Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Pesach and Covid-19 "The Great Awakening from Below"

[Music] good evening everyone welcome to the Pinet bait madras rabbi brighter wits will come on in just another minute but I wanted to thank you all for staying tuned and watching these videos the last video at this point in time had reached over three thousand four hundred views for a playwright which is shir and that's rata shem after Pesach we will continue okay so this will be the last Shir rabbi bright - its before pays off so I'm sure that he'll wish everyone a kosher were some math but in the meantime I just wanted to mention they get banana is an organization that's built upon tested and doing facet and we've committed to provide 180 meals for needy people a hundred are going to lone soldiers who have absolutely no one and the other hunt on the other eighty are going towards families in distress financial distress singles mothers who have kids running around the house and are out of work and we've committed now we haven't raised the money yet so we were just about halfway there so at this point at this time when I'm recording this hopefully by the time you go on to donate you'll see that the amount has skyrocketed right there at the show so in the meantime I want to thank you all for staying tuned with us during these trying times and it's not just for the tested project of Khimki the Pisgah and mouse key team but in order to for us to continue we'd also like you if you could also donate to your banana so we can continue these types of programs and in the description box below I'm putting my finger down okay in the description box below in the YouTube description box you'll find a link in fact I'll put two links one is for the Khimki the Pisgah the Pesach contributions and the second one is the general one okay so with that I say this kind of it's vote and how cuz you're some math and without any further ado here's red my brightest thank you goody good evening everyone and I hope everyone as well I know this is a very difficult this is a very difficult and challenging time for everyone there is both the fear of the coronavirus and there is the severe dislocation imposed by isolation and I spoke last week about some messages of hope and faith that on one hand we do have to be very meticulous in obeying the directives of the Ministry of Health or whatever health authority you are dealing with on the other hand we also have to be hopeful than optimistic and courageous and understanding that Akhilesh Borka will ultimately take us out of this great sorrow indeed we're entering the month of Nisan and this is there's never an auspicious time to have a plague so to speak but if God forbid there is such a plague that we are being afflicted with the month of Nisan is the best time to have it because this is the month of redemption and this is when God takes us out of our mats of and all of us pray that he rots on we should experience once again you'd see an exodus from all of these plagues but in truth the old saying which is a secular saying that every cloud has a silver lining is even true in the wake of this corona epidemic first of all it makes us understand the utility of technology it's true that we're not able to get together personally that we are in to some degree socially isolated a minyan holistically cannot be created through virtual zoom or or Skype or whatever but nevertheless technology does give us the chance to spread Torah I can tell you that in many places in the United States they do have virtual minyan in the narrow that they do not recite the kedusha or the Kaddish or anything that requires a minyan but at the same time they can recite the prayers that you could recite as an individual and they can do so in the context of a community and I think that has a very therapeutic effect you know people knock the internet all the time and indeed there's a lot to criticize in the internet and in my neighborhood there are constant wall posters talking about you're not allowed to have it and you know again one could discuss that that's maybe a topic for another time but in times of crisis I think we do understand why hakodesh Barco allowed such a technology to enter the world because it can really be a force for good it can keep us together even if we're not able to be physically together so I hope that everybody will keep up their connections whether it's by the low technology of the telephone or the more advanced the videoconferencing zoom and and the light that we keep up both our friendships and our Torah learning our spiritual developments the physic and courage that we can give to each other and God willing that will be a tremendous factor that will bring us through this very difficult and challenging time there's another point I want to underscore in terms of the silver linings within the cloud you know all of us know that the Torah has a law of needa that when a woman has her period there is a compulsory separation from marital intimacy the Torah provides it for seven days for various holic reasons it presently is at a minimum of 12 days a month and although we don't know the reasons for the Torah because that'll give us a possible understanding that the compulsory separation means that when husband and wife finally get reunited there's a certain excitement a certain sense of renewal the old saying absence makes the heart grow fonder and therefore a compulsory separation is a way of keeping a relationship alive and vibrant and exciting a relationship Dargis relish that way when the great runner made alia towards the end of his life he was asked was there anything he missed about living in huts loritts and he responded I missed the yearning I had to come to Erica's around and this is an interesting paradox you know when you're not here when you're not in usual I'm you're not even average as well you think about oh I'm so excited about the possibility of coming here once you're here you take even you wish a lion for granted so consequently one of the gifts of galoot in general is that can actually increase and accentuate our yearning for redemption our yearning for Eric Israel are pining for the bata Mukesh and that in turn becomes a merit that brings the basin McNish so let's look at it in terms of what's happening with corona many many schultz have closed down most of the orthodox synagogue in the united states are not functioning in Eretz Israel the number of Shults have closed down other places do continue to have many on him I'm not going to give any and he talked about this but one of the sad aspects of not having a Beit Knesset we're really really being deprived of minion of Philibert Seaboard of connecting to God in a very very special way but what that does is that makes us appreciate what it means to have a show to have a minion to have it's Seabourn and when this crisis is over and it will be over be as wrath of Shem and we go back to our shoulders we go back to our minyan IAM and next Pesach we'll go back to our crowded Pesach Sidora filled with children and get grandchildren in which people can coffin sneeze on each other with impunity right that'll be one of the great great great breakfasts that somebody can sneeze on you without you getting a heart attack at that point we'll appreciate the gift of family and the gifts of community and the gift of beit knesset and the gifts of its Fila bitsy boy and that'll become much much more precious in our eyes precisely because we've been deprived of it so in a sense all of these depravations are really preparing us for something better than something good and you here at Sun may be God's will that have come very very soon I want to talk a little bit about Pesach we do have holiday of Pesach coming you'd see at Messiah and I for those of you that follow this year and a few weeks ago part just for IRA I spoke about the four cups of wine I'm going to speak about the four cups of wine tonight it is not a repeat here it is a totally different here so you can actually look at Vera for one interpretation of the four cups of wine and tonight I'm going to give you a totally different interpretation so these are two separate cheo reom do not worry and that is all of us know that one of the mitts votes of the Seder night is that we are obligated to drink four cups of wine this is a rabbinic Commandments unlike the eating of matzah and the recitation of the Haggadah which is biblical the drinking of the four cups of wine is a rabbinic Mitzvah and interestingly enough the Babylonian Talmud does not give a reason for it that's very very fascinating it presupposes that there is such a mitzvah and it gives you many many hollow hugs regarding the four cups of wine but there is actually no statement in the Babylonian Talmud for the reason of the Turkana of the four cups of wine the closest we can come to is a reason that it is reflective of four different stages in the Seder itself there is the kiddush stage and that's one cup there's the Haggadah stage which is the second cup there is the benching which is the third cup and there is the howl which is the fourth cup meaning you're kind of working backwards since you have these four parts of the seder each one should be honored with a cup of wine but the well-known that even every child in fader generally knows is actually from the Talmud you shall me it is not in the bodily and the Talmud rashon me says that the reason for the four cups of wine is to correspond with four terms of redemption that a Shem said to Moshe Rubino when he told them to go and form the Jewish people I'm taking them out of Egypt votes ac I will take them out with eat salty I will save them Big Oil tea I will redeem them the Lacaze at some lilium I will take them unto me for a nation and even though there is a fifth phrase right afterwards --have 80th time lor its I will bring them to the lands we understand indeed that is why there is one opinion in the Gemara that says you're supposed to have five cups this is the opinion of Rebbe tar file and some of the gun I'm actually postulant like rabbit are fun and even the morale of Prague says that it's not a fee if they have a fifth Cup but it's a proper minute but basically the overwhelming majority of call Israel do not have a fifth Cup because we regard the Haiti as a messianic prophecy that will not be fulfilled until the final redemption and therefore we have Elijah's cup which we're holding for the coming of Messiah which is on the table but we actually do not do not drink so this is the well-known idea though that the four cups of wine or grape juice if necessary are connected they correspond to the are above the show notes of gula the four terms of redemption question is why do you need four terms of redemption redemption was one event took us out of myth ryeom what is the top width of four terms of redemption so a few weeks ago I went over one understanding which correlated it to the four Exiles tonight that we're going to have a different approach which is based on the Mesha hokhmah of Mayor simcha coming and he points out that although you'd see us mitzrayim may have been a unitary event there were four distinct dangers that the Jewish people faced and because there were four distinct dangers they needed as it were to be redeemed from each distinct Sakana and each lesson of gola corresponds to a particular danger that the Jewish nation faced danger number one was simply the danger to our physical survival a slave nation just as in the Holocaust we were beaten we were oppressed we were sometimes starved our children were thrown into the water our children were sometimes thrown into mortar and incorporated into buildings there was a real fear that there could have been a total genocide of the Jewish people over the course of time and that is a cunning number one be danger to our physical existence so kind of number two danger number two is a danger to our spiritual existence because I'll actually teach us that the Jewish people in metrium and we should have been there for four hundred years and we only stayed there for two hundred and ten years because we had reached the 49th level of impurity and we were slipping fast and according to cabbalistic teaching whatever the 50th level means once you hit the 50th level you have reached a point of no return and you're no longer redeemable the I resolve says when the Torah says they had to have matzah because they didn't have time to let their dough rise the I Rizal says that doesn't just mean power was kicking us out it means God said you have to leave now because if you stay even the few minutes that it takes for dough to become comments by rising you would have hit level 50 we would have fit level 50 in a number of minutes we don't even understand that that's how difficult spiritually we had to send it and indeed that's the one-fifth that survived remember that four fifths of the Jewish people were killed in the plague of darkness and that's understood to mean they had hit the Dean level so if danger number one is to our physical existence danger number two is spiritually we would have been totally assimilated to Egyptian culture Egyptian mores slavery takes a toll in terms of someone's spiritual existence and not only their physical one danger number three ramier simply says which is why we're going to have four leshawna's of cola is that a slave has no sense of history those of you from the United States may remember a number of years ago actually goes back to the 1970s quite a long time ago the phenomenon of roots Alex Haley wrote a book that was based on his African roots again some of it had been for the boy in there to be falsified but basically he talked about the story that the African slaves who were brought to the United States many of them had royal roots they go back to very very eminent families of their countries and one of the great tragedies of slavery is that a slave has no sense of where he comes from he has no sense of his history he has no sense of his roots he has no sense that he comes from people of accomplishments and greatness even if in fact they did it's as if you were just born out of nothing and that to a foot afflicted the Jewish people the Jewish people are slaves they come from the great righteous of Ramallah Kanako the shifting huh but in the course of being beaten and subjugated and humiliated at some point you just forget where you come from and as the old saying goes if you don't know where you come from you can't have a sense of where you need to go because you simply don't know who you are you were robbed of your essential identity and the fourth danger of slavery is lack of hope that the future can never be better person is so crushed by the vicissitudes of life by the affliction by the torture by the humiliations that they no longer have a vision of an alternative that can be different that can be better losing hope is a very very fundamental self-fulfilling prophecy even medically this is a little relevance of the coronavirus as well it's well documented it's like a reverse placebo effect if a person believes their situation is hopeless and they're not going to recover the body starts shutting down in irreversible steps that is the mind over matter that is the negative side of the psychosomatic condition in which the mind controls the body and when a person loses hope that's kind of the end of things so but kids are the measure karma is positing that the reason why we have for the show note of gula is because there were four dangers that Jewish people faced a danger to their physical life a danger to their spiritual essence a lack of a sense of history and a lack of hope that the future can ever be different can ever be better and I shall redeem this in spite of these four things but what's interesting is in order to be Zota in order to merits hakodesh Brokers Redemption there has to be some behavior on our parts that elicits that redemption now we don't have to meet God halfway because I'll use an expression a beautiful expression that God says open up for me like the eye of a needle and I will open up for you like the portals of the beit hamikdash which are very wide gate so we don't have to do that much but we have to do something in Kabbalah this goes by the Aramaic term ISA Russa della Tata there must be an awakening from below to open up the channels of benevolence ed goodness that comes from above the entire route that Allah Tata even if it's very small brings it's our roots our gelila the awakening from above so what was the attire that Allah Tata of B'nai Israel that elicited God's redemption what behaviors on our parts countermanded those four dangers that enabled God to therefore redeem us in whole from those four dangers so here the measure customer makes a beautiful connection there are various lists because after all the Jewish people were in the 49th level of impurity if they were in the 49th level of impurity then why would they why did they merit to be redeemed at all and there are various lists that talk about residual merits the Jewish people had dementia Kozma uses the list that appears in the Matilde now this might be slightly different than some of the listings that many people have heard of but we're going to use this one this is what he uses the Matilde tells us there were four merits the Jewish people had which enabled them to be redeemed from mitzrayim number one they did not intermarry they remained faithful to their wives wives remained faithful to their husbands there was preservation of the family units and that was a great merit that enabled us to be redeemed merit number two they did not speak Lashon Hara against each other now here I need to clarify what the mistletoe means the Michele that does not mean they were from and they were keeping the laws of the harvest I am NOT speaking loshon Hara rather this refers to more of a what you might call a group solidarity meaning to say we know in times of crisis when people's lives are at risk there is sometimes a tendency to turn against your fellow in order to secure temporary advantages from the ruling authority tragically this occasionally occurred even during the Holocaust itself where one Jew might inform on another Jew in order to get some food or freedom usually it was a loser and you see it usually did not pan out anyway but there was such an attempt when cuz I'll say the Jewish people did not speak loshon Hara it means they kept the United Front they did not turn against each other in order to secure some momentary advantage or privilege in fact even the people that we know is kind of the bad guys Dassin Anna veeram they were the troublemakers in the desert but you know they were taskmasters in Egypt and if a Jew did not meet his quota and the Egyptians looked at the numbers and they wanted to know who didn't do their job today does son in a veeram took a beating rather than reveal something about the Jewish slave that is why by the way they made the cut one wonders if four fifths of the Jewish people died so only the 1/5 that's the most right relatively speaking the most righteous left how does dozens of ariram leave the answer is they were quite righteous with respect to not turning against another Jew now I have a theory I have no proof of this that this was actually the source of their animosity to Moshe Rabbeinu I think from a human perspective we can understand it because here are these two guys who are in the trenches they're being beaten because they're standing up for their fellow Jews and here comes this guy Moshe of aina who number one grew up in the royal house of pyro never experienced slavery and number two then leaves Egypt and spends many years in Midian and now he comes back and he is the leader and he is the Big Shot and he is the king they could feel from a you know obviously this is totally incorrect thinking but from a human human perspective they could say why should he be our boss we're the guys who were beaten again totally erroneous improper sinful and Dustin and a veeram of course died with correct in the desert but from a human perspective one has to appreciate that even the negative figures in the door amid boy were quite righteous in certain respects so it's a good number one merit number one to review was faithfulness in the marital bond merit number two was the group solidarity love not speaking loshon Hara merits number three they didn't change their names they kept their Jewish names and married number four they didn't change their language they continued to speak the Hebrew language lashauwn ha'qodesh the holy tongue so here's what the metric Rahman was going to do quite ingeniously he's going to correlate these four behaviors to the four dangers that we faced and each of these behaviors counter man's the danger and that is what is called the Asura satola Tata the awakening from below that elicits God's Redemption and we'll start with the lesson Hara first if danger number one was to our physical survival the greatest antidotes physical danger is unity caring about each other not speaking loshon Hara which is really symptomatic of actors unity and Iraqis rail I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who said I'm not sure if it was that the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution we must all hang together or we shall surely hang separately and that's an important message I think for Chloe Israel it is understood that when there is updates when there is unity when there's a Vadis rail God is going to protect us from external enemies but when we are divided against ourselves we become weak we become vulnerable we become open to all the enemies that try to destroy us so therefore the not speaking watch in Hara which as I explained was not a matter of from tight it was a matter of solidarity and afters and about the Israel that is what ultimately protected us physically from being destroyed because when we turn against each other we are vulnerable this is why I've mentioned before that every year there are surveys in Israel in which people are asked to list the greatest problems that the Jewish people in the Jewish state face unfortunately we have quite a big list whether it's Iranian nuclear weapons Islamic fundamentalism bioterrorism this year of course we have a new thing to add to the list diseases which again god forbid might even be based on biological warfare who knows what's going on in China god forbid it shouldn't be that but you know who knows so there's a whole list of problems and that includes lack of water although workers have that problem is a little better this year we've had a lot of rain even the cost of housing and the cost of cottage cheese these are problems and that butter shortage was I still don't understand what that's based on but year after year the number one problem that a majority of respondents have identified and this is true whether they are religious or secular her ad Helium a conservative reform Sabra born in Israel or a Lim who have come to Israel his lack of unity and oxidants among the Jewish people people understands intuitively that when there's unity there is strength and when there's Maha loketh there is weakness and vulnerability so the great protection against our physical destruction is the not speaking loshon Hara which is again symbolic of a unity and a togetherness a united front now we then come to the second danger which is that of spiritual assimilation so here we're mayor simpler tells us the great bulwark that protects you spiritually is the holiness of the home the marital bonds you know people make a mistake this is something else to think about during the coronavirus people think that the most important institution in Judaism was the beta mikdash when we had it and today it would be the beit knesset which is called in the book of your Cesco abate McDonough at a miniature beit hamikdash but in reality the most important institution in judaism is the home the Byatt particularly the relationship of husband and wife and mother and father to children that is where the Shekinah resides as I'll say is ficha when a husband and a wife lived with Shalom the Shekinah is there that is the divine presence in many ways the Ramban writes that the various miracles in the temple such as the eternal light of the menorah that never went out and the blessing of the showbread that was on the table for more than a week and was warm and fresh when it was eaten a week later and the cloud of glory that represented a physical manifestation of the Shekinah those are the miracles of the temple the miracles of the Mishkan they actually corresponds with the miracles of the tent of Sara II me know which there was a blessing in her dough that corresponds to the Letham upon him her Shabbos candle a stood the whole week that's the near torment and there was a cloud of glory the ROM bond says that the miracles of the temple are just an imitation of the temple that we build in a Jewish home and perhaps this is a time in which we can focus on building the mikdash of the home and the measure Hoffman says it was the relationship of husband and wife which was based on faithfulness commitment trust dependability even if it was not in a religious context so to speak that gave them some spiritual connection to the Shekinah that prevented them from hitting the 50th level they still hit the 49th level they were pretty low but what kept them from hitting the 50th level was the faithfulness and connection of husband and wife right so if they're not speaking loshon Hara was the antidote to physical threat the faithfulness of husband and wife was the antidote to spiritual assimilation to the 50th level now the third danger was a slave lacks a sense of history he doesn't know where he comes from he has no sense that he comes from something significant in beautiful and important so here the metric Alchemist says not changing the name gives you a sense of history because typically we name people after relatives who are no longer well get organized and named after people who are no longer alive Spartan may name someone even after people who are alive but a name is generally a connection to the past so if somebody's let's say grandfather's was Moshe and they're called motion then they know they're connected to that earlier motion going all the way back to Moshe Rabbeinu keeping a name reminds you that you didn't come out of nothing you're connected to a past you're connected to people of stature people of goodness fact even the Yiddish diminutives that Ashkenazim use are so telling you know we sometimes call little children mobile mom Allah Ta'ala said Allah now people sometimes look at them as just interchangeable terms of endearment but not really bubala means little grandmother Tzeitel a little grandfather mama lo little mommy little mother tateleh meaning if you name a child out of for a grandfather grandmother the deceased mother deceased father every time you use that diminutive you're telling the child you come from somebody who preceded you you are standing on the shoulders of giants of goodness and holiness so once again therefore the not speaking loshon Hara is our behavior that protected us from physical threats the faithfulness of husband and wife prevented our spiritual assimilation not changing our names is a linkage to the past which gives us a sense of history and then we finally come to the last danger a person loses a sense of hope they lose a vision that the life can be different life can be better we countered that hopelessness by continuing to speak the Hebrew language because think about it there was a time in history in which Latin was the most widely spoken language in the world at the height of the Roman Empire which had conquered virtually all of the known world Latin was the official language today Latin is virtually extinct it used to be required in law school and the like and medical school no longer even the Catholic Church that was the last holdouts abolished the requirement of Latin for masses now there are some karate Catholics who don't accept the Pope and they continue to do the mass in Latin but they are the extreme fringe Latin is more or less an extinct language Assyrian Hittite these were big cultures there are academic shines that are still compiling Assyrian dictionaries but there's no real push for the revival of the Assyrian language or Latin why is that because those cultures are dead they're not coming back if they're not coming back then the only reason to study a language is for admir academic interest that's not going to attract a big following if indeed it was the case that the Jewish people had given up hope that they would come back to Eric Israel if indeed the Jewish people thoughts slavery is our lot in life and this is where we will always be then what would be the point of teaching my child Hebrew when I teach my child Hebrew what am I telling my in Egypt we're not going to be here forever there will come a time I don't know when I don't know if it'll be in my lifetime I don't even know if it'll be in your lifetime but there will come a time that God is gonna redeem us this is before Moshe Rabbeinu came right this is before this is all those years before there was a redeemer that God is gonna redeem us he's going to take care of us he is going to fulfill the promises that he made to Avram music and Yaakov so we need to have our language because we're not gonna be here forever one has to understand to teach my child Hebrew when I don't live in Eretz Israel is a great great affirmation of hope and that is why in many ways I have to give credit I think all of us have to give credit to Eliezer ben-yehuda who although he was not necessarily the most observant person and many rabbis had problems with him it was close to Dethklok but algebra Judas was really almost single-handedly revived Russia on our coda to revive the Hebrew language for everyday speech it was always a literary it was always the literary language of rabbinic literature to be sure but it was not a spoken language even among many many great rabbis and he brought it back and that's important because speaking Lashon ha'qodesh and I'm not going to get into the very subtle debate of the relationship of modern Everett and Russian our qodesh one can write books about this there have been books written on this but at a very minimum we can say Russian Turkish and the rich are very very close siblings or at least first cousins they're close enough that they're really you know if one understands one one can understand the other so so let's let's see the beautiful intricate maja that the shikaka sets up for LeSean notes of redemption her because of four dangers the four dangers are danger to physical survival spiritual assimilation lack of history lack of hope but the reason we merited the redemption from those four dangers was because there's four behaviors in our parts that complemented those dangers they're not speaking loshon Hara which is accurate in our body 3l protects us from the physical threat the faithfulness of the marital bonds keeps us spiritually holy the names that connect us to our forefathers and foremothers is our connection to history and our lovingly preserving loss Shona kodesh is our declaration of hope that we're not going to be here forever for the shownotes of redemption for dangers for behaviors so now I'll give you a fourth component what a fourth way that these four ideas intersect that is let's examine where we drink the cups during the Seder and let me point out it's very important that you drink them in the proper places I mean you can't just start the Seder drink four cups of wine is let's get the wine over with you have to drink them exactly where it says and I don't need that not only drink not only drink them where it says it but pour the wine you'll notice that you we actually pour the wine let's say way before we drink it you can't just pour the wine before you drink it because the market for example has to be recited over wine even though it may be an hour or so till you drink it so please be sure all of you that you follow the instructions of the Haggadah both in terms of when you drink and when you fill your cup because you're reciting things over a cup of wine just like for kiddush right you wouldn't recite kiddush and then fill your cup of wine before you drink it you fill your cup of wine before kiddush so the same thing is true for the four Magid before benching and before the recitation of of hala now the first cup is the cup of kiddush kiddush is a term that means holiness sanctification that corresponds to the holiness also of husband and wife in the marital units so the first cup could be seen if that marriage is called key to him sanctification so the first cup is a celebration not only of God's Redemption but of our behavior and faithfulness of husband and wife that enabled kedusha which therefore saved us from spiritual assimilation the second cup is on market market of course is the story of the Exodus what is the market about our history our past that corresponds to not changing our names it's a celebration of that merit because the Magadh reminds us we don't come out of nowhere we have a history we have a vote with whom a sham made cabinets we have ancestors to Hashem did miracles and when we have a sense of that history that gives us optimism that our sham is with us so the second cup is the connection to history the third cup is Birkat Hamazon now this the association is a little more subtle but Birkat Hamazon is of course an expression of gratitude to God for giving us food and giving us sustenance now pure be about tells us as a Oh Kaka I'm sorry Isaiah Shir who is a truly wealthy person a Sameach Cassell Co when you're happy with your lot wealth is not defined by how much you own but actually by how little you need one might say instead of how much you have it's how little can make you happy and the greatest brother in life is to be some a octopus oka now if beer Gotama zone teaches me gratitude and when there is gratitude I am Sameach Patel cow I no longer live a life of jealousy rivalry rivalry or competition so consequently I'm able to have actors and unity with my fellow man because I no longer look at them as a threat I no longer look at life as a zero-sum game where it's your game is my loss I can live life in with a sense of Shalom friendship cooperation collaboration and that in turn corresponds to the united front which protected us physically and ours of course was we didn't speak loshon Hara finally we come to hallo now if you study this there got and indeed that it's proper to study that gutter before Pesach you will notice that one of the anomalies in the Haggadah is that the Hallel of Seder night is actually splits into two unequal halves the first two chapters of Hallel are actually recited before the second cup and they are the conclusion of magadh the narrative of each cioth metrium the rest of how well is recited after the meal after the up become n o after benching on the fourth time so we actually split how well what is the significance of the split of hallo so the riche item explained that the first three chapters of Hallel are talking about the exodus indeed the second chapter says but say see Israel me mitzrayim when they left with Ryan they are past oriented and because they are past oriented they are connected to the market that deals with the past events obviously estimates ryeom but the how well on cup number four is no longer about UC Atmos ryeom it is the Hallel anticipating and envisioning the future Redemption and here I just want to make a little commercial about that you know sometimes many people simply turn out after the afikomen kind of anot we've done the afikomen we've we've done the market we've had four cups more we haven't had the fourth cup yet we've had three cups of wine and in the how they'll you know you're not even allowed to talk not allowed to offer interpretations once you're saying hallo you can't be mop stick so there's not a lot to do now one thing that I highly recommend and I'm sure many many many people do it is this is a part of the Seder that you can sing hello can be put to very very beautiful songs and this might be a time for singing but if you don't know them to join em and you're not you're not that conversant with Hebrew so how L can be a little less interesting for some people so I know people maybe they're not so religious necessarily who kind of leave after the afikomen which is unfortunate because they're missing the fourth cup and they're missing challah the one has to understand that there's something very elevated very special very wholly about the hollow on the fourth cup because until now we were focusing on the past but now we leave the past we leave the details of the exodus of Egypt in our mind in our heart are focused on an ultimate redemption the redemption that we haven't yet experienced but we begin to envision in our minds eye and that brings us joy and that is why by the way the howl of the fourth cup is preceded by the pouring of the cup of Elijah and by the opening of the door welcoming aliawan avi now countless parents have told their children the owner he comes to every Seder and he takes a sip of illios cup and if you watch the cup carefully you will see the wine go down and the parent might bump the table or whatever it is I'm not sure how many parents still do that but when I was when I was young that was a common little trick now just to set the record straight there is indeed a metric that says Eliyahu Hanavi comes to every Pesach Seder and this is actually a punishment because at some point when he felt that the Jewish people were so unfaithful to God that God ought to replace them and only ya'know he said they are no your covenants Hashem said oh yeah well I'm going to show you they keep my covenant you're gonna have to go to every bris Eliana up he comes to every bris and you have to go to every Pesach Seder because even Jews who aren't so religious try to keep a Pesach Seder so there is indeed how lucky' Madrasi sources literally Johanna becomes to every Seder but I don't believe there's any source that he drinks from the cup okay but be it as it many elyo another who is a Leo and avi he's the one that's going to announce my here so we're kind of saying okay we finished the Seder of the past we're now focused and the Seder of the future but what is that but an affirmation of hope that things will be better life is not gonna stay this way forever and ever so look at the beautiful intricate structure that we have here for the show note of redemption because there were four dangers that we faced and the four dangers that we faced were complemented by four behaviors in our part and they are positioned throughout the Seder although not exactly in the same order the Coase of kiddush is a celebration of ki Duchenne the marital bond the coast of maggot is our connection to history that correspondence we're not changing our names the coast of Bharata Mazzone facilitate facilitates solidarity and octants because it gives me the sameas Patel Co the happiness in what God has given me which takes away jealousy and rivalry and competitiveness and finally the how well after the Seder is the affirmation of hope that there will be a better time and that correspond to the Jews speaking Russian our Kadesh which was their reformation of hope that things are going to be better now it's interesting we sometimes look at the Jews who left Egypt and we say oh they were so bad the 40-minute levels of impurity well even though they were in the fourth level of impurity they had these fours of who yolks let's ask ourselves how much of the Jewish world has these fours to Cleo - even today so good number one was being faithful in our marriage and not intermarrying the sureno to our great pain and suffering least in the United States which are more familiar with those numbers at least one out of two marriages with a Jewish partner are two annunzio and in some smaller areas it is as high as seven out of ten what a tragedy it is people don't like to compare it to the Holocaust but in a very very real way of course it's unintentional and not castigating people but in a very real way the number of Jews that are lost through the scourge of intermarriage is really a Holocaust millions and millions of Jews so that's of course we don't have the seconds of course not speaking much Inara which is unity and solidarity among the Jewish people all of us know that the Second Temple was destroyed because of hatred and polarization among Jews and it cannot be rebuilt until we overcome that hatred and polarization and here all of us know how much divisive nosaka locusts how much synonym exists not only between religious and secular but among all the different gradations of religious in which we don't talk to each other we don't interact we don't learn from each other we don't respect each other anyone to the right of me is a fanatic and anyone to the left of me is a heretic and not be chorus it's only where I am whoever the is that is the MS and sometimes that could be so narrow that it might just be one person called me me the whole world is crazy so we don't have that circus the third connecting to our history so many Jews have no sense of where they come from when I used to teach law school one of my colleagues who was a religious law professor told me that after class one day a boy went over to him and said hey I know you're a rabbi also did you ever hear of this guy elijah of Vilna people tell me he was like a big-shot rabbi this is the Vilma cup so the person said the professor said it was a rabbi said the gonna Vilna the greatest of the greatest of the greatest president yeah he's like my great-great-great grandfather I heard he was like a big-shot rabbi in Europe didn't even know the Vilna Gaon our roots we just don't have a sense of where we come from and hope that the future will be different well maybe the Jewish people are not in despondency maybe that's not the issue but there's certainly a lot of complacency here we have a State of Israel that has been in existence for more than 70 years our forefathers our foremothers yearned and pined for the chance to perhaps see a rich Israel once in their lifetime for the chance to see some dirt that somebody brought back to Poland and here the person might be just 12 hours away granted and uncomfortable 10 or 12 hour ll flight but you know that's the biggest deprivation of the world and we give lip service to mushiya's but do we really want much she has to go they thought the joke it's the kind of a sad joke but it may have a kernel of truth about a guy who was planning his vacation really just you and the day before his vacation was she came and the guy had to cancel his plans so he was upset so his wife said how upset but she especially you know he kept us waiting 2000 years he couldn't come two weeks later I could have gotten my vacation meaning we have to ask ourselves again I include myself I don't I don't mean to lecture to anybody but we have to ask ourselves do we really want much yes to come are we kind of happy the way things are no life could be convenient life could be simple and I don't want all of these changes so in a sense do we have hope for the future or do we kind of assume that with Glatt Kosher restaurants and Pesach programs and voyages whatever it would be we have everything we need so the point I want to make is that we sometimes look down at that generation that left mature I am because they were in the Florida level of tilma and yet they had four Saku yachts that we don't always have in our own lives I think they were faithful in their marriages to Jews there was group solidarity avati through Al there was a strong connection to history and there was hope for the future again to go back to when I said at the very beginning of my remarks some of this once again might be the silver lining in the dark cloud of the difficult situation that we face because maybe this type of adversity makes us number one cherish our relationships to others and number two makes us less complacent and less satisfied with the life that we have because we can see how difficult it is and perhaps this can spur us on to yearn for mushiya and gula so even the virus can be a show vehicle fashion to bring us closer to each other and closer to the almighty so I want to wish you all a service Sameach even if Pesach might be a little more lonely than it usually is but you should know that is the Jewish people we are still united in soul and in spirits even if we're not going to be physically connected and most importantly you're not alone Hashem will be with you the Seder night just as that first VCs mitzrayim an evil al Malaki sham said it was i and no way no angel an evil o son of an evil Oh surely if no emissary so to every say tonight were weary experience yet see at Smith's ryeom right each person must regard themselves as if they were taken out of betraying God is going to be with us that's very very nice and therefore we have to know we are not alone we are never alone have a good young to thank [Music]