life. Neil Armstrong's footprints are still there exactly where he left them decades ago in 1969. So, you might argue and say, "Well, the moon gets bigger and smaller every day." No, it doesn't. The Earth blocks the sun's shine on the moon in varying degrees and it only appears to be growing or shrinking but in actuality it just sits there. Why would we choose our paradigm of change? The only thing in the entire universe that stays the same. It doesn't change. The answer is that is precisely the point. Change is not about waiting for the seasons to pass or the climate to improve. Change is not about dreaming about different settings and different scenarios more conducive to our success. Change is not saying if only this illness would go away or if only I would move to a bigger house or if only I made just a little bit more money. Change is about changing our perspective. Change is about getting rid of the habit of blaming conditions and focusing more on inner transformation. Change is taking the circumstances at hand and seeing them in a different light with a different angle. It's adopting an attitude of gratitude for the million parts of our lives that are filled with brah. It's seeing the goodness that's buried in our situation, in our house, in our unique life. You see, we are all faced with a choice. We can either live life blaming the scenarios around us, the people, the places, the things around us that we think dictate the quality of our lives. Or we can say to ourselves, I am going to create in my busy, hectic life a cocoon of harmony, a sort of island of tranquility and be and and be filled with the mental space to see all the good around me and to thank Hashem mightily for it. That is exactly what Yahhat is showing us. At the start of the seder, one piece of matzah gets broken. The same bread, it's the same reality, but suddenly it becomes two identities. The bread of affliction and the bread of freedom. Not because the bread changed, but because you did. Because attitude changes. Attitude changes meaning. And that's the story of the Jewish people from our descent to mit through to the yidden leaving Egypt to the Jews in Bavl and Spain and France and Netherlands, Morocco. From those yedin came the most emotionally resilient people to ever walk the face of the earth. The people who could sing in the rain. The [snorts] people who could dance night in Shrebinka. The people who could sing leaneka in the Warsaw ghetto. The people who could inject holiness into a world of madness. A nation that could sing in suffering. That could dance in exile. That could find meaning in chaos. A people who learned how to build an inner world that no exile could destroy. Because no matter what they faced, they knew one thing. Hashem's goodness is not absent. It's just hidden. And it's up to us to open our eyes and see it. Our entire journey into Msim started with this lesson. When Ysef was sold as a slave to a band of Arab merchants, the Tyra expends precious words to mention that they were carrying pleasant smelling spices. And Rashi explains that this is telling us that Hashem was always look after the welfare of Tadikim of righteous people. And therefore he arranged that Yseph was sold to merchants carrying pleasant smelling spices despite the fact that normally those merchants were carrying things like tar. Now stop for a second. Ask the obvious question. Do you honestly think that Yseph cared about those merchants what they were carrying? He was just thrown into a pit by his own brothers who only after deciding not to murder him, they grabbed him, placed him in chains, and sold him as a slave to Arabs, never to be heard from again. Do you honestly think in that moment he cared about the what the spies were carrying? What the Do you honestly think in that moment he cared about the spices the merchants were carrying? Do you honestly think he even noticed what they were carrying? It's like imagine if on October 7th you weream captured by a Hamas terrorist and you're on the back of a motorcycle being driven into Gaza. You're not going to sit there noticing or even caring what cologne he's wearing. You're going to be screaming on the top of your lungs. So, how did Yoseph notice it? The answer is shocking. Yseph understood something that most people never learn. Freedom is not a location. Freedom is an attitude. He didn't need to know the end of the story to know that the end of the story was a good one. He was so anchored in that certainty. He was so rooted in Hashem's plan that even in the pit, in the chains, in the collapse of everything familiar, his inner world was still free. And when your inner world is free, you can still notice fragrance in the chaos. You can still see that there's something beyond the pain. That's not denial. It's called mastery. Ysef wasn't just surviving Gullis. He was defining what freedom looks like inside of Gullis. This is exactly what Yah is trying to tell us. It's the same matzah, same reality, same food, but it can be the bread of affliction or it can be the bread of freedom. Nothing about the matzah changes. What changes is the way you see it. And that is the whole secret of life. Two people can live through the exact same moment. One walks out feeling trapped and crushed and defined by it. The other walks out free, alive, and elevated by it. Same experience, completely different worlds. Because life isn't always what happens to you. It's what you decide it means. You can live closed where everything is pressure and everything is limitation. Everything is I can't. Or you can live open or even within constriction there is hashem. There's meaning. There is light. There is freedom. And that is why we take the matzah and we split it in two right in front of us to say don't be fooled. It's never just bread. It's never just life. It's always the same reality. But it is you who decides if it becomes slavery or if it's freedom. Then we begin mag. And it's worth pointing out something that should immediately jump out at you. We don't begin the way you'd expect mag 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 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 to do that? [snorts] The answer is because the hagat 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 could become decent. Hagada 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 him 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 missed 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. Archadelim 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. [snorts] But perhaps there's another deeper reason that we go out of our way to declare that everyone is welcome in our homes. Because this isn't just the night of its and this is the night that we receive our tapid. This is the night that we don't only celebrate that we became a nation but we begin to understand why we became a nation. And that understanding changes everything. Because that means if I have a tough kid, something unique that only I can do, something that the entire Jewish people need me for, then that means something equally radical. That means that so do you, so does everyone else. No one is extra. No one is redundant. No one is just there. Every single Jew is part of the same mission. And once you realize that, you can't just have a seder. You can't have a seder celebrating Jewish destiny while ignoring Jews who don't have a place to sit. How can I celebrate the beginning of a people whose entire purpose is collective mission while being indifferent to the people standing right outside my door? It's a contradiction. On la cedar, we're not just remembering what happened. We are stepping into who we are. And perhaps one of the reasons we make this declaration is because of what actually allowed us to become a nation in the first place. The measure says that in Mitzim, the Jews didn't change their names. They didn't change their language and they didn't change their identity. That pride, that sense of of we belonging to something greater is what carried them out. And that's what carried us through all the places that we've been in our long journey throughout Gullis. A people who know who they are can survive anything. But when that pride breaks down, everything else breaks down with it. The Bikush was destroyed because of sinamas is not just hatred. It's something far deeper. When you no longer feel like you're on the same team as other Jews around you. Because when a person is truly part of something, he doesn't resent the other players on his team. He protects them. He roots for them. He feels their success as if it's his own. But when that connection weakens even slightly, the same person becomes indifferent. And indifference eventually becomes division. Look at camp color work. When everyone feels like we're one unit, there's energy, there's pride, loyalty. You can have two kids who couldn't stand each other 10 seconds ago and suddenly they're acting like they're best friends because the second a shared identity kicks in, everything personal gets overwritten by something bigger, something larger. But the moment that identity blurs, the same intensity flips just as fast into rivalry, ego, and resentment. That's what sin really is is a loss of shared identity. We see this idea even in Purim where the sin was going to feast blending into a foreign identity losing clarity of who we are and the repair is reconnection reinforcing unity reinforcing belonging. That's why the original night we got our collective tkid we push so hard in the opposite direction. We declare loudly and publicly right at the beginning that every Jew is a part of this because on Pesak night we are rebuilding pride. Not the arrogant type of pride but the deep grounding kind that says I belong and so do you. You see this very clearly in something we do on this night that we don't do anywhere else in the year. Instead of taking like we do normally on chabas and yiv we take three matas representing living is and some people have the meaning of taking 12 matas corresponding to the 12vatin and we are trying to highlight that tonight everyone is included but why is that you don't walk into a suka with three kalas you don't set up a y meal with 12 symbolic breads each representing the entire structure of but on this night we do why is that the answer is because this is the night that we are not just eating we are defining who we are we are saying there are different roles in Judais there's there's there's different paths different identities but every single one is essential no one is extra no one is replaceable no one is outside the system and that's why the carbon pes has to be in a because you don't do redemption alone you don't eat freedom alone you don't celebrate your tough alone The moral explains that even the fact that is that is said in Aramaic is because it's not just a cosmic declaration. It's spoken in the language of the of the home, the language of real people to awaken real responsibility and real relationships because that's what the cedar night is all about. We are receiving identity but identity that only exists if it's shared. And maybe that's why itself it wasn't chaotic freedom. The nation didn't just rush in. They went inordered, organized by shav 12 distinct paths, one collective destiny. Because if you think about it, when they're being chased out, the Egyptians are closing in. Time is everything. So why in the world are you wasting precious seconds organizing by shave it? Just run in and save yourselves. Why the structure? Why the order? Why the separation by shave it? The answer is because this wasn't just an escape. This was a beginning. And at the very genesis of our people, Hashem was making something crystal clear. Unity does not mean sameness. Each shaveet, each path, each role mattered. Each tough kid was not something to blur. It was something to highlight. We didn't walk into the sea as like a crown. We walked in as a nation made up of distinct essential parts. Because real unity isn't everyone being the same. It's everyone knowing exactly who they are and bringing that into something bigger. So if tonight is the birth of our tapkuit, then there is no such thing as a Jew who is not part of it. And that's why before we say a single word of the story, we open the door. Because a mission like this can only begin one way with every single Jew inside. Let's talk about matzah. But before we can, let's take a step back for a minute. Every single y on the Jewish calendar carries its own unique avoida. Its spiritual work designed to shape us and elevate us. Each holiday offers a distinct lens through which we can internalize its message and use it to become better, deeper, more connected Jews. Rashana calls us to malus to crown hashem as our king. Kipper centers on shuva, return, repentance, realignment. Sukis is the ofd serving hashem with genuine joy. Shivus invites us to receive the to renew our commitment to hashem's word. Each has its mission. So what then is the avoid of pes? If you distilled the entire y into one clear mission statement, one core purpose, what would it be? So at first glance, the answer seems obvious. It's freedom. We call the reenact our exodus from Egypt where we try to view ourselves as if we too were slaves in miraculously freed. We taste the bitterness of oppression in the mur. We remind ourselves of the bricks we laid with karesis. We recognize the hardships in mag with vivid detail. Nearly everything at the seder, what we say, what we eat, how we sit, whispers or sometimes shouts. But here's the question. What kind of freedom are we celebrating at exactly? Because let's be honest, we are probably freer freer today than any Jew in the in any point of our 2000 year exile. We have civil rights. We have political freedom. We have access to education, economic opportunity, the ability to practice Judaism openly. We have massive [clears throat] yeshivas and mcvos, kosher supermarkets the size of three football fields. We are about as far removed from slavery today as history will ever permit. So then which freedom exactly are we missing that Pesak comes to restore? Are we just going through the motions to remind ourselves of the slavery of the past? is it's sort of essentially a Jewish version of July 4th, America's celebration of their freedom from the British, but instead of parades and fireworks and hot dogs, we have the seder and halal and mur andis. What exactly is it simply the absence of oppression or is there something deeper? If the entire void of pesa is it would behoove any thinking person to explore the topic pretty deeply. I believe the key lies in matzah. Here's how we make a very very big deal about matzah and pes. Matzah is not just the most symbolic object on pes. It is arguably the single most symbolic Jewish object in the world. Virtually every Jew in the world has eaten a matzah. Manid sells 75 million of them every year to Jews in every corner of the globe. And the most unaffiliated Jews will likely find himself chewing on a piece of this cardboard flavored freedom at least once during pes. Matzah is so essential to the Pes that the Torah simply calls the YN. It is the supreme encapsulation of the Now, let's ask some pretty obvious questions. Why do we make it such a big deal about matzah on Pes? So, you're going to tell me, well, it's because we left Egypt in a hurry and we didn't have time to bake normal bread. Okay. So, what? A lot of interesting things happened when we left Miss Ryan. Like, how about the fact that millions of Egyptians woke up dead? Or the fact that Egyptian bankers just started handing us billions of dollars of free money and jewels, not to mention the makas and the splitting of the sea and the pillars of fire and the clouds of smoke and the 10 million other miracles that occurred throughout the entire time process. Out of all the things in the entire Pak story we choose to focus on, why are we fixated on matzah? So, we didn't have enough time for the dough to rise. So what? That's what symbolizes the entire Yentif. That's what encapsulates the entire story. The fact that our dough baked on our backs in the desert sun as we rushed out of Egypt. That seems more like a historical anecdote in the broader time story, not the headline. I'm not even sure the ancient newspaper writers covering the story would have mentioned it at all. Matza sounds more like the kind of detail that you'd expect to find tucked away in some obscure medish. something mentioned like almost in passing like oh and by the way amidst the 10 million other miracles happening as we left Egypt we didn't have time to bake bagels so we had crackers like a quick footnote how did matzah become the centerpiece that encapsulates the entire essence of pes what's even more puzzling is why in fact didn't hashem simply give us a few extra minutes to bake a decent loaf of bread he was turning the world upside down with open miracles he's suspending the laws of nature are all over the place. Surely he could have like stretched [snorts] the clock just a little. 18 more minutes and we'd have bagels and rugal and danishes instead of oversized dry crackers. We are finally becoming free. We're walking out of Egypt with it with wealth in our hands. Wouldn't you think Hashem would want us to, you know, celebrate that freedom with something a little bit more festive? Every preschool sitter party has better food than just crackers. Shouldn't the most monumental moment in our history come with something a little bit more dignified than Matzah? Why did the entire episode of Matzah even happen in the [clears throat] first place? And perhaps the biggest question of all, how do you explain the Tyra's seemingly radical obsession with KTS? The Tyra doesn't just tell us to eat matzah, it launches a fullcale war on anything that isn't matzah. Not only is KT prohibited, it is treated with the utmost severity. The tiniest crumb is forbidden. You can't eat it. You can't own it. You can't even see it with your in your house. And if you do eat it, the punishment is courageous. It's spiritual exition being cut off from the Jewish people. Why such extremes? Why did the Tyra feel the need to go this far? We don't ban all musical instruments on Rashana just to make sure that we highlight and focus on the there's no prohibition of fruit during sukus to draw more attention to the astroke. So why all of a sudden is matzah treated differently? Why can we eat matzah pes and still have in the house? Why are those two things like fundamentally incompatible? Having a couple of flashlights in my closet doesn't diminish the mitzvah of lighting the min. So why does somehow undermine the entire mitzvah of matzah if the assumes we can intellectually juggle having a pineapple on the counter in our kitchen while we're shaking the lul a naruka. So then why then does the Tyra assume we suddenly lose our intellectual balancing skills when it comes to matzah? The answer is that while other mitzvah are designed to instill a single focused idea, matzah is designed to instill two. Matzah and represent two entirely different spiritual realities, their opposition isn't culinary, it's existential. The difference between them not only explains the extremity of the laws, but it holds the secret to understanding the essence of Pesak itself. Matzah is the ultimate symbol of simplicity. It is as basic as it gets. There's just flour and water baked quickly. That's it. There's no fluff. There's no additives. It doesn't even have time in it. It is simplicity in food form. Ktz, on the other hand, is complicated. It's puffed up. It's fermented. It's inflated. It's elaborate. Matzah is quick. KT is slow. Matzah is a life stripped away of its distractions. KT is a life filled with distractions. Matz and KT are two ways of looking at the world and those two ways cannot coexist. On Pesah, we focus on one and ban the other. Because on Pesah, we relearn the world view we received the minute we left Egypt. A worldview that has made us the most transformative group of people on earth. A worldview that enables us to take a mundane world and make it holy. Every one of us is made up of a body and a soul. And while the soul is often described as deep and sophisticated, at its core, it is remarkably simple. It wants nothing more than to be close to Hashem. Its needs don't shift with time or circumstances. It is steady. It's pure. It's undistracted. The body, on the other hand, is a walking bundle of complications. It is an everinvolving, never satiated, pleasure- seeeking machine, always convinced that it's missing something. The closer a person is to their soul, the simpler life becomes. The further one drifts, the more tangled and complicated that life grows. And this is not just philosophy. This is observable truth. Just look at the data. Pew Research and the World Value Survey both show that the more money a person has, the less likely they are to be to care about religion. There is a statistically proven inverse correlation between material wealth and spiritual engagement. Now, why would that be? Isn't that so counterintuitive? Shouldn't those with financial security free from the pressures or rent and bills and financial worry? Shouldn't they have more time and head space to dedicate to God? Shouldn't a life of comfort create more space for a life of spirit? But it doesn't. Why not? The answer is because the life of the body doesn't get simpler with wealth. It gets more complicated. Yes, the very wealthy. They vacation more. They have nicer homes and they don't worry about mortgages. But their anxieties multiply. There's legacy. There's reputation. There's influence. There's remodeling, there's posting, there's impressing, there's achieving, there's seeing, there's being seen. Life becomes a performance, a production, a pursuit without rest. It's not peace they find. It's pressure. And that's why relig religiosity declines, not from abundance, but from distraction. The soul doesn't thrive in noise. It needs quiet. It needs simplicity and space. Walk into the home of a guttle and a true Torah giant. You're struck not just by the absence of luxury but by the calm, the contentment that fills his home. It's it's not minimalism, it's soulfulness. Gdelim live in this world as souls that happen to be clothed in bodies. Their lives are full not of things of meaning. When you encounter them, what you see is mostly soul. It's pure. It's undistracted because soul proximity and simplicity are directly correlated. The further one drifts and the busier and more chaotic life becomes, everything suddenly feels urgent. There's pleasures to sample. There's money to chase. There's honors to secure. There's a legacy to craft. There's battles to fight. There's people to defame. There's vacations to brag about. There's celebrities to worship. There's gossip to spread. There's vices to explore. Life becomes a dizzying whirlwind of noise and distraction. Ironically, the more the body gets what it wants, the more restless it becomes. But the soul, on the other hand, longs for stillness, for prayer, for learning, for acts of kindness. The body craves drama and ego and indulgence and stimulation. The soul craves God. The we're working on during Pes is not freedom of the body. It's freedom of the soul. It's about returning to spiritual simplicity. Going back to the basics. It's relearning the sacred art of being simple. An art symbolized by matzah. When the TR describes Yakov call him anh translated to mean he was a simple man. Now does that make any sense? Yakov simple. Yakob is one of the most complex multi-dimensional figures in all of Tanakh. He spent his days immersed in deep toal learning, plumbing the most profound esoteric spiritual truths ever known to man. He experienced prophetic visions that no one else on earth could have ever comprehended. He raised 12 sons, each spiritually distinct, each destined to become a shabet and guided them with wisdom that would one day change the course of history. And that's who the Tyra calls simple. The average person today would be spiritually and perhaps even physically incinerated by the light that Yakovino emitted. And yet the Tyra sums him up with just two words. Ishtam. How could that be? Just contrast it with his brother Asa. As is a bumbling man wandering the fields. He's killing and robbling people at random. He has zero patience for spiritual depth or intellectual growth. This was someone that sold his birthright, the sacred status of Bkar, for a bowl of lentil soup. Uh he was a man so shallow that despite being the son of Yizhuk and Rifka and the grandson of Aram and Sara he internalized almost zero of their values and traded a life of spiritual brilliance for a lifechasing animals in the field. And yet Jacob is the one to tell simple. How does that make any sense? The answer is that Yakov simplicity wasn't ignorance. It was clarity. His path wasn't easy but it was direct. He lived in alignment with his soul. His heart beat in rhythm with Hashem's will. There was no war inside of him. He wasn't torn between truth and illusion. For him, life was simple. It wasn't shallow, but it was focused. It was whole. It was undivided. YaKob was doing exactly what his soul wanted him to do. It was simplicity at its finest. As on the other hand, was a torn, confused madman in a constant battle with himself, his ego, and his soul. He was in a perpetual wrestling mash with his urges. He was lost in a haze of confusion and chaos. Yakov was doing exactly what his soul wanted him to do. And thus, life was simple. For loving Hashem isn't meant to be complicated. The Tyra never once offers a philosophical proof for Hashem's existence. It just assumes him because faith and amuna at its core is simple. And that's why it's expected of every 13-year-old Jewish boy and every 12-year-old girl to know and to love and to serve their creator. Not because they've solved some sort of metaphysical theological riddles, but because truth is natural to the soul. And it only gets complicated when the noise of the world pulls us off our course. Jacob was an Ishtam, a man of wholeness and integrity because he stayed the course and he took that simplicity and he injected it into his family. Notice how the Tyra is almost entirely silent about the lives of the aside from a few notable episodes Ruvenar obviously. We hear virtually nothing else about theatim. Most of the don't utter a single recorded word throughout the entire Tyra. But that silence speaks volumes. It doesn't reflect a lack of greatness. It reflects a life that's so spiritually clear, so internally aligned that no conflict or drama needed to be recorded. These were not complicated men. They weren't chasing identity or struggling to find themselves. They were anchored, purposeful, soul driven. Theatim didn't make headlines because they didn't need to. Theatim are largely silent in the Tyra not because they weren't they were unimportant but because they were uncorrupted, uncomplicated and totally souldriven. They were geniuses of simplicity. They lived to serve Hashem and fulfill their mission. And that kind of life while not exactly storybook material is the ultimate spiritual success. That's why the Tyra is silenced because their greatness wasn't loud. It was lived. When we first came to the gates of Egypt, we arrived as that family. brilliantly simple, deeply uncomplicated and entirely devoted. That was our strength and that was our legacy. And at first that simplicity followed us into Egypt. We lived quietly in Gan set apart from the grand door of Egyptian society. We yeshiva. We tended our sheep and we held on to the spiritual light that we were tasked with sharing with the rest of the world. But then something shifted. We ventured beyond the safety of our spiritual cocoon. We began to look around, to explore, to admire, and eventually to imitate the glittering world of Egypt. And the consequences were utterly devastating. Ancient Egypt was one of the most advanced and dazzling civilizations in all of world history. Their religion, their religious systems were layered, mystical, deeply immersive. They excelled in art, science, architecture. They were masters of magic and sorcery. They pioneered technology that outpaced the rest of the world by centuries, long before much of humanity had even developed writing. Egypt had already unlocked the secrets of geology, geometry, trigonometry, molecular chemistry, color, pigmentation, physics. The Great Pyramid of Giza, completed around 2500 B.CE. Stood as the tallest man-made structure on Earth for nearly 4,000 years. This was a towering testament to their brilliance and their ambition. Their society was sophisticated. Their rituals were elaborate. Their culture was utterly seductive. Their palaces were ground grander. Their in intellect was sharper. Their civilization richer than almost any other civilization for nearly 3,000 years. They lived externally dazzling and profoundly complex lives. And we, the Jewish people, were drawn in. Egypt's glittering lifestyle was so mesmerizing that we began to try it out. We slowly dressed like them. We spoke like them. We lived like them. But with every step we took towards their world, we took a step away from ours. And we began to forget who we were. Their complexity became our confusion. Their darkness clouded our light. The simple, radiant Jewish soul tasked with carrying Hashem's light into the world was being smothered by the weight of Egyptians excess and distraction. We began dropping like flies. We weren't just assimilating. We were literally disappearing. This wasn't like later moments in Jewish history when scattered Jewish communities around the globe could carry the torch of Judaism even as other communities let it fall. No, no, no. This was it. The only Jews on earth were in Egypt. If they were lost, the story of the Jewish people would have ended before it even truly began. So, we stood on the brink. The flame of Kai Israel was flickering, about to be extinguished in the shadows of Egypt. And Hashem had to act and he had to act now. one moment more and it would have been too late. When Hashem took this out of his time, it had to be fast. Not because he couldn't spare a few more minutes to let the dough rise, but because delay is dangerous. Delay is deadly. Delay leads to unnecessary complexity. More time could have meant fewer Jews leaving Egypt. For Hashem knows to break free from the moral and spiritual prison that this world can trap us in, it must be done quickly, instantly, without hesitation, not even another 18 minutes. Because here's what happens when you when you wait. You pause to finish baking your bread. Okay? Then you figure, why not check in one last time with your Egyptian accountant just to make sure your taxes are in order. And while you're at it, you decide to tidy up your apartment, maybe even list it on the Airbnb for a little passive income while you're away. Then you grab one last iced coffee at the Nile side Starbucks. And there, right by the window, you bump into your old Egyptian neighbors, the one that you used to vacation near in the Egyptian equivalent of Orlando. And you catch up and you laugh and you reminisce. And before you know it, you changed your mind about leaving. You're settled. You're comfortable. You're not going anywhere. Quickness wasn't an optional flourish. It wasn't a dramatic touch for the Yetsman story. It was essential. It was the only way to birth a people. Cloud Israel was forged in urgency for Hashem knew that this was the only way. And look how right Hashem was. Out of the estimated 3 million Jews in Egypt, only 600,000 left. Why? Because the glitter of complexity is addictive. Because they couldn't part with their complicated Egyptian lives because they needed their KT. But freedom, real spiritual freedom is simple. You just have to learn how to love matzah. That's why KT is banned with such force. It's not just puffed up bread. It's a symbol of the puffed up self, of the ego, the false sophistication, the illusion of control. It represents the slow, sticky world of overthinking and overplanning. A world like quicksin that swallows souls who just want to live truthfully and spiritually and simply. But matzah is the opposite. Matzah is the soul stripped bear. It's honest, raw, simple. Pesak demands a reset, a total cleanse. Clear out the kits from your home, from your heart, from your habits, from your life. Get rid of the fluff, the distractions, the false layers. Be real. Removing hum isn't just spring cleaning. It's soul cleaning. It's a practice in spiritual minimalism. It's a call to live less complicated, more honest lives, to spend more time with the soul, and maybe a little less time pampering the body. Because freedom comes not from complexity, but from clarity and courage to run out of Egypt and never look back. All of our souls are craving simplicity, not laziness or shortcuts. Simplicity, the kind that clears the noise and lets truth breathe. But we live in a world that's drunk on complexity. A world where everything is layered and optimized and branded and blurred. And over time, we start to absorb that mentality and apply it into our spiritual world. We we start to believe that in order to be real and deep and holy, things have to be complicated and sophisticated and dressed up. We start applying the rules of the marketplace to our souls. In the material world, staying ahead means endlessly upgrading new technology, new fashion, new buzzwords, new aesthetics. Keep scrolling, keep chasing, keep finding the next thing that's new, it's trendy, it's sophisticated, cool. The problem is that mindset seeps into our as well. We start to believe that must also mean constantly upgrading, more complex, more elaborate, more advanced. We assume that growth means complication. Not dominating well. Okay. So, let's throw in some extras. Go to the mikvah more. Dance more. Try out new sedorium. Try out new shs. Light candles for all types of people. And while those things can have beauty and power in the right context, sometimes they just mask the fact that we've forgotten what fela is. Fila is just a conversation. It's it's it's presence. It's clarity. It's honesty. Sometimes it's just about sitting down on a quiet show and opening the sitter and learning what the words actually mean. Sometimes it's about making space in our day, not just in our schedule, but in our minds to actually connect. In the world we live, it's easy to think that complexity shows sophistication, but sometimes it just shows that we're avoiding the basics. Think of a football team. It's preparing for the Super Bowl. Yeah. So, sure, they might visit spiritual advisers, follow all sorts of odd superstitions cuz they really want to win. They might visit psychics, but you know what they mostly do? They mostly study the playbook. They practice. They hit the gym all day. There's nothing flashy, disciplined, focused. It's not exactly complicated. It's not glamorous. It's real. It's effective. The same is true in Judaism. We could chase inspiration. We can go on soularching tours. We can get our palms read or try all sorts of podcast, but but mostly we need to hit the spiritual gym to roll up our sleeves and relearn the basics. Spiritual inspiration does not fall from the sky. It's built from the ground up. It comes from the for it comes in the form of hard work, learning, focus. Of course, it's nice to bake a fora or read petus and do all sorts of sigulas. But you know what the best thing to do is? How about learn more Tyra or do more baker or be pleasant with family? Delete the apps on your phone that are not befitting the child of a king of the world. Of course, it's nice that we run around the world getting brahas for our 27-year-old daughter to get a but but maybe just maybe we should consider the fact that perhaps we speak too much. Perhaps we aren't careful enough with perhaps it's the basics we need to work on. When someone is sick in the family, we chase every spiritual option, leaving no stone unturned. And we should. But have we tried doing chuva yet? Not reading about chuva, not listening to stories of Bali chuva, not learning sparum that talk about the importance of chuva, actual hardcore chuva, sitting down alone with a paper and pen and asking ourselves, is there enough tyra in my day? Do I give enough ducka? Am I kind enough, patient enough, humble enough, real enough? Hashem doesn't want our spiritual accessories. He wants us. He wants our souls. And our souls aren't complicated. We sometimes stand in confusion asking, "Why does life feel so heavy? Why does spirituality seem so distant?" Maybe the answer is that we've become too tangled up in our own complexity. Maybe it's time to step back, way back. Maybe it's time to roll up our sleeves and bite into a matzah and relearn the basics again. Yes, the world is complicated, but that doesn't mean that we have to be. Sometimes the truest answer is the simplest one. And sometimes the fate the path forward looks a lot like going backwards. Back to the basics, back to honesty, back to quiet, back to truth, back to matzah. Freedom is not chasing every shiny solution. It's letting go of the glittery illusions of complexity. It's remembering that in a world that tries to sell us everything, the greatest treasure might just be what we already had. a still soul, a sincere heart, a simple sacred path. For it was this simple sacred path that has kept the Jewish way of life longer than any other system, philosophy or culture in human history. Out of the tens of thousands of religious systems or cults or beliefs or frameworks that have existed in world history, only one has survived virtually unchanged for close to 4,000 years. And that's the Tyra way of life. And far more remarkable than the physical survival of the Jewish people, despite enduring more bloodshed and more persecution and more hatred than any other group of people in history, is the survival of our way of life, the Tyra way of life. Ideology after ideology tried to crush it. It went up against secularism and communism and assimilationism and Marxism and socialism and rationalism and nhilism and polytheism and atheism and pantheism. You you name it. And Judaism stared it in the eyes and came up victorious. You want to know why? Because truth does not go out of style. It doesn't expire. Because somewhere deep inside, every Jew knows that the Tyra is not just rules. It's freedom. And no matter how shiny or complex the new ideologies get, the truth cannot be replaced. Freedom is a state of mind, not a physical existence. It's living with a soul that isn't enslaved by noise or ego or distraction. the more complicated our life needs to be for us to feel happy. The less free our goals, our soul is to live life the way it wants to live. We could have left Egypt slowly. There could have been speeches and processions and fire rituals and poetic chants. But Hashem knew better. You want to change? You want to grow? You want to be free? Then don't wait. Pick up and run as fast as your feet can carry you. Let me tell you a story. 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 thrillsekers zipline over a pond filled with these 15t,000lb beasts, and trying to stop my four-year-old from dumping his entire bag of bomba into 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 estrogus. And then the trainer, who's calmer than someone having tea with the Queen of England, he turns to the audience and he asks the 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." And a woman yells, "Hit its tail." And a man screams, "Throw something at its snout." And someone else says, "Freeze." And wave your hands to look really strong. And another guy calls out, "Start whistling in a low low whistle, then retract in a 45 degree angle in a zigzag pattern." So, everyone has the 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. Sigulas, 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 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? Pes isn't just a celebration of Hashem freeing us from physical slavery. It's a celebration of being freed from the mindset of slavery. Pes is the in which we are spiritually reborn both collective and individually. The avoida 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 is banned on pes in the harshest of terms because hashem wants us to rediscover the pleasure of simply being a nishama. And our namas 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 ounces of flour and an ounce of water. Because real freedom isn't flashy. It's not complicated. It's honest. It's immediate. We just have to pick up your matzah and run. That is what we should think about when we eat the matzah. that we are returning to simplicity where the soul isn't at war with the body. That's why we wear a kit to remind ourselves that there is no moving trucks in the cemetery. That when you strip life down to what actually lasts, you start to see what actually matters. And what actually matters is the soul. Now, let's talk about what is for many people one of the highlights of mid and that is visha. Most people hear it and they assume it means that throughout history, Hashem keeps swooping in and saving us from our enemies. And it's a nice idea. It's comforting, but it's not what the words are actually saying. Look at the language. The word is the it is feminine. Hashem when referred to in the Tyra is masculine. So right away it's clear this isn't talking about Hashem directly. It's pointing to something else. So what is the answer is that it's going back to the Brisbane of Basar, the covenant that we just mentioned. That's the subject. That's what's standing up for us. And that's a very different message because it's not saying that in every generation, Hashem saved us. Because if we're being honest, that's not even historically accurate. There were many generations of devastating destruction. Entire Jewish cities were burnt to the ground with tens of millions of Jews killed. This is clearly not a don't worry, you're always fine, guaranteed. So, what is it saying? The answer is that it's saying something much more concrete. It's saying that the brisk that relationship that moment where we chose Hashem and he chose us is what has kept us going. Not a promise that nothing bad will ever happen to us. Clearly it has. But a promise that no matter what happens, we don't disappear. We don't lose our identity. We don't stop being who we are. Shambda means it's the covenant itself, that bond that has carried us throughout every generation and has kept us intact. not as a free pass from suffering, but as a guarantee of survival, as a people with a purpose. You see, many people look at Jewish history and say, "Listen, it's just one long chain of miracles. That's it. That's the only explanation. From MR until now, Hashem just swooped in time after time and saved us from the brink." But is that the correct explanation? Is that being historically honest? I think not. Of course, there were miracles. Yes. Hashem split the sea. Yes, one fell from the sky. Yes, a small group of hashim defeated an entire empire. Yes, the Jewish people survived millennia of exile and persecution and hatred. But if we stop there, if we just say Hashem did it all, we're missing the other half of the story. Because there's no king without a nation. Yes, Hashem performed miracles, but he didn't force our hand. Yes, the sea split, but it was us who walked into it. Yes, mun came down from the sky. But it was only because we had already followed Hashem into a barren wilderness without food in sight. We took the first step. He responded. Yes, there were miracles that took place during the PM story. But there was also Esther who risked her life. And there was Morai who wasn't bowing. Yes, the oil burnt for eight nights during Kaneka. But there was also a long and brutal battle fought by real people with real fears who nevertheless said, "We will stand up and stand strong for Hashem." Of course, there were miracles throughout history, but our survival was not a miracle vending machine just spitting out nissim every time things got hard. Our survival was built on something far more demanding and far more powerful. Generations of Jews who chose to stay Jewish, who kept walking when it was easier to stop, who kept learning when it was easier to forget, who kept believing when it would have made a lot more sense not to. People who understand that the bris has been the bris and masarium is not automatic. It's reciprocal. If we choose him, he chooses us. And they refuse to let that relationship die. That's what carries us. Not just miracles, but millions of decisions across generations to hold on, to show up and to keep the bris alive. But here's a question. How in fact do we keep on going? How have we not given up at this point in our history? If you look at the statistics of mental illnesses developed by people who experienced trauma or people who had to flee their countries or people who had to spend time in jail or people who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam, the rate of mental illnesses developed by such people is absolutely staggering. According to the VA, 30% of veterans returning from war suffered from PTSD and were severely mentally hampered for the rest of their life. According to the National Veterans Foundation, 44% of veterans relied on heavy substance abuse to try unsuccessfully to cope with their traumas. 43% of inmates at state prisons, 44% at federal prisons, and 63% of local prisoners are diagnosed with mental disorders, either directly or indirectly due to the trauma of being in jail. Human beings are not built to endure the worst of what this world can throw at them. War zones, prisons, bloodshed, displacement. Most people don't walk away from that kind of drama whole, let alone functional. And yet the Jewish people who have endured it all, there isn't a form of suffering or trauma that the Jewish people have not faced. Expulsions, pagrums, inquisitions, ghettos, gas chambers. And somehow, not only did we survive, we thrived. Every time we were knocked down, we rose higher. country after country, generation after generation, we emerge not just as survivors, but as leaders and scholars and builders and leading the world that five minutes earlier was trying to kill us. We're kicked out of our Israel. No problem. We go to bubble, modern day Iraq, and we set up shop and we don't just develop a flourishing community. We developed the most transformative Jewish community outside of Israel in Jewish history. We're exiled from Baba. We have to run to Persia, modern day Iran. No problem. We set up shop. We become involved in trade and crafts. We have all sorts of administrative positions in the government. We got exiled to Rome, no problem. We become craftsmen, merchants, bankers, doctors. We built massive Jewish communities, the biggest being in Alexandria with a tremendously vibrant Jewish life. We get kicked out. We run off to Spain. No problem. We become financial adviserss and physicians and writers and map makers and astrologers and philosophers. We developed some of the finest Jewish communities to have ever lived. Teaching and developing some of the most influential Jewish scholars who have ever existed on earth. Rishim that we learn every day like the Rambam Isra the we get kicked out of Spain. Where do we go? No problem. We run off to the Netherlands. Suddenly the Netherlands becomes the largest and most powerful econom economy in the world. We trade in de diamonds. We run finance empires. We build strong tyrabased communities. The world kicks us out of a country and the country that kicks us out collapses and we move on and become leaders and builders and movers somewhere else over and over and over again. The Jewish people's resilience is unparalleled in all of world history. Where does it come from? How are we not affected from from the thousands of years of trauma that statistically speaking should have eaten us alive generations ago? The answer is the seder because once a year we stop everything and we sit our children down and we tell them who they are. Not victims, not survivors, something much bigger. We tell them you are part of a people that stood at Arsena. You are part of a people that carries Hashem's presence into the world. You are part of a people chosen to be a light because the world will one day get very dark. And that changes everything because if you are a light, you're not surprised by darkness. You're not confused by suffering. You're not shaken when history turns heavy. A flashlight doesn't panic when the room gets dark. It was built for that exact moment. So when life hits and when it hits hard, the Jewish people respond why they don't say why isn't why is this happening to me? They respond I know I'm part of something. I know what I carry. I know that this is bigger than me. And that's exactly why Visha is saying what it's saying. It's not that every generation we were saved in a neat painless way. It's the brisk, the covenant, the identity, the unbreakable bond. That's what stood and still stands for us throughout everything. Even when it didn't look like it, even when it hurt more than we could have possibly imagined, because we never stop standing and understanding who we are. And when that gets into a person's bones, when a child grows up hearing and singing and living it, something unshakable forms inside of them, they don't break under darkness. They recognize it. They don't lose themselves in exile. They carry themselves through exile. Because it's not just history, it's identity. It's the reason we're still here. It's the reason we'll always still be here. That is what the entire sedar is here to tell us. We never just survived the darkness. We were the light that was built for it. I like to end with the way the ends and that is at the end of the sedar. Just when you think the night is winding down, we sing. On the surface, it feels like a childish song, a counting game, a repetition, something light to close a long evening. But that's only if you're listening with your ears. But if you listen with a little bit more depth, it's something else entirely. It is a window into a different kind of mind, a different kind of world. We say, "Who knows one?" And the answer comes back immediately. One is so what is the point we're trying to convey with the song? Perhaps it's to take us back to a point in time when that answer wasn't something that you had to think about. It wasn't something that you learned or recalled or reached for. The word one meant Hashem. It was your knee-jerk reaction. You heard the word one and your mind didn't wander to celebrities, to athletes, to icons. It went straight to Hashem. Today, if you stop someone on the street and you say, "Who's number one?" You might hear like Michael Jordan, Tom Brady. That's the reflex. That's what fills their mental space. But m is reminding us there was a different reflex once upon a time. A reflex built not on culture, not on fame, but on amuna, on clarity. And this song is reminding us to rewire our reflexes. One is Hashem. Two is the three is the other. Four is the Each one isn't just a number. It's a doorway into Tyra, into meaning, into identity. And it's not just about knowledge. It's about association. What does your mind do first? Where does it go without effort? I remember when I was living in a basement in Lakewood, my wife was doing a lab with a microscope looking at different slides for a research project for her nursing school and our upstairs neighbor, a very warm Kyle Yungman, he came down to install a phone and he glanced at the microscope, just a quick look and he immediately said, "Oh, you're checking shness." Think about that. A microscope could mean a lot of different things. Biology, geology, science, research. But his mind didn't go there. It went straight to shness. Why? Because that's the world that he lived in. He lived in a world of his mental wiring was Tyra. So that's where he landed instantly. That's what is capturing. A world where your your instinct is hashem where your associations are tyra. Where your inner reflexes is kadusha. That's really what the seder is trying to do on pes. We don't just tell a story. We try to recalibrate ourselves to peel back the layers of distraction of noise of everything that's filled our heads all year long and get a little closer to that earlier state, that pure instinct, that place where one means Hashem without hesitation. Because the goal isn't just to remember, it's to remember who we were and maybe just for a moment become that again. You've [music] just experienced another Torah class brought to you by to anytime.com.