Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Pesach and the Preservation of Hope in Redemption

[Music] everybody hello thank you for coming it's good to have a little bit of a bigger crowd in the uh not yet post corona world but i'm approaching uh the post corona world uh today shir is uh dedicated uh once again foolish leima young man that is going through hard times but god willing uh he should get better and stronger and he should have a refuge leima bisog israel again we very much appreciate the support of torah that his family is giving this year and ibanez generally again without doing too many commercials uh is uh still involved in uh trying to get uh money for uh pesach needs most and if you go to their page you can find a link to be able to donate uh staka is a great mix for the whole year and especially around pesach it's even a greater mitzvah so hashem we should all be zoka to at least fulfill vicariously the statement in the haggadah all who are hungry come and eat if we're not able to have them physically at our houses through our economic support we will be giving them the ability to have a wonderful wonderful youngtif uh this of course is the week before pacemaker only a few days to go uh i'm a little surprised when i'm unable to give a share and that you're able to go to a share but uh i post it you know doesn't want to be in the vital torah for anything uh so i'm going to talk a little bit about an aspect of the seder and i i want to preface i want to talk about the four cups of wine but i want to preface this because if you're going to say hey didn't i talk about the four cups of wine a few weeks ago i did but this share is not a repeat of that this is a different chair so you can actually listen to both the sheer and parshas foieira which happen to be about the dollar cosos and the share i'm giving tonight they are going to be two different shiorim and what i want to talk about tonight is that we know of course that one of the great mitzvos of the seder is the mitzvah of drinking four cups of wine this is not a torah requirement this is a rabbinic requirement and it actually has two different components and it's very important to know that you have to do both components there is a mitzvah to drink four cups of wine yes but there's also a mitzvah to recite the various portions of the haggadah over a cup of wine in other words nikhlau in the kiev of dalai kosos is you must recite kiddish over wine you must then recite magid over wine you must recite benching over wine you must recite halal over wine now this is an important point to keep in mind you'll notice for example when you look in the haggadah it'll say before the manistana fill up the second cup now you may be wondering why do i have to fill up the second cup now i'm not going to drink it for another hour and a half or so why can't i just fill up the cup before i drink it no the haggadah knows what it's talking about the instructions know what they're talking about because it's not enough just to drink the cup at the end you have to have an amira al-akhos you have to have a recitation over a course of wine so there needs to be a cup of wine upon which you're saying the gutter not only that the brisker of says ahirish that many people don't accept that the cup of recitation has to be the same cup as the cup that you're drinking so he gives this example let's imagine that uh i filled up a cup for the manishtana and this is my cup of wine over the mugget and then at the end of market the whole cup spills and i got to fill a new cup to be able to drink the briskerov says you're not you'll say drinking that cup because you didn't say the haggadah over that cup what you have to do is when you fill a second cup you got to say the haggadah again in order that the coast that you're drinking from will be the coast upon which there is an amira again we don't personally like like that prisca rub but that just shows you how important it is in fact i don't want to get into the halachic details too much but those of you that learned our vape sauce may recall that toastposts in the beginning of our repsorem raises a shyla can i be mozilla let's assume we're poor and i only have enough wine that i could drink four cups of wine i'm conducting the seder and there's not enough wine for you so tosos has eight sud that just like i could be mozi you in kittish i could say kiddush for you i could be mozi u and dalit kosos now the riskarov says how is that possible you can never be mozy a person in akhila eating is very personal i mean i can't be might see you in matzah i can't eat masa for you so the brisker ruff says that tosos actually had it said that the wholeness of delta ptosis is only the recitation over a coast so i could do the recitations shomayaka ona tosa says no because there's also a mitzvah of drinking and that requires that everybody drinks so these are two different ideas within delacosus but what is the macor what is the source of the rabbinic obligation of four ptosis of wine interestingly enough although everybody knows the reason i know i know that you know the reason the talmud bubbly does not give any reason at all meaning as far as the talmud babli is concerned the only reason for dallatos is because you have four parts of the haggadah that there should be an amir al-akhos kiddish magit that's all the babli says that since the haggadah is divided into these four sections each section has a coast of bracha that you recite the famous reason that everybody knows that the reason we have four cups of wine is because of four terms of redemption that is actually from the talmud xiaomi that is not from the talmud babali but it's a talmud you shall me that is quoted both by rashi and by his grandson uh the rashbom or shmuel ben mayer in their commentaries to arvieb salkin and this is a very famous you shall me so and pat yourselves on the back you know sometimes a person learns in yeshiva and they say oh i don't know any you shall mees i never learned you shall me well here's a ushami that you actually know and the ushammi says that the reason we have four cups of wine is because when hashem told moshe that he's taking the jewish people out of mithraim hashem used four of the show notes of redemption for hosseisi i will take you out or take them out salty i will save you virgo i will redeem you i will take you for me unto what people and even though there is a fifth term i will bring you to the land it is understood that that fifth term is not referring to even the not israel yet it's referring to the ultimate messianic redemption when all of the jews will be coming to erect israel and we are not there yet unfortunately and that's why we have the cup of elio which we're not ready to drink uh it's kind of in reserve elio is the announcer of mashiach right when mashiach comes we're going to have that coast kamishi that we're actually going to drink the mayor of yamino may it even be this year that we will drink a leo's elios cup but be it as in may the very famous reason that even children in school know four cups of wine are because of the four of the shonos of gaoula now the question is this given the fact that cs mitzrayim was a unitary event god took us out of betrayal 15th of nisan why are there four expressions of redemption it was one thing yet see us mitzrayim why is he seeing triam described in four leshonos of goula so the meforshim have many many different approaches the natsiv actually says this is then the civ actually says that that's because the redemption of the jews was sequential it actually did take place in four stages over a period of time the first stage and another is during the marcos and they say it was madayak i mean again it would be you'd really need a powerpoint or some type of blackboard to go over this but the native carefully reads the various sukim of the makos and even though pyro was always saying no no no no no then it differentiates different levels of no and the nasiv actually says that pyro was conceding various things during various times of the marcos so he says the first redemption was at some point and it shows some somewhere in the makos uh they're stopped they're stopped imposing what's called abodas perez avodah's perrick is backbreaking labor in other words he ameliorated the harshness of the conditions of slavery but they were still slaves the second lesson of redemption he took away the slavery but didn't give them the right to leave the third is pesach they finally had the right to leave and the fourth is mata torah i will take you unto me for a nation so the native understands that the four leshonos of gaula actually correspond to four stages in our redemption as people a nullification of the perak the backbreaking labor eventually the cessation of the slavery eventually the ability to leave and of course the ultimate freedom as we discussed last week is receiving the torah that gives us direction and guidance and structure for our lives and that's part of the freedom that's very important to underscore that the fourth washon of goula is montantore so that's it so besides the egg and besides the counting of the omer drinking the fourth cup is already a connection to mata matantora this is how the native learns and again he very very ingeniously shows in paro's various refusals that he's also making concessions along the along the way but the mecha ramirez has a different approach and he says that although you'd see us mitrayam was a unitary event there were four dangers that the jewish people faced for which they needed redemption a slave faces four dangers to their existence and hashem needed to redeem us from each of those four dangers and the four dangers he identifies are number one spiritual assimilation is danger number one now granted assimilation in the westernized sense presumably did not exist in egypt because if you're a slave you're despised it's not like they're welcoming you to enter into the ranks but moral assimilation there certainly can be you're living in a decadent immoral licentious culture that egypt was famous even within a degenerate ancient world as kind of being like the worst of the worst uh in so many ways and that permeates eventually you're living as a slave in that society and indeed we are told that quali israel were deeply affected in a negative way by their stay in mitzrayim they were in the 49th level of impurity actually four fifths hit level 50 and they died the one fifth that was redeemed was level 49 and they were slipping rapidly like the famous statement that they didn't have time to let their dough rise and that's why it had to be baked as matzah the arizona says it is not because of pyro kicking them out it's because they would have hit we don't even know what this means a few minutes a few minutes they would have hit level 50 they would have been gone so god had to take us out 190 years early because of that so we were very very deeply affected by the spiritual immorality of mitzrayims that's the first sakhana for which we needed redemption not to hit level 50. the second sakana is that of physical annihilation jews died in egypt they died of slavery they died of genocide babies were thrown into the water babies were thrown into buildings as they were being built and besides the liberated genocide people die of disease like think about the concentration camps it's not only the nazis murdering but so many jews died of of sickness of of overwork of starvation so the second sakana of slavery is literally sakura to your physical life we needed a redemption the third sankana is a bit more subtle and that is some of you well i guess you know most of you are young maybe you remember i remember i think you're too young too but in the 1970s there was a bigger maybe the 1980s in the united states there was a black writer alex haley who was interested in genealogical research in his to his family and he discovered that although his ancestors were slaves in the united states but if you go back into africa they were kings they were monarchs they were very powerful wealthy uh people and he wrote a book roots exploring that and that became a mini-series and a very popular phenomenon turns out some of the information he falsified but that's not that that's not important for our purposes but one of the points he made which was a very telling point is that a slave does not have a sense of history does not have a sense of coming from something that in slavery parents are often separated from children right you take the kids sell them one place father is another place they don't even know and a child grows up without an awareness that they come from something they don't have a sense of history they don't have a sense of roots they don't have a sense of being connected to something good and noble and so too the jewish people in mitzvah would face a danger that they wouldn't realize their connection to the glories of avraham and yaakov they wouldn't realize they're kashivas and there is an old saying that if a person doesn't know where they've come from they don't really know where to go so the third sakhana is a slave has no roots has no sense of connection has no past has no history and that's a very devastating thing not to have a sense that you come from something and then the final sakhana the meshach says is lack of hope you know you go through something day after day week after week month after month year after year decade after decade and at some point you just give up at some point you naturally would conclude things are not going to get better this is life and this is the way it is the importance of hope to a human being is even true in the most literal physical sense there's a lot of medical research that indicates that when a patient comes to the conclusion that their condition is hopeless the body itself starts shutting down in ways that are not reversible it's kind of you might you might call it a reverse placebo if i believe i'm not going to get better then i'm not going to get better even superstitions people who believe in voodoo they think that if someone sticks a needle through my effigy to my doll you know i'm gonna die which of course is garbage if they believe it and they see somebody do it they get a heart attack and they die because they believe it so it actually affects them hope is so important like there's no serious you're saying i don't remember the exact yiddish it says when you have hope you have everything when you don't have hope you have nothing hope is what keeps you alive in the holocaust it was certainly the case that hope is what kept people alive you know suicides brooklyn suicides were relatively rare among jews in the holocaust but among religious jews it was almost zero maybe maybe was zero i don't know i don't know for sure and besides the halakhah because it's also i mean many jews were not religious anyway but the concept was a jew had a sense of hope because of their moon and hashem that somehow things will get better maybe not in my lifetime but it's going to come and it's that hope that said i'm not going to give up israel was of course established on the basis of that hope you know hope is so important so the metro identifies again why do we have four of lesonos because there are four sarcanos that we face spiritual assimilation physical annihilation lack of connection to our history lack of help by the way with respect to history let me just recount uh an anecdote that jonathan rosenblum wrote about it was probably maybe 20 years a long time maybe 20 years ago but it was a story i never forgot uh he was describing an interview that al jazeera had with the palestinian terrorists who had been languishing in an israeli jail for many years and uh the terrorist was released in one of our swap programs okay that's very controversial okay uh but he was interviewed by al jazeera so the interviewer asked him were there times in your long imprisonment that you gave up hope and you figured you'll never be able to fight israel israel is so much more powerful and the terrorists said yes there were times in which i looked at the israeli army and i said the weapons are better the army is better the soldiers are better who are we will never be able to defeat them but then something changed my mind i mean listen listen to the story i mean i it would be funny if it wouldn't be tragic it's actually a tragic story he says it was during pesach the jewish passover and i saw my jewish guard eating bread eating pizza and i said to the guard you can't eat bread during this week and the guard said what do i care about what happened three thousand years ago doesn't affect my life and the terrorists said the terrorist said that's when i knew we would win god forbid because we care about what happened three years ago and they the jews don't know but it just shows you that when you're disconnected from the history god forbid uh this type of thing could could be articulated and and be thought so now the mesh man moves to a new step he's linked up the four lesonos of redemption with the four sakhanas but now he introduces a very important idea in order to merit hashem redeeming you there has to be a behavior on your part that addresses the problem now you don't have to meet god halfway but you have to meet god some of the way this is encapsulated in the famous rashem says open up your heart to me like the eye of a needle a little hole and i will open up like the doorway of the ante chamber of the ulam of the basa mikhna in kabbalah this is called isarusa de la tata that means there must be an awakening from below that brings down the asarusa delia the awakening from above god expects us to do something when we do something and we've done as much as we're able to do as puny as as ineffectual as our actions may be that enables the bracha to come down if we do nothing hashem will not necessarily bring that prophet down so if there were four dangers for what for which we needed four redemptions there must have been four behaviors we see denu from up from our side that enabled us to deal with those four dangers now what could that be so the metric brings a maxilta now this is a hazel that appears in different versions so the version that he's using may be a little different than the version you're familiar with but he's using the magilta the makota says that although the jewish people had reached the 49th level of duma they were even idol worshipers except for the tribe of libya the men did not practice circumcision except for the tribe of labor they were pretty bad but they had four foundational merits that gave them a zakhus to be redeemed now the four of the maquilta are number one gdurum the arrios uh they were faithful to their wives and did not intermarry or intermingle sexually with the egyptians the women did not the jewish women did not go to the egyptian men and the jewish men did not go to the egyptian women they were faithful in their marriages and they were not nichol in iraq's that's why rashi points out that when the torah describes a man that was the son of an egyptian man and a jewish woman rashi says that was the only case in all the years in mitzrayim of a relationship between a jew and an egyptian it didn't happen ghidorah and biarajas that was the khus number one so who's number two they did not speak lashon hara against each other now here i want to explain this a little bit this does not mean they were from and they were learning the and they were calling the shmira hotline that's not really contextually what this is referring to it could very well be that in terms of gossip they were gossiping hey you know what you know yaakov did the other day what it really refers to is a sense of group solidarity in not turning against your fellow jew to get some concession from the enemy you know in the holocaust even superimposed on the awesome grief of the holocaust the unbelievable loss of six million and more jews a loss that we have not recovered from and we continue to grieve and mourn and remember there was another tragedy on top of that tragedy although hashem it was not large scale but it was occasional in which there were jews who occasionally felt they needed to collaborate with the nazis in terms of giving away whereabouts of other jews now they did it because they thought it would be the only way they could stay alive and their families could stay alive and people did things that were totally wrong but they but they did it because they thought they had no choice most of the time by the way it didn't really help them the nazis got whatever information they wanted to get and then they killed them too but there was this notion of collaboration in miss ryan when it says we didn't speak latin harvard it means we had the united friends we didn't turn against each other we didn't go to the egyptians and report on other jews even the bad guys you know dustin and ivira dustin vaviram are the proverbial troublemakers in the token uh they constantly berate moshe rabbenu they died with korach in korek's rebellion in our tradition we don't look at dustin valveira as you know righteous good people and yet think about this for a moment justin bieber were the one fifth that made it out when 80 percent died and tell us something very amazing about these rashaam dustin villarreal doesn't if you have vehement were taskmasters their job was to supervise the quotas that jews were producing and if any jew didn't produce quotas because the egyptians had records of how much had to be produced like the germans the egyptians demanded of dustinville iran who are the people who didn't do their job dozens of vietnamese refused to reveal that information they got beaten they got whipped before they would turn against another troop that's what it means they didn't speak lashinar in fact i have upset i never saw this as a story but i don't know i i i feel that it it's actually true that part of why dustin and avira had so much resentment towards moshe robeno you can understand it from a human perspective because here you have these two guys who are in the trenches they're getting beaten and beaten and beaten because they're standing up for their people and here comes moshe rabbenu was raised in the palace of para and then he goes away the mid-juniper for many many years and he shows up and god makes him the leader well they kind of resent it they say you know we've been here being beaten for the jewish people and here you have a guy who who spent his early years in luxury in the royal house and his adulthood he spent somewhere else i think psychological again this is not a religion i mean obviously hashem chose moshe peter so there's no question about it but from a purely human perspective you can almost understand a little bit what's bugging dust and we have even the point is that you know we shouldn't just dismiss them as low lights for cheyenne they did a lot they were most renesh for ami israel that counts so when it says the second sukhoi says they didn't speak in hara i would not define that as like a year as shamayim type of thing in fact how could there be a shamayim if they were idol worshippers but it refers to a group solidarity and an artist the third merit that they had they kept their jewish names they did not take egyptian names they kept the names that were part of their traditions and the fourth is they kept their language they continued to speak la shona kodesh so here's what the metro customer is going to do he's we we've identified four dangers these four behaviors counteract in part each of these four dangers that's going to be the linkage and the connection so let's go over this the first danger that i mentioned is spiritual assimilation and indeed the jewish people were devastatingly affected by this it did affect them they were nimshaft to avoid zara and they didn't do brisk milan they reached the 49th level of tuma but somehow at least 20 percent kept their nose above the mud what spark of godliness enabled them to hold on a little bit longer it was the relationship of husband and wife because i'll say the faithfulness of the marital bonds not going into intermarriage or sexual relationships because i'll say when a man and a woman dwell in peace in accordance with god's law even him the divine presence is with them so yes they were affected they were dragged into the mount but the little spark of holiness that remained in their home was that which sustained them it kept them above the water that was the sarusa villa that was the awakening from below that elicited the redemption from above the second danger was to our physical survival here not speaking all right again i don't mean in the spiritual way that it protects you from service although that could be true too but i mean group solidarity and actus i believe it was benjamin franklin who said at the time of the american revolution that he said to his co-revolutionists we must hang together for if not we shall surely hang separately we can take wisdom from the gentiles and it's very very well known that when there's unity when there's togetherness when we'd all turn against each other hashem gives us a power to prevail against the external enemies that tried to destroy us you know every few years in israel some of the newspapers run surveys of people naming what are the number one problem that israel faces and you know and unfortunately we have quite a long list of problems ranging from the threat of nuclear war with with iran uh terrorism uh you know gaza um even the the cost of housing uh water water is actually perennial it goes to the background but water is actually a major issue in the state of israel but the number one problem that's always listed in all the surveys and this is true whether the respondents are kareni because they get some pyradine response hasidic secular datilium across the whole board is lack of unity in um israel because there is a real real sense that when we don't have actus we're vulnerable we're weak now arctis in some ways is kind of what mark twain once said about the weather uh he said everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it uh you know after you know all of us love actress uh the truth of the matter is actors is a difficult thing it's very very difficult on one level because there is such a thing as truth and uh if people are espousing ideas that are against the torah against god so we have to oppose ideas we can't just say i'm okay you're okay and everything is fine you know there are things that one has to oppose but it shouldn't degenerate into personal demonization it shouldn't be in which i'm calling this guy a molecule and this guy will be in this guy co-fair we can argue about ideas and we can oppose ideas and that's a good thing every daffodil of gamora is filled with much logan's and discussion you know there's a puzzle in michelin and i think i probably have said it many many times but it's such an important passage that i think people should put it on their refrigerator door uh i would say bathroom window but you can't have a pussic in the bathroom window a bathroom mirror and that is as water reflects the face that you show the water so too the heart of one person reflects that which you show that person what does he mean very simple if i have a pool of water and i look at the water and it reflects my face so the face i will see in the water is the face that i show the water i smile i will see a smiling face greeting me i frown angrily i will see an angry face so muhammad says beautiful puzzle the same way the water reflects the face that you show it a human being will reflect back that which you show that human being you show a human being that you respect them that you like them that you care about them that you're making you consider them as significant they will feel the same thing about the same way about you you denigrate you communicate that they're nothing then that's how they're going to feel about you so part of why particularly in the state of israel the religious secular debates never never makes progress it never moves it never gets better is because the nature of the mideast culture and it's loved after religious this is kind of israeli culture mideast culture is that if you don't agree with me you're in you're either an idiot or you're evil so each side looks at the other a demonic way so the the religious world looks at the secular world as amalek and evil and the secular world looks at the religious world as parasites or whatever it would be and it just spirals downward and downward and downward because there is never and it's a fulfillment of the puzzle upon him upon him cain lay for other let me give you an uh an example of this a few years ago when there was the first proposal about uh abolishing the draft exemption for yeshiva students so there was a huge huge rally of hundreds of thousands of people to oppose it and rick hashem at least in that case in that case it was a peaceful rally etc there were no riots etc that happened a little a little later and as things go it was good because it didn't turn into anything negative but i think to myself sometimes and there are a lot of speeches how benign tyra shouldn't go into the army i don't want to get into the substance of that issue and you know bitter torah tori is what keeps the jewish people alive and all of that is eminence i certainly believe it but what would have been if at the end of the rally after you talked about all the reasons why we need people in yeshiva which we do we then would have recited to hillary in a prayer for the army blessing the kaiolin for all that we they that they do acknowledging that they do so much for us yeah we we we we emphasize that we need torah yes yes but we acknowledge what would have happened if half a million people from the kharadi yeshiva world would have prayed that hashem should shower his brah on the army well what would have happened i believe his mashiach would have come and i am i and i'm almost saying that without exaggeration because that would have achieved actus hashem but i also recognize the importance of what you're doing and then kamayam upon him upon him if i recognize the army and the medina and the government and all of the infrastructure that they create that makes it possible for religious life to flourish then they too will recognize the importance of what religious jews are doing and instead of the downworld downward spiral into endless recrimination you would actually have the opposite effect in which each side understands we're ultimately on the same team and we ultimately on some level have the same goal so the metric says again i don't want to lose the main thread here that the not speaking washing horror is equals group solidarity equals israel and that is what protects you from the physical threat that you face from the outside you know we're going to recite in the haggadah the famous beautiful passage and that which has stood for us and our forefathers in all generations it is not only one that tries to destroy us but in every generation there are those who try to destroy us so shalom is always translated it is not only one that tries to destroy us the swastimas homiletically has a little bit of a hasidic translation instead of translating it is not only one he translates it it is only the fact that we're not one that is going to destroy us meaning if you have that actus you're going to have that shamira so that is how we dealt that is our hisiris that is our arousal that is our awakening for the second danger the third danger lack of history not knowing where you're coming from the mesh says that's addressed by not changing your names because jewish names are always a link to the past of course ashkenazim today only name after people who are no longer alive severed him who will name after people who are alive but it's still a connection to the past a father or grandfather etc or you go back to the biblical figures avraham you're right avraham could be your uncle abraham could be a ramavina either way you're telling a child you don't come from noah nobody you come from great people good people noble people remember your connection to your past yeah you're a slave right now but you have a history even the yiddish diminutives are so significant you know we call a kid bubble uh people don't realize people just think these are just things you call kids no i mean bubble that means little grandmother little bubby meaning if i name my daughter after my mother right let's say the same name so i'll call her little you know your little grandmother so the child when he realizes that they're connected zegala little zadie tatula little daddy little abba mamala these are significant they remind a person you're connected and here i do want to add that uh i think i need to say this that what if a person is a ger they were born non-jewish and they're not genealogically connected to avraham yitzhak what are their roots what are their family so i want to make two points about this point number one is that aguero is always called ben or bas avraham because the definition of a child of avraham is not if you're physically descended when you embrace their lessons and their teachings you are the child of abraham so you are a child of avraham even if you're not physically descended from avraham the second point i want to make though is that even the non-jewish origin is not to be disparaged there were many many things that a guy got from their non-jewish family that carries over perhaps it was honesty courage integrity authenticity these are gifts you have roots those roots are something to be proud of i personally know the parents the non-jewish parents of people who converted to judaism who did a lot for the jewish people some of them helped jews during the holocaust etc so whether you're jewish or non-jewish you have a history that you can connect him and that can give you strength and by preserving the names of the family that deals with the history then we come to the fourth danger hopelessness a feeling that things are never going to change are never going to get better here the mesh says this was addressed by continuing the speaking of the hebrew language lashana as an aside the relationship of modern hebrew to lashana kodesh is actually a very very fascinating study there's a whole book by one of my colleagues narasimha rabbi rouven klein which he devotes a few chapters to this topic modern hebrew is not exactly the same as washington but it's pretty close it is pretty close if you knew modern hebrew well you wouldn't have that much difficulty understanding the biblical hebrew and and and and the like so we can without getting into the subtle distinctions we can talk about the preservation of language as addressing the issue of hopelessness why is that so very simple there are a lot of languages in the world that at one point were widely spoken but are now fundamentally extinct latin latin was the language of the roman empire which occupied most of the known worlds it was a language spoken by millions of people today latin is still studied as an academic subject maybe but as a spoken language it's extinct even in the roman catholic church which was the last holdout for latin they abolished the latin mass a number of decades ago i mean there is like ultra orthodox catholics kharani catholics who don't they don't accept the pope they consider the pope perform so they still do a latin mass but they are eugene the official position of the catholic church is nobody speaks latin anymore you know who needs it there were languages like hittites assyrian moabite these were languages nobody speaks them today maybe you can find the dictionary in their university but that's about it and the reason is because there's no roman empire why do we have to keep the language of the roman empire the aren't coming back the moabites aren't coming back so languages simply get extinct when there's not going to be a national revival that's going to use that language think about the jews and mitch ryan year after year decade after decade we're languishing as slaves but we continue to teach our children and my smart son might ask me you know abba why do you speak to me in hebrew we're in egypt you were born in egypt your father was born and your father died in egypt we're here why are you preserving this dead language that will never have occasion to be used so what will the father tell his child my son there will come a time i don't know if it'll be in my lifetime and i don't even know if it'll be in your lifetime but there's gonna come a time hashem is gonna take us out of this slavery and hashem is gonna bring us to our lands and when he brings us to our land we're going to have our language and i am preserving this language so you will know that this is not our permanent state think about this the preservation of los angeles is a statement of hope and ammuna in eventual redemption so now you see with the metric his structure four terms of redemption corresponds to four dangers but the four dangers need to be counteracted by four behaviors in our parts spiritual assimilation counteracted by faithfulness in the shalom bias physical threats to our survival counteracted by the group solidarity of not speaking mushanhara a lack of a sense of history and roots is counteracted by preserving our names of the past and a hopelessness that the future will ever change the preservation of las anakodesh and that's because hashem's redemption from above requires that there be some awakening from below so the final piece of the puzzle where mayor simcha says fits its position of the four cups in the haggadah although this will be slightly out of order uh the four cups of the haggadah are a celebration of the four redemptions from the four dangers with the fours of khuyot that we had the first cup is the cup of kiddush now we know that one of the words for marriage in judaism is kidushin sanctification and therefore the cup of kinnish is a celebration of the sanctification that can exist between husband and wife and that is what prevented our spiritual assimilation and indeed the whole theme of kiddish is that god shows us a sherbach he shows us from the nations and he sanctified us and in other words that that's what prevents us from assimilation now the second cup now this is where we're about out of order a little bit the second cup is magit now magette is history magette is the historical narrative of how the jewish people came to mitzrayim as 70 people and they grew and they prospered and then they became enslaved and persecuted and god redeemed us with the ten plagues and the splitting of the red sea that gives us a sense of history what is our roots where did we come from what made us who we are so the second coast is a celebration of where we come from and that corresponds to not changing the names that's where it's out of order that was the third thing this is the second thing the third cause is birkasamasu now this is a bit more subtle but birkasamazon is of course about gratitude that's what it is right you thank god for what you have and part of gratitude is samayak rashelco to be happy with your lot right the famous mishna in pirkei yovos who is a wealthy person you're happy with what you have so when i bench with proper kavanagh right i'm grateful for what hashem has given me i'm somehow i don't have jealousy or rivalry by looking at the other person that what does that promote actus unity and therefore birha-samazan is an exercise that promotes unity togetherness and that protects us from the physical threats to our physical survival and of course food itself is connected to physical survival and that corresponds to the not speaking wash on hara because you have less of a need to speak bad about a person if you're happy with what hashem gave you and then we come to the fourth danger the fourth danger was lack of hope now this corresponds to hollow now as you undoubtedly know the hallel of lael seder is a very unusual halvel because it is bifurcated uh two chapters of the halal are recited before the second cup as part of the margin and the rest of halal is recited after the meal and the bifurcation is an unusual feature and the commentaries say because the first part of halal is thanking hashem for the miracles of the exodus but says israel mitzrayim but the second part of the halal is a different mood we're no longer focused on the past we're focused on the messianic redemption that's why the second part of halo is introduced by opening the door and welcoming elio hanavi to announce the coming of the mashiach that's why sometimes people don't really appreciate the high and elevated nature of the hollow after the meal not right i know that sometimes even orthodox people if they're not very knowledgeable they kind of conk out they leave they leave the seder after the after benching they salvage it over you know now it's true that some of the seder is optional i mean it's as nice as it is maybe if i have a few moments maybe i'll say something about gotcha that's very very nice but that's optional you know if you really had to leave beforehand gotcha you know i would give you a header although you know you're almost at the end but how well after the seder is not like after the seder is a key of mamas it's mama besides the fourth cup which is also a thief but there's also something very elevated i don't know if you sense it you're dealing with something powerful you're dealing with mashiach you're dealing with galola so what is that other than hope in a better future you see so again the metric says that we have the four languages of redemption we have the four adversities we have the four behaviors of call realm and we have the four cups in the seder that address and corresponds to these four behaviors and four predicaments and the coast of hollow the fourth cup is the case of hope and affirmation in gaula sita right this is something you think about as you go through the seder we have a few moments although it's not uh i'm just wanting to show you very very quickly i mentioned perhaps my reference to khan ganja was a little disrespectful because they said you could skip khargarja so i need to make up for that in fact the siddha brings the story was mainly said by ashkenazi in the original sfardi hagados although today they they put it in and uh israeli was making fun of the ashkenazi paga by saying ah these are children's rhymes and it's trivial and the svardi was put in for disparaging the sanctity of amina israel and the svardi went to his sparta grove and said look what these ashkenazim did to me they put me in because i disparaged a trivial nursery rhyme and the sweaty rub says you deserve to be in favor because even if we don't say it in all of these men hagim there is a deep and profound spiritual significance so god khadgarja is no accident khadgarje itself is filled with many many meanings some of which are very very mystical so very very briefly my mission only uh three minutes i want to share with you the villenegons one of the ones a few interpretations but one of the villenegon's allegorical interpretations of khadgarjen and he says that all of the blessings that come to the jewish people whether it's physical material or spiritual are because of the blessings that yaakov got from yitzhak and had yitzhak given those blessings to asap we would have nothing and if you recall yitzhak wanted to give the blessings to asaph and rivka convinced yaakov to trick his father okay we'll have to leave for another time a discussion of that and the way they were tricked was by preparing to the way yitzhak was tripped was by yaakov preparing two goats that he served to to yitzhak so the vilnigan says does not mean one goat he says one goat plus another goat meaning two goats was the zavin haba betrayzuzi these were the two coins by which our father yaakov purchased the bracos from yitzhak right so is the trey zuzay like the money the two go the two uh currencies by which yaakov purchased the broncos and the brothers he then gave to yosef that's why yosef was considered to be the most blessed of all the shrek so yosef is the repository of the goat yosef is now the goat so to speak because he got the benefit of the two goats so then it says the cat eats up the goats the cat is a symbol of jealousy anyone that owns cats knows that cats are kind of jealous possessive animals in many cases and that refers to the jealousy of the brothers in trying to destroy yosef by selling him into slavery and that's the cat that eats the goat but then the dog bites the cats the dog is mitrayum and the grog quotes different pyro is described as a caliph but what happens to the dog the dog is hit by the stick the stick is the mata the staff of moshe rabino that did the ten marcos and brought down all of the afflictions to mizrahim now the guru brings from the tsar that the mata of moshe did not disappear it actually entered eric israel and yoshua had it and it continued to do miracles for the jewish people throughout the years of the first temple but the stick was eventually burnt by fire that refers to the destruction of the first base amiktas at the hands of the vucat netzer in which we lost the success of that stick and it also refers to the fiery passion of idolatry which was the primary sin that caused the corbin but then after 70 years of the babylonian exile the water put out the fire and that refers to the men of the great assembly who rebuilt the second temple and they took away the fiery passion of idolatry so that's good but then comes the ox now the ox the wild ox the wild bull is the description of asap now the romans according to our tradition are descended from asap the romans destroyed the second base of mikdash so they drank up the water right the water put out the fire that enabled there to be a second base of mytouch but the ox drank up the water aesop destroyed the second base of mikdash because of sinascan and that's where we are as far as our history is concerned that's where we are now but the rest of khadgarja are things that haven't happened yet the shoheid will come and defeat the ox that is mashiach ben yosef who will come and destroy amalek from the world i'm all i guess from asif but unfortunately although mashiach ben yosef will destroy amalek mashiach ben yosef will be killed in the wars of gog and magog the malacha and the very last stage of history and the greatest stage is that hashem will come with mashiach benjamin kill the mother of us not not initially because people will die when the shia first comes but eventually there will be resurrection of the dead and bilah that suffers said death will be destroyed or swallowed up forever um i'll call upon him and god will erase tears from all faces so again it's very very fascinating that the very last part of the haggadah is once again the affirmation and belief that we have in the sita the future redemption and the resurrection of the dead so the haggadah ends on that hope just as it begins on that hope in allah we say and by the way those are the only the only two parts of the gather that are in aramaic at the beginning of making at the end of the seder because aramaic is the language of exile and in our exile we declare there will be a redemption just as the jews in egypt by preserving watching we're saying we're not going to be here forever our slavery is not going to be your favorite again i understand hashem uh those of us who are fortunate to be in eric israel we're in eric israel but the truth is we're still in gulas we have to remember we're still in golis we are in gallus until mashiach comes who are in goddess until we have a base of mikdash we're in golis until we have an ebola and in some ways maybe one could even feel the gulles more painfully in the holy land because you're so close to the kedusha and you see what we don't yet yet have but dargah is not just history that god is about that hope now we are here we should be benefits is also the idea of amazing so i wish everybody was i hope everyone will be able to spend it with their family and loved ones because the covet situation might be getting a little better but even if sadly people will not be able to be with those that they care about they should remember that the shovels are connected even when they're at a distance and most importantly will be with us each and every one of us at the seder that we will be celebrating [Music] oh