I Am That Broken Matzah

It's an insight that comes from the labavba. It's also our propo. The Reb's birthday is alf of Nissen, the 11th of Nissen. And every year growing up at the feet of the Reb was always a very emotionally charged day where his disciples and students till today express so much gratitude to Hashem for the smile that he sent down to the Jewish world after Awitz in the form of the soul of the Reb. And on Pesak after the second sedar which ended around 1:00 the Reb would come down to hold a faban. Imagine a fabbran starting like 1:30 in the morning no food because it's after the and the Reb went on for hours deep deep discourses and talks about Pes. So this is from the Fabangan of the second night of Pes in the wee hours of the morning tough 1960. The Reb spoke then about the middle matzah that we break. It's called yakat, right? And we break it. And what do we do with it? We make sure not to break it evenly. We have a larger piece and a smaller piece. The smaller piece we leave at the sedar table. The larger piece we hide and we'll later retrieve it to eat. Why is it that by we don't break the matzah evenly? Like do half and half. Be fair. And he gave a very very powerful answer. He said, "We all have a broken matzah. We break our matzah. The matzah that we leave on the table is a small piece of matzah. And what do we do with it? Right after y we do maggot. What's mag? We start off. This is the bread of poverty that our forefathers ate in the land of Egypt. It's bread of poverty of exile. And that's the small piece of matzah. We say the entire the story of mitz on this piece of matzah the broken matzah called what about the other piece of matzah that we hide that we don't say the say that we don't say the hag on that we retrieve later at the end of the meal for the what's that about time of the bik they used to eat a carbon pes a passover offering a sheep or a goat at the end of the pes meal it was roasted it was offered in the bame mikdash and then it was barbecued and roasted and this was the staple the highlight food of the Passover s. So we eat as a as a commemoration for the carbon pes and as a preparation for the gula when we're getting going to have the carbon pes. So the said as follows in each of our lives our broken matzah breaks into two pieces. One part is it's the part that represents our poverty, our brokenness. For some of us, it's the abuse. It's the grief. It's the childhood years that have been lost. It's the youthfulness that has been taken from us. It's all of the pain and agony that each and every one of you had to deal with in your own way. Whether it was a very dysfunctional family, whether it was sexual molestation or rape, whether it was mental illness inside of you or around you, whether it was emotional neglect, whether it was addiction in you or around you, whether it was deep, deep mental challenges that you encountered among your caretakers, or all of the other forms of abandonment that each and every one of us or many of us have experienced in one form or another. And that's our broken matzah. And we say, "Hey, this is the bread of poverty that you and I ate in Egypt." And you look at it and you expose it and you say the whole Hagada. You pay tribute to it. You honor it. You respect [Music] it. You embrace it. And ultimately, you eat it. We eat that matzah. It becomes part of us. It's always part of us. And we make a blessing because each of us has become sanctified through our deep experiences in life. Each of you has been forged in fire, blood, sweat, and tears, the tears of murder, and the broken matzah. And you're here tonight. Amazing, amazing, profound people. There are no people that I have met in my life who are as real and authentic as those who are committed to the work of inner healing. And there are no people I meet who are so superficial. And I feel bad for them as those who make fun of those who are on the journey of healing. And those who their only attitude is to dismiss all the crazy people who are into healing because they're perfect. And I feel bad. I feel bad for how much disassociation our generation had to experience in order to deal with our pain. And I salute all those who can look at their broken matzah say the over it and even make a blessing. But vintage labav listen to this. He said but that's the smaller piece of matzah. The larger piece of matzah may be hidden away. It may be hidden in your pillows. It may be hidden under napkins or in matzah bags. It may be in a drawer somewhere in a bookcase. Your child may have stolen it and put it away in a way that you can't find it. He says that's your matzah of redemption. That's the matzah that represents the carbon pes. It's the matzah that prepares us for the redemption. And in life, he said you have to know that your larger matzah is your matzah of redemption. Your smaller matzah is the matzah of your pain. Each and every one of us needs to know. Never ever think for a moment that the pain in your life is larger than the beauty in your life. Not because you haven't been through a lot of pain, but because never doubt the magnitude of your soul. The biggest effect and result of trauma is that you doubt yourself. That you think your depression is more powerful than your bliss. You think that your ego, your insecurity, your fear, your mediocrity is what occupies the most space in your brain. Maybe, but that's the trauma voice. The real thing is your redemptive power, your healing power, your beauty, your holiness is infinite. I want to tell you something and I say this from a very deep place in my heart and I hope you'll hear it the way I'm saying it and that is with all the pain you or I or anybody has experienced in life with all the abuse with all the agony. It's true and you need to pay tribute to it. But if you put that in the presence of your holiness, if you put that pain in the presence of your greatness, of your magnitude, it's like an orange in the presence of Mount Everest. The problem is, the challenge is we don't know our greatness. Most of us don't know. Most of us, as a poet said, live lives of quiet desperation. We don't know the depth of our souls. You don't know how much holiness is radiating from you. But think for a moment. Could you even compare, a piece of God himself, to the painful abusive messages that I tell myself about how stupid I am or how nerdy I am or what a loser I am or how ugly I am or what autik I am or what a nerd I am. It's like comparing finite filth to divine infinity. So the Reba said, "Never forget. There's a small matzah of lma, but your big matzah, it may be hidden away, but your matzah of redemption is so much larger, so much more powerful. And as you go through the seder, you're going to retrieve it. And when you're going to retrieve it, you're going to bring that to the table. And that's how you're going to finish your seder and declare [Music] the yeshiva.net