Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz - Leaving Egypt as a Paradigm for Spiritual Liberation

thank you so much it's always a pleasure to speak for uh for Rabbi poon I know uh it fills even in a city that is filled with Torah and mitz and Sh and everything else there is always room for additional projects especially in the emphasis on and so again it's a a great honor for me to be connected a little bit to the very good work that ion is doing uh we know that if you made a list of the most common rituals that really all Jews try to do uh it's really the PES you know we count yum Kipper fasting and yum Kipper britz Milas circumcision maybe lighting kanah candles and the PES seder are really up there as the list that almost everybody does and maybe the Seder won't be kosher it's interesting I I uh was once speaking about the Seder and uh somebody mentioned to me that it was very inconvenient for them little bit little background in the which was a book that was written shortly after the beginning of theic movements and essentially it's a veiled critique ofid penned by ran who was the disciple of the Von soar talks about the fact that some people think that the most important part of serving God is your internal subjective emotional state rather than following the rules exactly and said it's of course your sub subjective emotions your AEM your is very very important but it has to be within the framework of the one has to follow hashem's rules and the example that he gave as a reducto ad absurdum of subjectivity is let's imagine it's p and you've been EX Ed cleaning for PES and you're going to fall asleep at the Seder so what if you were to Simply say you know my seder is going to be such an empty experience because I'm so exhausted I'll tell you what I'll go to sleep early L seder and tomorrow morning I'm going to make a wonderful wonderful seder with his slav with enthusiasm with andem but how could that be valid I mean you're not following hashem's rules so this was an example of something that was so absurd that everybody wouldn't understand immediately that makes no sense to make a Seder the wrong time okay let's Flash Forward uh 350 years and as I gave this example a woman said raised her hand and said you know that's exactly what we did we couldn't get the family together well seder and it was too late anyway so we decided to make the Seder the week after PES it was so fantastic you know Unity togetherness so as they say life imitates art or life imitates the C kodish sometimes so it just shows you that what was considered to be so absurd in one generation becomes a possibility a real possibility in another generation but be it as it may whether people do it 100% right or 100% wrong there is something deep within the recesses of the that wants to commemorate the story of p in one form or another there is something very deeply evocative about this man of pesak uh even people uh for even even with respect to cleaning for PES people who may not keep kosher you know they're going to clean their houses for PES not to have bread or or whatever it is and the centrality of The Exodus to Judaism is so apparent as you know that not only is there a Mitzvah avad once a year or in it's twice a year but we mention the Exodus every single day and twice a day have to remember the day of the Exodus call every single day we mention it twice a day in the morning and at night in the third paragraph of the when we say I am the god who took you out of and if you look you're supposed to have kavana to be a specific Mitzvah called so technically they go by different names BL Sader there's a Mitzvah called an extended narrative every single day there's a shorter Mitzvah just like tax forms us tax forms at least I don't know if Israel has the same uh thing uh but we have 1040A the Short tax form in 1040 uh you know I was actually my English birthday is actually April 15 so I'm very attuned to the uh to the tax code uh so too so too so so too uh we have uh the short form which is the daily and the long form which is the se but it's been well said that the brisar once remarked that the hardest Mitzvah of PES is not getting rid of even though if one knows theas of brisk in getting rid of truly it is very very hard nor is it the Mitzvah of making the matah them even though making the mat itself is a tremendously elaborate ritual but it's a passage in the hag that [Music] states it's really a mish every person must regard themselves as if they themselves personally experience The Exodus that the Mitzvah of Le is not to commemorate it is not to remember it is to experience and the brisker said how does that work how does one experience as if they were slaves that's very very hard I can remember by go you know remembering the history I could be grateful and don't confuse this with another thought that that is expressed earlier in the ha that superficial sounds a little bit the same but it's different in the beginning of the we say if Hashem would not have taken out our forefathers we might still be there now thefor say that doesn't mean we would still be slaves eventually most of the Civilized World abolish slavery but it means we would have been totally assimilated there wouldn't have been a Jewish people now that saying I am grateful for what God did for my ancestors because if he didn't do it for my ancestors I wouldn't be here that's the first statement but the second statement is going Way Beyond that the second statement is not saying I am grateful for what God did to my ancestors but rather I myself have to regard as if I myself was in MIT and was liberated how do you achieve that so the truth of the matter is is the rambam has a slightly different of that passage he only adds one letter and that one letter changes the meaning meaning dramatically instead of each person must regard himself which is an emotional and mental reconstruction he has the word larot instead of L now the hyro is externalized each person must Show Must demonstrate you act as if you were liberated thus you recline thus you have four cups of wine you behave as if this is the night of your freedom so according to the rambam life is much much easier or the Mitzvah is much easier because the Mitzvah refers to behavior it does not refer to emotional experience so according the ra the Mitzvah becomes a bit easier but that is not our our is not you have to actually experience it so what does that mean what does it mean to experience as if I was taken out of mitam I was never in Egypt and even those of you that might have been in Egypt were not there as in the capacity of slaves I did see well now with the unrest I don't know what the traveler arrangements are but I do remember every every day I would pass a travel agency uh and there would be a big sign uh we sponsored trips to Egypt and one time you know from here to MIT and one time I even saw an advertisement I saw it once for a pesak program in Egypt come back to where it started you know kind of reverse a little bit of a reversal want to yeah unless on the seventh day they they they go to the Red Sea and uh who knows what hasem will do right the yam itself right uh so still so realistically how can I possibly experience that which I didn't experience so here there are two explanations one explanation is actually offered by the rambam although the rambam's geara did not necessitate it but the rambam makes this observation the rambam describes a phenomenon that I think parallels what we would refer to in the modern world as method acting if you remember the uh the famous uh method acting approach of Lee Strasberg and the like and that is where the actor is supposed to emotionally imagine actually being in that experience and as a result he feels what the character is supposed to be feeling because through the power of the mind and the imagination he puts himself there so the rambam seems to say putting aside the laros and the leros but the rambam seems to say that in order to feel gratitude to the almighty you have to pretend as if you were a slave imagine what it's like the rabam says to be beaten to be tortured not to have any privacy or space to have your children taken from you and perhaps murdered brutally thrown into the Nile or killed in various other ways and then you feel you actually feel the bitterness of slavery the persecution of slavery the oppression and then you have gratitude for the freedom that AES has given you so according to the ramban uh putting aside Theus and that's another answer but the notion ofos is basically a high level of pretending to have that experience in order to augment and intensify the gratitude that you have to the Mighty because otherwise it remains an abstraction and it is only through the power of imagination that is harness to a good cause that one can appreciate the gift of Freedom which means ultimately it is a pretended game but it's a pretend game that is connected to historical reality meaning there is the historical reality that hasem took our forefathers out of Egypt and if he had not taken them out of Egypt we would not be here that's historically true but in order for a person to appreciate that one has to make believe they were there as a slave and that means Focus meditate imagine what it's like feel the pain of the Whip and then you will have gratitude to the almighty for the situation he put you in that is how the rambam would understand this but there is a Mahal that really uh the balatan talks about and it was taken up by theas and and many manyas in which they offer a uh a more profound interpretation in many ways although it's a non-literal one and they point out that the word MIT itself has double meanings MIT is of course a nation the nation of the Egyptians but MIT also comes from the word boundaries constrictions limitations blockages says I call out to God from the narrow confines which prevent me from serving him that trap me and the concept is that MIT can exist within a person as well as outside of a person every person has an inner MIT it might be my arrogance my GAA my selfishness my egotism it's well known that itself is a remes to the because it is puffed up in arrogance and the Commandment of destroying K is connected with destroying theet of the heart in fact it's if I could digress for a moment you know the largest Seder in the world is normally the one in KATU in Nepal many many Israelis mainly have after the Army are there and kabad to their great credit as they do in so many other places make uh make these huge Sedar and uh because the uh audience is largely NTI although most of them actually know Hebrew so language is not so much of a problem so they do a little bit of an avard touch and they have a minhag on a of PES that's actually quite beautiful and it might be a Min that uh we might even think about doing and that is when they burn the Kates everybody is asked to write on a piece of paper some negative attribute that they would like to get rid of I get angry too much I'm not grateful and consider that yourit theit of your heart and you burn and you destroy that humit and if that sounds a little too hippie-ish or or 60s or whatever it be let me point out that there actually is a cabalistic prayer that is in some sorum that some people recite when they burn theet and that prayer actually says Hashem help me shame that I burnt the physical humates may I burn the humates in my heart now clearly one does not understand this that burning the pce of piece of paper is some magic trick that burns the anger within you that would be like Tash when you throw the crumbs in the river uh it's not like your sins are transferred to the crumbs and the water washes them away but these are symbolic gestures that make an impression on a person that when I visibly tangibly viscerally see some representation of my sins going into the water that makes me want to change when I see theet being burnt that makes me realize I can burn away my own kets so we know that whether you call the ra or whether you call it right there are two ways of looking at it is the RA are the blockages that constrict me that prevent me from connecting to God and there are many types of mams there is the arrogance and Diva there is also the mitam of depression and hopelessness and despair there is the mitam of laziness there is the MIT of work holism in which you take all of your Kos and you work very hard but you you give no Focus to your family or to spiritual ends all of that is a MIT and as the saying goes those of you who are a little older might remember the old cigarette commercials when they used to have cigarette commercials you can take Salem out of the country but you can't take the country out of Salem uh those of you remember are certainly dating dating yourselves uh besides the fact that I means you watch television which you know is not is not proper but anyway but the thing is uh people have paraphrased that saying it's easier to take the Jew out of MIM than it is to take MIT out of the Jew the MIT stays in us in many many many ways you know there was a u a black entertainer there is I think he's still alive Mr T perhaps you you you've heard of him 18 yeah that's right the 18 that's right okay and uh his Persona was he always wears uh big gold chains right his chest is exposed until the belly button and he wears a lot of gold chains and he once said said a remark that I just I came across somehow and it struck me as a profound remark now perhaps unintentionally profound perhaps as say but there was something to it somebody asked him why is he always wearing those chains so he said I want to imitate and emulate the ways of my ancestors who came from Africa to the United States and they were slaves they came in Chains and I come in Chains they came in chains that were iron and on their legs and I come in chains that are gold and around my neck now perhaps he was just making a contrast they came like that I come like that but I think that there's a deeper chat that he's saying you know you can be a slave with the iron chains around your leg and you can be a slave with the gold chains around your neck if a person is a slave to materialism to acquisition to wealth to power to heathenism that's even a bigger slavery cuz that's a slavery that's emanating from within as opposed to a slavery that is without you know the Jew that was being beaten by a Nazi in owitz who was the Freer person the Jew was Freer than the Nazi yes the Jew was in prison the Jew could not move the Jew was being beaten every minute his life was being threatened but internally he had the freedom to decide to live his remaining moments with dignity with Holiness with faith the Nazi beating him may have had all the power in the world all the wealth in the world but he was a slave to the most animalistic inhuman characteristics which destroyed the Holiness of man that is made in God's image who is free and who is the slave this is what say the only one that is truly free is the one that is connected to Torah because Freedom that's not linked to submission to God is really the slavery of giving in to every impulse that I have I'm a slave to my emotions I'm a slave to whatever is driving me at any given moment in time I am buffeted and pushed and pulled with every wind and every change a person who submits to God has the freedom to control his impulses in an ideal s obviously all of us fail in various degrees but in theory one lives a life of discipline one lives a life of submission and one lives a life of Freedom the point was made very beautifully by a non-jewish poet Tori he was an Indian not Native American Indian from India who actually won the Noel prist for literature for his poetry and uh very very profound and beautiful poet his Works have obviously been translated and he once remarked that a human soul is like a violin string it is capable of producing magnificent music there's Beauty and resonance in that violin string as there is in the human soul but take a violin string and make it Loose disengage it from an instrument the string is totally free totally liberated there is nothing restraining it what music will you get from the that violin string you'll get nothing at all paradoxically the ability of the string to express its beauty lies and it's being tied down part of the instrument over the bridge of the violin so too a person might think submission to God stifles me styes me closes me off limits me I want to be creative I want to express The Beauty of My Soul the creation the creative talents that God has given me but within the framework of submission I'm not able to express myself tagari wasn't even talking about Torah said the Paradox is it's precisely in that submission that we find our freedom truth of the matter is even in a secular standpoint this is very much the case you know for those of you that like jazz music right so we have uh you know the great jazz players can do a lot of improvisation they can do riffs they can just like make up things on the spot and now you have a 11-year-old kid who's a learn learning trombone and like he wants to do the riffs just like you know uh John P train or uh Louie Armstrong or whatever whatever the great jazz players are Duke Ellington but before you have the creativity and the freedom to improvise you got to spend hours after hours practicing scales before you're the Picasso that can deconstruct all sorts of spatial relationships you spend our kaso of course was a natural genius as well but you spend many many hours doing basic technique in any Endeavor in life in reality the ability to be creative actually what you think is free of limits and free of boundaries actually require submission tell the Tor is that way as well a person submits to learning many many things and then there is creativity in one one is mes one brings together different ideas but aish that is not grounded in a submission and a Mastery of the basic material is the act of a diletant the act of Sal who is kind of the Prototype of the original analytical thinker one said that any pull of Torah in which one does not know the whole Shas is a waste wasted discussion by definition right people hold up they want to be every every high school boy wants to be mes Torah like Sal but for some reason they they're not aware of uh this statement of R Sal so this is what the gari said Freedom comes with submission this is why by the way we start counting Shas The Holiday of Torah in the holiday of freedom because true Freedom exists only when there is submission to God PES and Sh are not two holidays it is shos that gives meaning to Freedom Eric frown once said the world makes a big mistake when we Define Freedom as freedom from something it has to be Freedom towards something Freedom has to be towards something you know Freedom itself is not a purpose of life you can't say the purpose of my life is to be free what does that even mean the purpose of my life is to be free freedom is a condition that enables the accomplishment of purpose and the self-realization of one's goals and one's values but Freedom itself is not a value it is to use the hak terminology a it enables in fact it's not it's not an accident without getting into a too much into a very complicated phenomenon human beings are hardwired to seek purpose in their lives transcendental purposes and Jews are especially hardwired the Nish Cleaves to God the Nisha seeks a connection to God even if on a conscious level a person does not always articulate it and when they don't have a meaning in life there is an inner frustration and turbulence which a person tries to deaden with sex and with alcohol and with drugs and with accumulation but these are distractions because there is a pain in a person's psyche that never goes away unless they have this connection and this purpose and that is why and this in an extreme case can even lead to suicide if not murdering others and it's very very interesting that sometimes you will find I think I think you will find this statistically that teenage suicide rates are higher in affluent countries than they are in poverty-stricken third world countries because in a third world country you got to spend the whole day looking for some bread you don't have time to ponder the existential crises of life but when you live in a society even if you're not rich but you live in a society where there's bread tee you're not dying of starvation where you wearing clothes where you have an apartment to go to so the B basic life needs physical needs are taken care of then something will erupt within you that desire for meaning that desire for purpose and it will eat at you day and night incessantly and you'll try to kill it by all sorts of distractions but sometimes the frustration and the pain becomes so great that life itself becomes unbearable culminating in suicide and violence which by the way we we see with more and more frequency in the in particularly in the United States among younger younger people so what is slavery and what is freedom slavery is not connected to affluence it's connected with having mitar going back again we're going to go back to this point every person has their own inner Mitra and here is what the batanya said the batan says we know that sacred time holy time does not move in a linear Direction it moves in a cyclical Direction what do I mean we normally perceive time you know simple balabas uh understanding of time it's linear there's a past there's a present and a future and the events of the past are things that happened and we Comm memorate them we remember them but the Jewish concept of time particularly as seen in cabalistic sources is that time is like a wheel that turns or maybe it's a spiral which goes around and brings you to higher and higher levels and therefore the same spiritual forces that liberated our forefathers from its our spiritual Force that exist in the world at the very same time in which we can experience our own so the bat say each person must regard himself herself as if they themselves left MIM does not mean each person has to make believe they were a slave in the country of Egypt and they were redeemed that's not true but each person must identify the inner MIT within them and by tapping into the great spiritual power of redemption that God puts into this moment in time I as an IND indidual can be liberated from the MIT the blockage that is within me I as it were uh can jump piggyback pay that L but to piggy back onto the K of G so that the G of becomes the Gul it of my own personal mine but you see this only makes sense if you perceive time in cyclical terms not in linear terms if you looked at it as a linear term then what happened is what happened that was past but if it's cyclical you understand that same moment in time comes back with everything that it represents the moral makes a beautiful proof about this notion of of the cyclical nature of sacred time he points out it's relevant this year that the Jewish calendar is a lunar calendar we go by the moon a year is 12 Revolutions of the Moon around the Sun um I'm sorry around the Earth around the earth I'm sorry around the earth and that will be normally 354 days sometimes 355 depending on uh on kesman and K having 29 or 30 days now we know that a solar year the earth going around the Sun is 365 I'll go with approximations 365 and a quarter so there is a little bit more than 11 days between a lunar year and a solar year now since the seasons are based on the movement of the Earth around the Sun so that is why as as all of us know every year a Hebrew date will get progressively earlier and earlier in the calendar but there is a problem that the Torah requires that the holiday of PES be in the spring and if the lunar date will get earlier and earlier in the seasons eventually pesak will be in the winter right it'll be in February January December we don't want pesak in the winter the T doesn't want it so we have what is called a leap here this is a an intercalation is the uh astronomical term that we use and the Jewish calendar is built with great great Precision seven out of 19 years we effectively push pesak later into the year and this is one of those years of course by adding an Adar sheni so our calendar is lunar with a solar intercol as opposed for example to the Islamic calendar our friends across the street in East Jerusalem uh where that is a Pure Solar calendar a lunar calendar without a solar intercalation and that is why Ramadan can be any time of the year now of course if I would be a Muslim I would be happy for that because that allows Ramadan to sometime sometimes be in the winter it's shorter you know it works out works out well for them in that way uh but our calendar is lunar with a solar adjustment now why why is that important after all the moral says PES commemorates an event that happened on the 15th of Nissan so whenever the 15th of Nissan occurs let's celebrate P what is this concept that you have to correlate the 15th of Nissan to the springtime so the morale answer is exactly with this idea if the point of sacred time was to commemorate events I would just pay attention to the date 15th of Nissan is 15th of Na I don't care if it's in April or January or February or December or November whenever it is is whenever it is our calendar our measurement of time is through the moon but the morale says if you understand that the commemoration of Kim is not just historical memory but it's the spiritual vibrations of that TFA come into the world allowing you to tap into those vibrations so here the very response of the earth what is spring spring the Earth becomes liberated the fertility of the ground becomes liberated from the dorcy of the winter now granted in arell we don't have a lot of snow so you don't really see the same thing as you know the ground is covered with snow and then the snow melts but even so maybe you can even see it more vividly here we don't have a lot of snow but nothing is growing on the the trees it's as if growth and Redemption and freedom are imprisoned in the DOR dorcy of the winter and then comes the springtime and the trees begin to Bud and the leaves come out and the blossoms come and you see redemptions the moral says the reason why PES has to be in the spring is because that is when the vibrations of redemption are here and PES has to correlate with those if I make p not during that time I would be commemorating a past event but it wouldn't be the Z of G now you may ask aasha from the southern hemisphere southern hemisphere it's not spring p is being observed when uh these things are not happening but the short answer is that spiritual Powers enter the world from ER Israel from so when it spring here the will spread even to Antarctica and even to the cold places of the world they'll get it in a different form to be sure but the of G comes from here that's what we used to say you know in the olden days before people had cell phones maybe even today people still do it uh if you if you ever go to Port Authority or New York you know uh or Penn Station and there was time for Min and uh you know you're looking for a place to D it's not like where if you had to in the street you know do in the street in fact what did I say I saw a whole blog where somebody some y guy was complaining that he can't stand Seminary girls blocking Mal Isel at 4:00 in the afternoon okay whatever would would be but but generally speaking uh in America at least people are more self-conscious about daving so they would go to phone booths or you know phone and they would pick up the phone and like talk to God have a conversation with god uh for a while so the old vort the old word used to be it's too bad you're doing it there there was a long distance goal you can do it here it would be it would be local it would be cheaper huh collect collect collect that's the way that's the way to do it right you hope will accept the charges that's the okay okay but anyway uh so so this is the idea that a a a person has has these mits that we have to be able to overcome and the morale says that we do this by tapping into the of the and the balatan who by the way happened to be a direct descendant of the maral balat little little historical note the maral's writings now now the morale again not everybody learns him but everybody talks about the morale the morale is very very popular now in the world of Torah the world of yeshivos every person who wants to try to learn uh the philosophical ideas of Judaism in a deep way you know tries to get to the Moral Moral is the great symbolic uh Expositor of agad and the like but you know you have to know that the maral's writings were were virtually neglected for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years the morale lived in the 1500s and the Mor's writings were not even reprinted uh for 2 15300 years uh but the morale was preserved interestingly enough inic literature kic literature uh although uh they used the moral for their own purposes but they they preserved kind of the maral's writings part of it was a isue because balat himself was a great great grandson of the maral of Prague so the moral of Prague uh got grandfathered into theic movement he was way before the bov but he became an honorary he became an honorary uh in that in that way but this is a very good proof that is not commemorative but it's cyclical which is why it has to correlate with the natural cycle cycle of the earth to put it another way the Bas put it this way P let's see if you can follow this p is not P because of rather occurred because it was p in other words it's not the event that gives the time significance rather the event occurred because of the nature of that time it was the nature of that time yum Kipper yum Kipper is not the day of atonement because God forgave the but rather God forgave Theo because it's Yumer and God impressed certain spiritual powers in certain times of year it's inherent to the time itself this is how the Bas puts it let me go back for a second um I want to take this idea much further but let me go back for a second uh and forgive my uh my uh partial disjointedness here uh I have an additional observation about the Tori idea that freedom requir submission you know it's an interesting point that ashkenazim have a custom it's a custom it's not a din that after we eat the matah and the mor and we're ready for the meal what do they say they say in America uh we have a different version of the four questions the Manish Tana the four questions are when do we eat when do we eat when do we eat when do we eat those are the four the four cashes uh yeah and and then you have uh Larry King's a short version of the S which actually isn't bad he says they tried to get us we won let's eat you know you probably you know you probably are y if you're really really stuck you probably are y you know with that with that statement so that's good good to know the short form uh but you know the ashaz the ashkanazi custom is that we have a hardboiled egg and the reason we have a hardboiled egg is that an egg is what you give a mner when he comes back from the bakos and we are mourning the destruction of the B Mikes because we think P night of the corbon PES that we don't have and even though the Sater night is a joyous night but we think about all that we don't have at this night uh fact we begin the hag by saying we are still slaves May next year may we be free Etc uh and even the statement we say that even in because we understand that the in a spiritual sense is still eluding us and it's also brought down as a further idea here that the night of the week or the day of the first the first day of PES is the same day of the week as Tish later in the summer so what what night is the first dat is it uh Friday night yeah so that means Tish is shabas which we fast on Sunday but the date is is is the same now it's very interesting that should make it that somehow the first day of PES is the same day the week as the nth and the egg is even commemorating that in part in which we're over the Corb p and we link ourselves to Tish and part of it might be the following this is a speculation I I did not see this anywhere but I think it's an interesting thought and that is the first day of PES is the only day of PES which is not yet linked to the giving of the Torah because we don't start counting the OM till the second night so every day of PES is freedom linked to submission and responsibility the first night is Pure Freedom so maybe there's a remiss here when your freedom is not connected to Cabas your freedom will lead to Tish will lead to destruction in a sense eating of the egg is the substitute for not counting the OM you know you're not counting the OM the first night the egg is kind of the lesson that reminds you to keep your mind focused why we don't start counting the OM the first day of PES I will leave for another talk maybe closer to sh that's itself is very very interesting but I want to go back to to the main idea of P okay so we now understand based on the maral the balat Theus a very deep and profound teaching we have our own p is a time when hasem gives us the kak to be liberated from that which enslaves US by tapping into the great spiritual energy that Hashem puts into that moment so that means when you read the ha there are two stories going on simultaneously the first is the public story The National story the story of am Israel being formed as a nation that because God had a covenant with our forefathers he redeemed us through miracles and that and that that story is the essential story of parent to child transmitting the national story of am Israel and the role that we have in the world and the Torah commands that father to son mother to daughter it has to be transmitted and that is the simple meaning of that and that is the true meaning of the one one should never use inner meanings to obscure simple meanings right we have all sorts of is about the Torah is about theab is also about your wife you know don't uh don't be so esoteric that you forget the basic idea of what is so certainly the ha is about the story of our slavery in Egypt that's the public story but there's an idiosyncratic private story in the hag as well in which each person in his own heart and soul tries to identify what is my MIT and how can I see my MIT and their MIT and how can I see my from there and this isan there is a double meaning an exoteric meaning and an esoteric meaning but the esoteric meaning is a private meaning you might share it you might not I'm not saying you can't share it as it were but ultimately it's a very individualistic idiosyncratic meaning so now what I want to do is I want to take some elements of the Seder some elements of the narrative and show the esoteric ID I don't mean calistic the esoteric meaning the private idiosyncratic meaning of these things to uh to our own personal MIT re says right this is at the end of the mag before the second cup call me again it's a mission in anyone who does not explain three Commandments uh about about PES has not fulfilled his obligation and the three Commandments are PES the Corbin PES the matah the eating of the matah and the mor now let's just look at the statement just what does it mean anyone that does not say verbalize and that of course means in a language you understand it's not like just saying the words does not fulfill his obligation what obligation does he not fulfill so theim explained does not mean you don't fulfill the Mitzvah of matah unless you talk about it after all I don't have to talk about lul to fulfill Lula I don't have to talk about chaur to fulfill chaur I don't have to talk about matah to fulfill matah same thing with M and P so reel is not telling me what I need to do in order to fulfill the Mitzvah of eating P mat but R griel is telling me what I need to do to fulfill the Mitzvah of seur of narrative meaning the MIT of the narrative has to be connected with a narrative that explains the significance of these three Mitzvah let me take it in reverse order then I'll explain why I'm doing it in reverse if we understand that the Mitzvah of SE has a double purpose one is to remember the historical events and the other is to internalize the recognition of my own we can understand symbolically these three ideas what is Mora Mar is to feel the bitterness and remember the slavery now granted Al is fairly lenient here it doesn't have to be the old horseradish that can really uh drive you crazy you know we we allow even a little bit of a bitterness but we like the Roma lettuce and the like but we do require a tangible experience of bitterness what lesson does that have for us lesson number one is if you want to leave MIT your first step is to acknowledge that you're in Mitra if you don't recognize the bitterness that something in your life has to get better then you will never be able to take a step towards achieving freedom because you don't even acknowledge that that you're in a state of slavery be a slave the first step to being free is to be honest enough to yourself to acknowledge slavery not to sleepwalk not to be in denial not to whitewash but to have the courage to focus on what is wrong in my life that I could make better in a meaningful way I'll give you a trivial example you know when I uh those of you from from Baltimore will will will appreciate this you know uh I used to teach at the University of Maryland law school which is in Baltimore and I lived in Silver Spring Maryland so I had to go north I would take a Highway 95 North the Great Highway 95 north now if you're going north uh but if you Veer to the right you could there's a turn off to 95 south if you're in the extreme right lane so I remember when I first moved to Silver Spring and I was driving to to Baltimore and I was I wasn't I guess I was uh thinking about something else and apparently I wound up a 95 south now how did I know that all of a sudden I'm driving along and all of a sudden I see the Lincoln Memorial the Jefferson all these the Washington ment and I say so I had this like feeling in my stomach you know I just don't remember seeing that on the way to Baltimore so The Logical conclusion was yeah I turned off 95 shots but I didn't want to say that because I number one I didn't know how to get back really and and I you know and I so I was like I was literally I can't even explain this rationally I was literally making up excuses you know maybe you do see it from both maybe I just didn't notice it or or maybe the road just changes I just keep on going and the road gets better well it does it does in Florida you know if you go you know if you go to the end you just turn around make a U-turn and you're going you're going back you know but I would have been late late for class you know uh but what what is the idea now again and this is so this is obviously stupid but it was real and and this is a process that many of us go through I just don't want to admit that things are going people make this problem in business all the time throwing good money after bad you invested $50,000 in a business that's just going bust now logically just forget it cut your losses and get out but then a person says I can't do that that means I wasted $50,000 so I'm going to keep on putting more in more money because maybe it'll turn around but as Albert Einstein famously remarked insanity is doing the same thing many times thinking you're going to get different results in spiritual life it's very much the same thing sometimes you got to cut your losses make the decision as the t-shirts say t-shirts are always accurate uh today is the first of the rest of your life what is past is past I got to make things good now so that's Mora moror is the courage and the honesty to acknowledge that there is something bitter here that I need to change in my relationship to God Freedom comes from acknowledging slavery when you deny the slavery you cannot take the step from Freedom that is what Mor teaches us we then come to matah now matah to this matah actually is quite complicated because there actually two different reasons given for matah in the Torah one reason for matah is it's a commemoration of the slavery it was the bread of slavery the bread of Affliction but the reason that the hag gives there's a second reason for matah that we didn't have time to let our dough rise Hashem said we had to leave exactly then and therefore as a commemoration for the that we left we eat mat now the moral points out that one of the differences between matah Andes you know one is mat you know is puffed up and arrogant and matah is flat and humble but the moral gives another point about that's very interesting he says is a product of inertia and inaction because once the water hits the flower if you do nothing it will become fermentation is an automatic process matah is the need to take action to arrest the fermentation in other words represents inertia matah represents action so the relationship of Mora and matah is the following moror is the cognitive acknowledgement of the slavery that I live under I have Insight I have understanding I have honesty but matah says do something about it you know it's kind of say you could say Mor to Mata is like psychoanalysis to behavioral therapy and that is psychoanalysis focuses on Insight understanding why am I this way let's go back to my childhood let's go back to to uh my my uh my prenatal status in the mother's womb let's go back to preconception hurts what whatever whatever that would mean psychic you know uh like Carl Young Collective unconsciousness you know traumas that were suffered and a person could stay in psychoanalysis for 50 years 60 100 years because after all a human being is infinitely complex and psychoanalysis will explore every type of complexity but at some point something you got to do something you can't just allow yourself to have Insight the Insight needs to be translated into concrete action and that is the lesson of matah the imperative of action morar is the honesty of awareness and matah is the imperative of action now there's a story of nak of BR used to tell used to teach in addition to L Maran which are cabalistic teachings complex teachings he would teach by stories and Parables and these stories also have very deep meanings breast lers get together and they recount these stories and they give all sorts of explanations but once said about his stories that the reason why he likes teaching by stories is because you know when I teach by Torah if they get me they get me if they don't they walk away with nothing if I teach by story if they get me they get get me and if they don't they heard a good story so uh with the story there's no loss because even if someone doesn't get the message they have a story so rman tells the story and he doesn't tell you the meaning of the story things have to be defined but this is a very famous story like some say R may have borrowed it even from a German folk tale uh but the story goes about a prince who uh became a little insane and he was under the delusion that he was a chicken a rooster so he took off all of his clothes and he crawled on his uh knees and he was eating table scraps uh from the floor and nobody could convince him that he was a human being he just convinced himself he was a rooster or a turkey so a shows up and says I'm going to cure this guy what does he do he takes off all of his clothes he crawls under the table with the prince and the prince who apparently could still talk I'm not sure why the prince said what are you doing and he says who says you're the only rooster here I'm a rooster too so that was fine so after a week the puts on a shirt and a pair of pants and the prince says what are you doing he says who says roosters can't wear shirts and pants so the prince puts on a shirt and pants as well The Story Goes Again the story is in a lot of layers but the bottom line was that after a year the prince still thought he was a rooster but it didn't make a difference because roosters could do whatever human beings did he he walked upright he talked he worked he studied he still thought he was a turkey or a chicken or a rooster but it made no difference now what's the point of that story nak doesn't say he never he never says that the point of the story is but I would suggest that the P of the story is that sometimes we have a certain mental conception of ourselves that operates as a blockage to positive change we tell ourselves we create a picture in our mind maybe it's a they often use the analogy of a tape there's a tape that keeps on running in our heads that we internalize from parents or from teachers or from negative experiences that we're not the type of person that can fill in the blank learn every day go to Minion go up to a stranger and say how are you doing and be friendly right we have all these inhibitions and these inhibitions kind of block us and limit us and lock us up they become our MIT and R is suggesting again perhaps he was the first behaviorist in this way although said it much earlier that a person's behaviors create the emotions that instead of trying to change the mental image first say okay I'm a turkey but who says a turkey can't learn every day and who says turkey can't D every day who says a turkey can't say hello to strangers in other words and then you become a human being not by first redefining yourself and then acting accordingly but by simply saying I can act even if that's not how I feel and eventually my feelings get in sync with my actions as the said much earlier a person is affected by their actions we look at actions as outgrowths of emotion when in point of fact actions can so educate the emotions that is a fundamental principle of Judaism so that's the idea of Mata right so the mor is be aware of your slavery Mata do something about it and that's important because there are moments in life when all of us get inspired maybe after yum Kipper whatever s uh sometimes it might just bees and you think to yourself wow look at where where I am we take it for granted uh rutner once said when he came to erel so somebody asked rautner is there anything you miss about so rautner said yes I missed the yearning for erel when I was in I yearned and I pined and that connected me to erel but now that I'm here you know I'm not yearning and pining so in some level I'm less connected emotionally precisely because I'm facing the daily frustrations of life and and and the like so we have this idea that we get inspired but if you don't concretize your inspiration it dissipates very quickly matah says take action or you lose it Robert Hutchins was the uh boy wonder he was a a president president of the University of Chicago at the age of 25 there were many graduate students who were much older than him a real Eloy genius uh Boy Wonder and uh he was not as careful about his physical health that he should have been so somebody once said to him Dr Hutchins why don't you exercise more don't you ever want to exercise so he said that I do have yearnings and Desir to exercise every once in a while but I know if I lie down for a few moments I'll let it go away I'll let it go away right it'll go away right right right and that's the way it is it's true for that it's true for that and it's certainly true for spirituality so matah is take action now let me stop there you may ask aasha based on what I'm saying and that is if morar is awareness of my slavery and matah is to do something about it then logically one would have assumed let's eat the ma mat the Mora first and then eat the matah because Mora is the problem and matah is the action and yet we do eat matah before Mor why is that why do I eat matah before the well so yes I just want to elaborate that so so here part of the answer is that there is a danger because if you focus on your problems without recognizing you have the capacity to change you might be mired in depression and self-pity and paralysis and ineffectuality so you eat the matah to give me a sense I can change I can improve I can take action I am a person of Free Will and when you've internalized that emotion you're then ready to confront the things that need to be worked on and that's the K you combine the mat and the the awareness and the freedom to change we then come to PES now the carbon PES has many many uh deep deep meanings but I just want to focus on one little one and that is the Corbin PES is an unusual Corbin because it it it has to be brought as a community meaning you have to bring it with other people but we that means even if you have a big appetite and it's a little lamb and you could finish the whole thing a Corbin P cannot be brought by one person you have to have a theab could be your family but if you don't have a family you connect to a family and you bring you need a so here too this is a very important lesson in our own spiritual and that is we can't do it alone we have to connect with others that have those goals and those purposes now it could be our own nuclear family husband and wife strive together for Spiritual goals our our Show members organizations like P is a lesson that and has to be with says buy for yourself a friend acquire a friend why is friendship so important important so the ramban brings actually the ra this is really almost a Verbatim quote from Aristotle but the ran modifies it a little bit friendship has three purposes the rambam writes purpose number one we will call practical or utilitarian if you don't have a friend who are you going to call if your car breaks down in the middle of the night or you lost your keys in other words friends are like insurance policies meaning you know I need them most of the year but when those occasional emergencies come I need somebody in the world that I can call so we'll call that the utilitarian Insurance function of friendship the second is the social function of friendship you know we are social creatures we get lonely uh it's good to have somebody to talk to and that's legitimate again assuming of course you keep the laws of lash and Har and everything else there is a role in life for conversation but the RAM says although those are two good purposes for friends the ultimate deepest level of friendship is spiritual Fellowship in which because my love and concern I do what I can to help my friend be the best person that they're able to be now that friendship is not always an easy one if you're simply shooting the breeze with somebody you're having a good time with somebody so good we'll have a good time and if he's doing things that aren't so good you know I don't have to get involved but when friendship is truly deep and loving each one gives strength to the other again in a marriage that's the that's the you know that's the ideal level of a marriage beloved friends and people think oh friendship is in carer to lover right lover is the big thing friendship but no friendship is a very very deep thing it's caring about the type of person that the other is and that sometimes is difficult in which you have to bring things out and then be willing to get feedback from the other person as well and that is the spiritual friendship that the navi describes that schl describes two are better than one for if one Falls who will help him up but when you have two and one Falls one can bring the other up and the says one person helps the other and to his brother he says Be Strong don't give up so P are not just historical but they connect to the personal slavery we have they offer three ideas that pertain to our own personalized number one be honest recognize the slavery number two don't be debilitated or paralyzed take decisive action and number three find the community in which you will be able to achieve that because you can't do it alone we need each other for for strength and when people work together you know if I could quote um Ronald Reagan of all people uh and I'm not endorsing any political views at all uh he once said there is no end to what could be accomplished in the world if people don't care who gets the credit for it friends work together so your success is My Success it's not a zero some gain where your gain is my loss but rather as each becomes successful that is a success of the other in fact there's a marvelous story it's not well let me just tell the story because it's it's always worthwhile I mentioned Ronald Reagan so let me counter mention the punov mil VES uh the St the pich who I don't know if anyone here knew the was not so good to know him he was sft many years ago already uh but P was a very very unusual person he of course was a god Torah but he was also a person who had remarkable tolerance in AAS Isel and a person who got along with uh religious Jews non-religious Jews in his day the picher Yeshiva would fly the is flag and they did not say uh of course that's the famous joke they didn't say Hal so somebody said to the of if you're such a Zionist why don't you say Hal he said what do you mean I do benan no you know okay of course I'm and what's amazing is that the who to say even if there was a bris that day was was a deer you did of the K the loved everybody and was loved by everybody and he was a world traveler because he had not only the picha but he made many many orphanages after the Holocaust thousands and thousands of children he raised and supported and brought to the K and he traveled all over the world to get money he was a legendary fundraiser the SAT rebbi once said about the pun of picture of when after the moon launch and was it 1968 the first man on the moon so he said people were debating can there be life on other planets so the satar says I don't care about the science I know there is no life on other planets because if there would be life on other planets the picv would have been there getting money if the PV didn't go to Mars there is no life on Mars this is what the satv said so The Story Goes that the penovich arv once came to Chicago and uh he was going to give a dresser and his dresser was filled with muser and Torah and humor and stories and you know all sorts of Charisma and he came the same time as a m from the much smaller n Yesa and when the M walked in and sees the pun he turned white because he how am I going to compete who's going to give me a sent I mean what I'm going to ask for my little Yeshiva and I'm I'm not going to say anything that impressive and here you have you know one of the greatest speakers of the world one of the greatest gadola so initially the Nara person was very upset but then he said okay listen I'm not going to get money here but I'm going to listen to a great share and a great talk and I'm going to be inspired so he sits down and the pun ofure of Karo was uh inspirational and humorous and deep and emotional and people were pulling out their checkbooks and they were going to go right you know very generous checks because he really inspired them about the need to rebuild Torah after the Holocaust and the end of his speech he said rosai there is a very very fine gentleman who has a very wonderful Yeshiva in b n I would just ask you that whatever you're giving to me please give to him instead in instead no not yeah not double instead just give it a give it to them and people gave all their checks to this m now suffice it to say this was the best day the M ever had because on his own he would not have gotten a fraction of this money but he got he he got off the pun of his Dr so he went to the Rev afterwards and he said Reby I am so so grateful but I don't understand I just don't understand you traveled all the way from marus real and you have mostos that have so many needs and people were going to give generous sums to you H how could you just turn it over to me how could you not keep it for your mosa P said I don't know what you mean my mosad your mosad we're all on the same team if somebody is giving enough money so that a 100 people can learn Torah P said I don't care if the 100 people are in panovich or the 100 people are in AAR now this is a very rare attitude uh in in the world even among even among ADM but this is what the P said we work together your successes are my successes my successes are your successes your gain is not my loss this is what friendship is this is what kabur is in which we rejoice in each other's successes and we feel pain in the failures of disappointments of others this is the lesson of carbon P must take place in the context of a and when you have that so I I want to wish all of us should be of you know what they say people always say por happy porm and a kosher P but the famous word is you really have to say a kosher and a happy P because has all sorts of problems with you know who knows their koser P has a problem sometimes that we're so overworked that we don't have so that's why we have both so be well