Pesach Prep, Part 1: True Freedom, with Rabbi Simcha Barnett

give us meaningful Torah that we can apply to our lives grow from this experience that we are involved with this is going to be a four part series on Passover you know I think everybody's going to be probably as prepared as they've ever been for the Passover Seder no excuses this year but it really does give us an opportunity to understand this tremendously important holiday it actually has a lot of confluence what we're going through as we're going to see I'm sure other speakers have mentioned it but I will as well in my own little take on the holiday but when I usually give this talk and ask people what is the B holiday in the first month of the year and most people it's a bit of a trick question but most people say Rosh Hashanah and I say no no no trust me it's not Rosh Hashanah it's for another time because the really the holiday in the first month of the year is Passover the first month the Jewish year very strangely if you didn't really know this if you didn't read the Torah closely you wouldn't even know you know it because you'd think that the first month of the year would really follow Rosh Hashanah there was a new year so the first month must be Tishri which is like September but in an interesting quirk in the Jewish calendar it's not that way and even though the new years of September our calendar starts in in Nisan which is the month when Passover happens and it's no accident because the birth of our nation actually happened Nisan so really the Jewish religion starts then after we got our freedom from Egypt we became a nation and got the Torah at Mount Sinai so really Passover is the first holiday and first national holiday and probably the most foundational holiday in a lot of ways about the fundamental concepts of our religion but it's interesting if you ask somebody what password is about everybody will pretty much say the same thing it really is about freedom I mean that's when we became free in historical terms but the influence and what we're trying to rediscover and re-experience every year is the ability to go free in our own lives and that's why this holiday to is resonated with Jewish people but really all over the world even with Gentiles the black experience in their Gospels you know go down Moses they were very enchanted with the story the Jewish people because we were the first religious redemption to freedom now it's interesting because if you think about it freedom is a very man-centered concept it's a very contemporary concept that's why it resonates so much in the in our contemporary world but it's not such a religious concept you know I would think that Passover being that first holiday we'd be a little bit more God centered not so much man centered it might be about our service to God but it's quirky that it really isn't it's about this thing called freedom now it's fascinating that this is the first lesson that God teaches us I remember when I was growing up I went to college I didn't really know that much about Passover other than it had a lot of rules regulations a lot of symbolism and I when I was off college my freshman year at Dartmouth College wasn't a very Jewish place and they didn't give us off a Passover I remember going in to the dining hall and the only reason I think I even knew it was Passover it tells you how far I was at the time was there was this table and I subsequently you know tongue-in-cheek referred to it as the Jew table it was a Jew table set up and the Jew table had like matzah you know stacked up and it had hard-boiled eggs and there was some horse folds horseradish and there was if I'm not mistaken you know they can filter fish in the jars the glass you know jars which have the jelly in it that looks like phlegm like that was what I saw and it was Passover and I had a twin brother my brother went to college with me and he kept going to the Jew table every day when's the Jew table he got mots and everything and I said to him you know Mitch I said you know I understand you know he mocks on Passover and we usually have it at the Seder you know one night the cedar but but isn't isn't you are you taking the symbolism a little too far I mean it's only really what's Passover it it's only a commemoration or something it happened so many years ago I would think just a little symbolism it's quite enough you know but little did I know that Judaism is not about commemorations we don't commemorate historical experiences we wouldn't be relived that in fact all Jewish holidays we understand on a mystical level there's a spiritual influence that comes around almost like a train that comes around a track in a circle it comes back and it docks and it stops in that spiritual influence the influence happens to be at this time of year freedom now we see it beautifully in the physical world because the whole world is breaking free from the shackles of the winter it was kind of a mini death in the winter ice and all the leaves fell off all life kind of stops and goes into hibernation and the world right now is breaking free even we all got this expressions spring fever people want to get out want to do things when I want to move and go this is the time of year that we're getting into now so the world is breaking free and there's a spiritual corollary to that as well breaking free now freedom is one of those things that in Judaism when I was as I was learning over the years there were there's a lot of Torah about it and there's a lot of kind of definitions or ideas very much associated with freedom and usually when I learned Jewish concept as I was getting more religious with what what struck me about some it so much of Judaism is that the Jewish definition usually was very much in concert with what every man felt something was about love what life is really about in the Jewish context it what the Jewish answer was typically if you asked every man they we kind of line up and that gave me a lot of comfort when I went when I was becoming religious because you see a true religion is going to be a religion which lines up with what you you into it and when everybody else on the planet into its you shouldn't have to fetch the concepts if they're true but freedom kind of like bother you because some of the ideas I would hear would be things like freedom is the ability to actualize your potential where freedom is the ability to serve God another another idea have I heard about freedom is that there is no free person unless he's immersed really immersed in Torah some people said that freedom was the ability to do what's right or to do what's true now all of these and then one other idea that I often heard was usually we think freedom from like freedom from responsibility like throw the shackles off and Judaism was like no no no that's not freedom for its freedom to freedom to actualize your potential freedom to assume responsibility that's what that's what a really free person does but it bothered me because when you you know kind of look at all these definitions and these ideas if you ask any person any human being anywhere in the planet and you ask them you know who is a free person they would say derivative of the following a free person is someone who can do what they want without any external or internal hindrance nothing can hold them back and doing what they want that's a free person and that's what resonates with all of us so I was bothered why aren't the Jewish definitions lining up that comes simply with this everyman definition of freedom and I thought about it because I knew there had to be an answer to this and as I thought about it I realized that there are two very simple questions but incredibly deep and fundamental that can confuse our answer to this question so of course freedom is to do what you want to do but you first have to know who you are and you have to know what you want if you know who you are and you know what you want you have the ability you can get into the arena the arena of trying to become free trying to unlock yourself some things which hold you back now those questions might seem simple but they're in essence very deep because there's a universal confusion in the world over who we are I'll illustrate it with the following story it really was true story I had a friend at Dartmouth it ended up becoming a model while the rest of us went to Wall Street and we were you know cutting our teeth working 60 to 80 hours a week he was making an incredible amount of money as a model very good-looking guy he was on the football team as well and smart guy smart guy as well and he didn't last a year in the profession and we asked him why didn't you last the year in the profession he said something very fascinating he said that I couldn't deal with everybody relating to me purely as a pretty face in other words they related to him totally as a physical body and it pointed out to him that the the kind of the the economy because he wasn't that isn't who he was he wasn't a physical body yet he has a physical body but he has brains and he has a personality and he's sensitive and caring and he can transform himself and he's growing a growing person how can you relate to me kind of on such a surface physical level but he got he got a treat he learned the tremendous lesson then a very young age at 22 that a person is a combination of a body and a soul and he really is a soul he's a soul clothe and a body might be a good-looking body it might be a body that people pay a lot of money for but it's a it's a soul clothed in a body nevertheless now if a person is confused and thinks they're a body make it be pursuing a soul pleasure but feel enslaved because they identify with the body out of the end if a person totally identifies with the soul and they are trapped doing physical things they might kind of be free to do physical things but they might feel a slave as well now let me give you a couple of story couple of examples to underline this so say you want to eat healthy right you have a choice am I going to you know eat that chocolate cake am I going to pick out you know or am I going to keep to my diet you know to achieve my long-run goals of being healthy or if I'm an athlete to get in shape to make that weight to be able to get that edge on the court what am I going to do so if I identify totally with my body and the cravings of my body even if I hold to my diet I'm gonna feel oppressed I'm gonna feel like a slave I'm going to feel like someone who's being denied my very essence but if I have in mind my higher aspirations which I think is very much related to my soul my aspirations of what I want to be what I want to accomplish kind of my long-run true desires then when I don't need to chop the cake I can actually feel incredible sense of empowerment the difference between empowerment or freedom and slavery on the same action is merely what identify myself with what I'm most clearly identified with my body my soul how about your husband or your mother asks you you know take out the garbage can't do this to me can you do that for me and we all know this we all understand this voice and and we look at that two ways if we're coming from our body side our physical selfish side don't leave me alone don't bother me I'm kind of you know very self-centered that side of a person we're gonna feel oppressed by having to follow what mom or what your wife wants you're gonna feel like you know the proverbial ball and chain is walking around the room you know no matter what she keeps asking me this and that but the other hand that I identify with my soul and what's really important to me is that relationship through my wife and I and intimacy or perhaps I'm really recognizing how much he does for myself and for the family and then I want to pay her back I want to show my gratitude I want to I kind of want to bring us together and I feel sense of love it can be very liberating I can basically jump say honey what can I do for you now I take out the garbage I do something else in all the pens on where you're identify we shift all of a shift for a moment to moment but it's good to know where you're shifting then sometimes we identify with the body sometimes we'd n25 the soul another example I saw this very much on Yom Kippur say a woman you know it usually goes to work and she wears makeup and it takes her quite a bit longer than a man to get get dressed in the morning and you know if a if a woman really associates with her body like that is really who she is her looks or physicality you were probably very difficult to go a date without makeup should be mortifying to go out of the house without me imagine if someone identified really identified with their soul it might be very freeing not having to deal with the body not having to make that body up one day a week might be very very afraid that's actually never we say that and Yom Kippur is about a day of the soul like don't don't be enslaved by your body these are three examples where if we identify with our soul if we identify with our body is going to cause us to be free or to be enslaved so obviously the idea is that we're some we are trying to more and more identify with our aspirational self our essence which we recall our spiritual side our soul so aspirational sense it's that part of you when it late at night I asked you what do you really wanted a life and you tell me that's that's the aspiration of the soul everybody would tell you that's really over the long run what you want to identify with now that you have to know we have to know the ABCs of how the soul works empower the soul to get on top of it and the soul really s but in its essence is created in the image of God this elemental can we say in God's image we were created and and that image the commentators say is that we are creators and have free will just like God God creates and God decides so do so - we decide now 24/7 in our lives we have this funeral power it's with us always so what is free will and how can we use it in a maximum and maximize it so that we can actually achieve the aspirations of our soul our higher aspirations so free will is the choice between doing what we feel like doing and what we want to do now it might seem pedantic the difference some more semantic rent rather what we feel like doing what we want to do now a Weinberg the Dean of the former dean of Asia Torah may rest in peace you say it makes all the difference in the world what you feel like is what you want to do now often associated with something physical and very short run is the pleasure I want to eat that chocolate cake right it's physical I want it now it's only gonna last the pleasure a little bit of time what do I want to do I want to do something real long run which involves probably using myself using my intelligence a little bit perhaps maturity to get something really worthwhile that whose pleasure lasts a long time it's the healthy person over the immediately gratified person it's the person who has a rigorous training schedule and diet to try to win a gold medal in the Olympics that's what I want to do versus what I feel like doing and most people when you ask them about free will they have this vague notion that free will is about probably making choices to do thoughts things that are meaningful or to do choose good over evil and when you ask a person how many choices during the day you get to do things that are really meaningful and how many times you get to do things that are ain't can do with good and evil I mean I think if a person has six meaningful really meaningful moments a day or 10 minute for moments that's a pretty awesome day yet we have this power to make choices and we're making them 24/7 so shouldn't their free will be something that's a little more consistent a little more you know all-encompassing in terms of life so the Torah gives an amazing definition free will in in one of the last party odintsov him says I placed before you life and death good and evil blessing and curse but hard to behind choose life in order that you will live so you will live and your children after you but hard to behind choose life so that you will live the choice in life free will is framed in the Torah not is good and evil or meaning and meaning less it's fraying nothing else than a life and death which is a really fascinating kind of kind of definition wouldn't necessarily have thought of that because really how many of us are really choosing death in this world but what the turrets saying is that life is a choice for you to really be quote unquote alive you have to choose life you have to be engaged in life in other words if you don't engage if you don't choose life you could be a walking dead man walking dead man such an interesting idea so really the choice of life is like Shakespeare said it best to be or not to be and Hamlet to be or not to be to be engaged or to be disengaged now if you think about it that way every single moment of our lives we have an ability really to be engaged or disengaged to be full of life to be a little less full of life have a little death in our in our lives with it just about asleep on a hammock with a pina colada it's very good for it's very good for half an hour imagine life was all about that we have a word for that in Judaism where our society Rati rather a word for that is Comfort comfort is the choice to really disengage to get rid of all the pain all the pain in life and to just kind of hang out it's like to sleep as Shakespeare said perchance to dream you know the Big Sleep is called death so the idea of full disengagement is death in our terms and our terms would be comfort the price for real pleasure in life on the other hand the price is struggle the price is fighting the trisys and price is growth so engagement versus disengagement is all about this struggle between what I feel like doing which is Comfort mentioned before what I feel like doing the comfort food right away or what I want to do the growth the struggle the aspirations and that's free will and that's the free world a battle each of us in life each of us has our own struggles some of us have struggles with with our diet with drinking some of us trouble with anxiety some of us have trouble with anger we all have our own futile struggles and they're all different so two pieces of advice before we're going to move on from free will to freedom two pieces of advice how we can get on top become more matte more master of our free will and then we'll have a shot at freedom so two possibilities first you have to basically diagnose one of my freewill struggles one of the things I feel like doing versus what are the things I want to do I feel like eating the chocolate cake I want to be healthy I feel like going to the party Saturday night I want to study for for the chem test because I want to get into medical school I feel like snapping and being short with my you know mother when she talks to me about something I don't want to talk about but I really want to be patient my long-run desires to be patient so these are my freewill struggles maybe each one of them has half a dozen at most essential freewill struggles and know the struggle so you don't get ambushed understanding what you feel like doing you want to doing is like an early warning system so you don't get ambushed you start getting on top of this battle this battle between what we call the body and the soil now body's great but we want we want to take the passion of the body the verve of the body the energy of the body and we want to use it for the dictates of the soul it's like a candle you know when you take a candle a candle wax is like a body the flame is like a soul matter what you do with the candle matter where you turn it the flame is always up the flame the soul always wants to go to heaven so our job is to use that that power and then energy of the wax and let it aid the flame go up that's the perfect harmony between the body of the soul you love the body we're not denigrating the body you want to be fit we want to enjoy physicality the Torah tells us to be physical the Torah tells us to enjoy we're not ascetics but we want to channel it the right time with the right people in the right measure and the right ingredients two pieces of advice though beyond just the definition of free will that could really help us end an awful lot much of our life happens to go on autopilot we've made decisions you know many many years ago sometimes we make decisions recently where we're gonna eat how we're gonna drive what we're gonna do we get in the car which radio station we're gonna play and we've become habituated to those decisions and we rarely check in on the decisions some some of them that we made decades ago I remember Kirk Douglas he just passed away in his book the rad man's son which was your bestseller he was starting to question his mortality when he he survived the helicopter crash where two younger men died and he survived and he was thinking about his Judaism and he realized that he had a negative impression of Judaism because of the binding of issac that story the binding of issac story which he learned as a 14 year old and it turned him off he was about 75 at the time so for 61 years he didn't revisit not only the story but the entire religion and he thought himself that's ridiculous and he started becoming a much more religious and a much more spiritual person till the end of his life he learned Torah every week now so just by looking at how much of our life is on autopilot we can gain a lot of these areas of potential freewill that we really have lost it's almost like we're reviving the dead much many areas of our lives but everyone have free will on because we just kind of go on autopilot an extension of this idea is social conditioning we live in a society or we're socially conditioned to believe many things by our family by our schools by our rabbis and by arm you know democratic system freedom democracy individual rights all of this are all of these ideas make up the fabric of who we are and I don't mean to say in any way you should throw them out but the goal should be to make those ideas our own whether they be religious ideas whether they be ideas we got from our our family whether they have ideas we got in our schools or in our or in our society at large make them your own if they're good you're mine if they're not good let them go in in so doing again you Guinea these two areas give us a huge playing field to operate with our free will okay so the next step I would say free free will is like a spark and freedom is the flame which comes from the spark because freedom is the ability to be able to do what I want to do so free so free will is knowing what the decision is its potential it's knowing what I want to do versus what I feel like doing but there are many different things which stand in our way which block us from doing what we want to do those are the things that bind us those are the things that enslave us I remember when I was growing up when I would go to the seder and I would you know read the story of our ancestors enslaved in it in in Egypt I didn't really relate to it that much because I was enslaved in Egypt I wasn't in jail we were in a very free country I found it was a very difficult very difficult thing story to relate to and then I realized that physical enslavement is just the tip of the iceberg you know there's so many things that hold us back in life and the truth in matter is in almost all cases a day I can safely say this for all Yuman beings the the the greatest most powerful jailer is really ourselves because we hold ourselves back in so many emotional psychological and spiritual ways and when you realize that the depth of freedom is to break out of your boundaries the things that hold you back and the story is a template it really allows us to really resonate with it and I think now in this world we're living in the last couple of weeks a lot of these a lot of the sternal z' are out of the picture and we really are enslaved in a certain way if I asked you are you free but are you a free person right now you don't have to think twice because on one level you're not free you know if they make a quarantine and you're not allowed to go out of your house and some level your freedom is hinged on the other level you are free because you're free to be who you want to be to respond how you want to respond to change your internal appreciation and understanding of what's going on around you to increase your sensitivity to others to engage with others there's so much that you have that makes you free you know when you ask this to a refusenik and you see you know the early refuseniks in in Russia really resonated with the story and they would smuggle in you know in on Hanukkah they would start a smuggle in oil to make a Katya and they would they would smuggle scraps of a ha gutta to say the ha say the Passover Haggadah during Passover they would do anything to make a little bit of matzah and you ask a person in America who's so totally free is this refusenik free and he would say to you well I mean that's an interesting question I'm well he's not free he can't get up and look at in a Siberian cell when the other on the other hand he's probably more free than I am so that's the freedom we can taste now and experience in our quote unquote quarantine a soulful freedom which we could probably make greater strides then perhaps we're out there walking around with our arms and our legs with a semblance of freedom so what is the soul want we ask two questions before you got to know your soul and you got to know what you want what is the soul one so they mentioned the soul is aspirational and wants kindness it wants love courage if I asked you I usually ask people what these make shout about achievement persistence hardwork growth creativity sacrifice for good patience peace wisdom relationship loyalty you to add in your superlatives wow that would be pretty amazing they're all incredible aspirations now a free person is one who's able to access all of these things without hindrance so what keeps us enslaved and I would say it's buying into the illusions of life there are illusions is that the world presents to us and there are illusions that we present to ourselves let's take a look at an analogy for where most of our illusions and life come from and I call it it's the bakery window analogy if you go to a bakery any bakery in America you look in the window there are beautiful cakes and and turnovers and rolls and loaves of bread just just beautiful and you go out there you know you're salivating and you're kind of you want you want everything you want to buy all the baked goods in the store go in you buy your selection you bring it home and you know you're all you're excited is like Pavlov's dog you're starting to matha starting to water and you you cut a piece of the Black Forest Cake your favorite and you bite it bite into it and ah it just doesn't give you the bang for your buck it advertised it sucked you in it promised you it beckoned you that it had all this potential to offer you and the return on your investment was lacking now we have a bakery I live in New Jersey we bakery up in Teaneck New Jersey called zaydis now when you go there you get exactly what you pay for it's unbelievable but what most the time when you go into the bakery window of life and you invest your money and you invest your kishkes and you invest emotions in things you desire and things you really want and advertising industry pumps up Stokes those desires to kind of an out of control level and what you do is you have only a certain amount of money magic a monopoly money only a certain amount of money to spend in life and you got to allocate it to things which you're going to hopefully get a return on investment the problem is we get sucked into the bakery window now it's fascinating because the holiday of Passover revolves around comments and matzo hummus is the bakery window we're told get rid of it for seven days get rid of it it's poison get it out of your house your houses don't partake in it don't eat of it don't eat any of it what are you supposed to do back to matzah what's matzah matzah is flour and water without the additives without the sugar without the puffs without the what it grows too it's essential bread it's all value it's dead sweet the matzo it fills you up no fake out no fake out no illusion so with the tour is telling us is that you have to almost detox pull back from the world of illusion the world that's sucking you in the world year after year day after day commercial after commercial is trying to get your attention get your dollars get your emotions the worst thing though is it gets your time and attention it veers you off course for what really matters and what really counts Pesach Passover is about getting back to value it's not the new sexy stock it's the Warren Buffett approach it's the value orientation of investment what's really really important in life it's very interesting because you can approach cleaning this way I don't clean you know my think on my wife is unbelievable she does most of thing but I go and do my office I do my closet I do as much as I can and I find it incredibly liberating in a way because I get to analyze and reconsider the purchases that I've made throughout the year and I'll go and I'll take a look at those shoes that I bought you know and I wear them once why because they're too tight I always buy shoes that are too tight I've got a problem I've got a disease my wife actually refuses to let me go buy shoes anymore alone and whenever I look at those shoes I'm in pain because I didn't get any value for that investment now there are certain things in my closet you know like the threadbare blue blaze that I love and I finally have to get rid of that it gave and it gave and it gave so much more than I even ever put into it and when you go through your different purchases purchases are just kind of a catalog of your choices what you put yourself in what you did you measure that you're ashamed you bought because you used it twice you know they you know the famous joke that when they look at you you know me in terms of the gym membership I'm prophet you know pure profit because you know you don't get into the gym you don't use the equipment it's very embarrassing it's very very painful the idea of Passover is to really really analyze what is value and what's holding me back so in the physical world the illusion is is to pull back through all those things that have got me out of whack all those things that have got me away from my goals my values now I'm Russia Shana which is six months actually 1/2 a year before Passover it's like bookends Russia Sean is about freewill Passover is about freedom Russia Sean is about about cataloguing what's important to you what you have to do to come back to you who you are what counts in life now once you get out of Russia Shawna is you're supposed to use it as a springboard to getting those things into reality but what happens life gets in the way illusions pop up things get you of course pace off the six months later is a time to retrench again get a whole week of getting back to basics so on the level of the world what's holding us back is the bakery window is the illusions that I'm getting sucked into on the personal level and the internal level hum it's also is an analogy for what's holding us back the rabbi's say then it symbolizes a puffy person an arrogant person a person that's full of themselves that's the illusion that a person creates about themselves often to hide from the real work and the insecurities that they really possess arrogance blocks us from seeing what's wrong with us it blocks us from encountering honestly other people it really removes us into a world a prison of our own we think arrogant people are successful in their you don't need anybody and that that that not needing anybody is sort of a almost like a powerful thing no no it's weakness it's a weakness because it's illusion arrogance is basically it's like a roomful of imagine the room gets full of me and it has no room left for anything else a total illusion so they two aspects of illusion the bakery window and my internal illusion called ego and arrogance that's comments matzah again as I say is totally the antidote matzah is humble matzah is the bread it's Colet them oniy the bread of struggle the bread of the bread of enslavement it's also the bread of freedom because getting back to the basics freeing myself both on the external illusion and the internal lusion that gets me free so matzah is that that double-edged sword it's humility but it's freedom its total total freedom now how do we get back to the first idea we mentioned that it doesn't seem like such a religious holiday it's liberating it's contemporary now we have a bit of a roadmap to helping our son free ourselves hopefully this year but how does that main thing do with God well the truth is if you think about it now with the definition that we brought if freedom is to be able to get rid of all those barriers that are keeping you from doing what you want and what you want is really the aspirations of your soul those are God's aspirations what more beautiful comments and you freely and through struggle anything effort you're basically giving almost a gift to God freely giving a gift to God you're saying I'm for your priorities it couldn't be any any more religious any more beautiful concept so I just want to I just want to end with a little bit of it how this ties in to the times we're living in now 25 years ago I had the great fortune to hear in a time Sharansky speak to students a group that I was working with and he mentioned that maybe it was before Passover and he mentioned that when I was in the cell in Siberia he was a refusenik I was more free than when I walk down the street in Tel Aviv and at first we didn't understand what he was talking about and he explained and he said when I go when I'm walking in Tel Aviv I'm on autopilot my life is just kind of organically going from A to B to C D I'm not really thinking about it I'm not really making choices I have the semblance as we mentioned before a freedom but I'm not truly in touch with my choice minute to minute when I was in that cell in Siberia I was totally free 24/7 I could either give in to the Soviets to Russia or I could knock him and I could fight or I could submit my free will was in front of me always I think in a weird way that's what we are situated as we're quarantined in our homes yes the external distractions have been taken away from us the autopilot of our lives and our schedules but now we're forced to confront the real issues that enslave us and many of those are personal how do I relate to my most important family members how do I relate to myself in terms of my person really growing am i in person starting something new I have so much more time now what am I doing with that time how am i approaching my insecurities my anxiety now those problems those issues are in front of me am I going to hide I mean it's funny I noticed even in quarantine you can hide you can be on the Internet every person can be on their phones and it's fascinating because the last two Shabbos is and I spent with my family we had to get rid of the phones to get rid of the internet so I felt so liberated because we couldn't run away from each other so interesting we love each other but we all run away we run away from what's difficult you run away from those conversations we should have had so long so much longer ago and I think what God has done is he set us up in this cocoon to really become free to really become free on a spiritual internal psychological basis and you can't help notice the similarity to the initial Passover because on that fateful night when the Jewish people were redeemed they were redeemed at 12 o'clock midnight the Torah says the Talmud says 12 o'clock with the slaying of the firstborn and the Jews were commanded do not leave your house put blood on the doorpost go in quarantine in quarantine we became free people and I can't help think wow what an incredible confluence Passover is coming up very soon we can't go anywhere we have to deal with ourselves imagine the opportunity that we have imagine how much stronger how much freer how much more loving how much greater we can be as a as individuals and as a Jewish people because of this beautiful gift that we're having now yes and as misery out there and I you know it's heartbreak everybody who's god forbid passes away and I don't want to minimize any of that but Jews have always preferred to say what am I gonna do about it not why is this happening that wouldn't that will never that we might never know but what am I going to do about it how am I going to respond and on that basis and from that point of view we have an incredible incredible opportunity it's my blessing to everybody is that we use the opportunity so this is the first this is the first segment of our Passover prep now we know what freedom we have a definition of freedom we know it's about doing what you want to do as ever the everyman concept but you have to know who you are and what you want and we our souls that's our aspirations that's who we really are and we want to be free to do what our soul wants and to really ultimately be in concert with what God wants for us so that's the philosophical overview on Thursday we're gonna move to the Hagana the gutta is a book that from my own history I found very confusing it starts and stops and Abraham and Moses I mean I couldn't get it all straight it's choppy it just it's hard to make sense of so Thursday's class at nine o'clock is making the sense of the gut up I hope you'll join me and I join the rest of the of the presentations in this nine o'clock physic forefront inspire tonight