Simcha Barnett - Pesach Prep Part 2: Making Sense of the Haggadah

good evening everybody um welcome to the project inspire on a live stream um classes hopefully to inspire and to get us more um excited and prepared for passover and also to help deal with the situation we find ourselves in so the class tonight is the haggadah making sense of the haggadah and um you know myself i i didn't grow up religious and the gutter was always very much a closed book to me um you know it was always great getting together with the relatives um eating the brisket and uh yeah i think the only thing i would really remember from the seders were like the monash tana you know because they get make you get up on the chair and i'm a twin so they made both of us get up on a chair it's very cute and uh the four sons you know that that was what i remembered and the wine drinking the wine you know we was trying to sneak it from our parents um but pretty much else much more than that i really didn't know and even when i became more observant i found the haggadah a very confusing book in other words the the haggadah really and the seder actually in totality is 15 steps to help us get to freedom which encompasses several mitzvos um first of all obviously the midst of telling the story of leaving egypt which is the guts of the the haggadah is accomplishing that but haggadah also helps us fulfill the mitzvah of matzah the mitzvah of maror and the four cups so there are other mitzvahs and other things going on in this thing we call that gutta but the mitzvah i want to focus on tonight is the telling of the story it's called sipor you'd see a smiths right now um it would be helpful if you if people had a haggadah and one second oops okay one second this is going to be great one minute one minute one minute so i hope you're all seeing the uh the haggadah that i have up here the uh sorry the hand the first time i've ever used screen screen sharing so i think you see it now because i see it in place so what i want to do is go through the mitzvah of c project mitzrayim which is telling the story telling the story of leaving egypt now i'm going to go through you're going to see here it says magen telling the story of leaving egypt now as you see on this handout there are 11 pieces to telling the story 11 pieces to telling the story of leaving egypt the first one as i mentioned a minute ago if you look at number one is why is this night different than all other nights the monster which we're familiar with and then after the um that's a question about are we talking about freedom we're talking about slavery because two questions of the monash tana two points of slavery the the uh author of the god is asking you know which is it so the answer is it's both number two says we were slaves but hashem took us out because if he didn't take us out we'd still be there and even if we were all wise and all the greatest rabbis in israel we'd still have to ask the manastrana and tell the story right to keep it passing it on to the next generation so i guess two follows one very nicely you have what is this story is it about freedom is it about slavery the answer is both then we say if you're all wise you have to tell the story if you look at number three there's this um example of all these great rabbis who stayed up all night telling the story and i guess they want to they want to uh underscore for us that it doesn't matter if you know the story the issue here is not knowing the story the issue here is passing the story on so that's good so far no one two three is good but then all of a sudden we take like these digressions to seemingly things that really don't have much um emphasis and continuity with the story so you would expect the story to be starting now so what do we do instead of the story number four rebellion um explains why we have a mitzvah daily to mention leaving egypt not the mitzvah we're doing tonight but the mitzvah daily to remember leaving egypt it seems like a total digression and then it gets worse from there because right after allah zarya we digress again to these four sons the torah talks about four sons number five and six barracuda like a torah blessing introducing the four sons and we're introduced this wonderful uh uh sort of magical four sons with so much commentary on it but what does it have to do with leaving egypt so we make digression after digression then there's another dimension here number seven is you might think to tell the story to do the myths we're doing tonight for some reason we might have thought to say this story two weeks ago when the month of nisan began we might have thought to tell the story of nissan and this parry was saying hey i don't want you to have that idea really have to say it tonight so it goes back and forth and then now at number eight the story seems to start one more time so in other words we started the story before we stopped and had all these different digressions that didn't seem to uh say a whole lot to us and now we're starting the story again number eight we're starting this story with abraham mitchella of uh vodazora we were slaves we we we worshipped i i'm sorry we worshiped idols in the time of abraham so it seems odd that we would start the story again with something happened that happened much earlier in history you think if we wanted to ex to mention both we would have started right on number one or number two with the abraham story and we'd have continued with the story of our slavery but no the torah goes back like it wasn't confusing enough now we have to go back to abraham which was like 400 years before this story actually happened so then you go to the next uh number number nine now number nine says go and learn what love and jacob's father-in-law did to us okay it was abraham isaac jacob so at least we're on the same track here and this begins many pages which forms the guts of the story this really number nine here is really the story goes all the way to our enslavement the the different details of our enslavement god hearing our cries taking us out with a strong arm and strong hand it goes through the templates in detail and we're good we seem like we're good to go over here and then we're throwing a curveball number 10 number 10 is ribbon gum leo's ruba gamaliel's rule is a very very interesting rule he says that if you don't say pesach mata and mara point to the pesach point to the matzah point to the mar on the seder plate and explain them it says you don't fulfill your obligation now we would i guess we'd expect at this point the obligation he's talking about are the other mitzvahs of the night we have a mitzvah for matzah we have a mitzvah in the times of the temple to eat the passover offering which now is the afi komen and we have a mitzvah but the rabbis tell us in a real curveball that no if you don't explain these mixtures in detail and point to them you have not fulfilled your mitzvah of seaport you'd see a smiths ryan which is telling the story and at this point i think you have to scratch your head because we've been telling this story for three hours how could it be possible that i told the story in like excruciating detail but now this is pesach matsumara which almost seems like an afterthought it wasn't even woven in to the narrative it's like an afterthought now i'm told if i don't say this i am i didn't fulfill my mitzvah and the and the jewish law the halacha actually states that's true if you don't hear these three things that's why it tells us no matter where anybody is in the house the women the older people they can't sit at the table come here rubbing gum wheels rule pesach mata and mar okay so we have to explain that and the last part the very last part of of the story is what's called hallel hallo are songs of praise to hashem now we usually say them in synagogue it's very very strange to say hallo in our homes but the rabbi said you have to say hollow tonight it's a very special night and it's actually part of telling the story the last question i want to mention which is a global question and then we're going to answer them all with a beautiful beautiful explanation from the mao beam a great rabbit who lived in the 19th century the last question is the mitzvah of the night that we are trying to fulfill is called seaport it sees mitzrayim telling the story of leaving egypt c4 is a story so the rabbis wonder why don't we call this book of ours this guidebook for the seder why don't we call it the sipora instead we call it the haggadah we call it haggadah and not sipura so the maldine really has a beautiful explanation to this i'm going to go to the next page to be able to explain this and all of this comes together all these questions will be answered with his approach so if you take a look in in the book of shemos the second book of the torah exodus chapter 13 verse 8 the source verse for this mitzvah of telling the story is related to us in other words every mitsuno torah there is 613 they all have a verse which which is coming to tell us why we have an obligation with this mitzvah so here's the verse and i broke it up into sections that he got it to levinha and tell your son by omaha on that day lay more saying for the sake of this asahashem did hashem do li for me with satan in my leaving egypt so the verse is saying tell your son and sons and daughters it's all your children tell your children on that day saying for the sake of this hashem took us out of egypt now if you look right below it i've broken these verses up into six parts this is really the mild beam breaks these verses up this verse up to six parts and he says it's something penetrating and fascinating he says the essence of the mitzvah of telling the story of leaving egypt what we're trying to get over to ourselves and to our children is contained in the very verse from which we're commanded in the torah which makes so much sense and it really makes sense in haggadah so if you look at it tell your son tell your son our first question were there our last question but it was our global question why do we call this the haggadah and not to see pura why do we stress which means to tell and not to relate a story and the answer is because our source verse says tell your sons tell your children it puts the obligation squarely on the shoulders of the parents this night is very different from the everyday version of remembering leaving egypt which we do in the shema every day twice a day sorry once a day and art to fill in our mezuzah all has mentions of this of the leaving egypt this is very different and very special this is a mitzvah that you're going to tell you're going to do to transmit the tradition of our people from generation to generation and it stresses you taking responsibility for that and too fascinating uh and not only that the way you're going to tell the story as we open up the the um with is question and answer we're not going to lecture our children we're going to preach to our children we're going to promote questions we're going to get them to ask questions because when you have a question you have a desire to know then you really want to know the answer and that's jewish pedagogy that's the beauty and wisdom of the seder is that it's getting jews to answer ask questions here in our first national holiday and it has become a jewish pastime throughout the generations this is really where it started you should tell your child and when you tell your children what what it means is that you need to be on fire you need to be alive with the material and it's very similar to the mitzvah of learning torah another one of the 613 mutuals of the torah interestingly enough mitzvah in the torah is not um spelled out in terms of each one of us having an obligation to learn it's actually says vishy nantan levanakha and you should teach your children since we have a verse in the tournament that says teach your children we know then that we have to learn isn't that a fascinating way to uh to give us the mitzvah of um you have learning because we all know that if we're responsibility to teach our children who we love dearly and want to help that's the best way we can assure that we're going to learn that we're going to know we're going to be excited on the other hand when a parent is excited and a parent is alive and on fire and he's a role model for the children that's the greatest way to pass on the tradition so that's so what's by yo mahu bayo mahu is that day it's that day and um that day is in parallel to the um the paragraph that asked us when do we say this mitzvah when do we do this mitzvah by yom means saying and lay more is going to be associated with telling the story in detail from say the low maid all the way through the plagues the rabbis tell us in the haggadah refers to when pesach mata and mara when these three misses are in front of them in front of us and this refers to robin gamliel's that always means to point this you didn't fulfill your obligation and then finally we say hollow right hal is a recognition that hashem did all this for me he loves me and he did this for me he he manages my life the life of my people in in exact detail go all the way back to abraham to the present day he did it for me and me alone and for that i have to thank him in misread the last two words here are is actually an excerpt from hollow so that's the last thing we do the last thing we say is hollow so to summarize this summarizes i hope i hope beautifully for you he got it to levinha right he got into the vinca the first and i'm going back on those 11 11 points the first one was tana so what is managed to not doing it's it's asking us a question why are we doing the mitzvah and we get an answer so the first two sections or why we do the mitzvah it's not the beginning of the story the third section the story of rebellion they stayed up all night that just tells us why even great rabbis need to tell the story rebellizaria he mentions we have a mitzvah every night to mention leaving egypt well listen guys tonight's mitzvah is different than the night we mentioned of egypt here you have to feel it mean it experience it and give it over your children the next two points barack and the four sons that's telling us how do we appeal to our various children how do we approach them so they'll be excited about it that is part of haggadah tell your children the next section i hear is number 22 it says yahoo mirosh kodesh you might have thought to tell this story the first day of the month the answer is you know you tell this story by yom ha-hu on that day this is the next part of the source first on that day the night of the 15th of nissan when do we fill the midst of telling the story the night of the 15th of nisan in the beginning our father we went down to egypt this is the introduction to the real telling of the story and the next section save a low maid learn from lovin's father uh this is all the way down to the end of the plague uh of the uh all the plagues uh that ruined egypt and brought us out and have brought us out of the country now one other question i want to mention is that save the low maid this section over here is really a um puffed-up version of three lines in the torah in davarium in davar we have three lines that come from the mitzvah of bringing first fruits and when the farmer brought first fruits in in israel he brought him up to the temple and he thanked god for it and the declaration he said three lines started all the way from abraham that's the beginning of this story all the way from abraham and it went three lines through our enslavement in egypt god hearing our voices and taking it out so we amplify each line we take apart amplify so it comes a very long section but it's these three lines from a mitzvah are bringing first fruits unrelated to passover so the question that you have to ask yourself is why didn't the rabbis bring the story from the book of schmos the second book of the torah where the story happens that is where god told it to us the first time you would imagine you would think isn't this the best way to tell the story god's way isn't god the greatest pedagogue but the author of the goddess said no it's very important that we wrap this story with three lines from the mitzvah of victoria and i think it's a beautiful beautiful concept at the very heart of what the whole haggadah is trying to tell us because the midst of bequarium is the midst of gratitude it's a myth of thanking hashem for all he does for us and you and i might have thought that the farmer would thank god from the year before when he put the season to the ground when he s the sun shone beautifully and the water was plentiful that year maybe he would have gone back 10 years before when he was lucky enough to be able to buy his home and acquire his fields but no god the the mitsubishi says go back to abraham go back 450 years the beginning of jewish history and see all the different pieces of the puzzle that god put in place for for you to enjoy the fruits of your labor so this is the rapper the context for the story of leaving egypt the the the author of the gutter chose to wrap it in the story of gratitude because gratitude is the most major theme of the story which we'll get to in a minute why that's so important but since it is so important and the whole gutter is trying to uh show us all our blessings even the negative that turn into a positive and once we see it and once we feel it and once we re-experience it well of course what are we going to do then we're going to thank god and that's the hollow that is the last section the last section is us thanking god for all he's done for us so this is the sweep of the the verse but i want to go back to the verse and i want to go a little deeper with you i want to go a little deeper to sketch out some themes now that we have the overview the overview it goes lock step with the verses these are the various sections the six sections and they are they're parallel to what we went through on those 11 sections really break down to these six let's go a little let's go a little bit further so we mentioned that gratitude is so very important and questioning is the key to unlocking all the blessings that god gives for us and we do everything question and answer so i want to mention something about a carcinogen it's not just a nice thing it's not just being polite it's the very entry point to having a relationship with god and believing in god and it's very important to go back to the hebrew to be able to understand this because in english gratitude doesn't really um connote it it's just we we agreed to call thanking god gratitude but in hebrew it's amazing uh phrase it's the recognition of the good someone who's grateful recognizes the good that was done for them someone who is ungrateful is called the kufuitov kufuitov is somebody who denies the good that was done for them so hakarta tov really if you if you um dig into what it really is about it's about recognizing appreciating reality if someone gave me a cup of coffee did me a good deed a tova we call it in hebrew and i recognize hakara means to see it oh my gosh you gave me a coffee that's so nice of you hakurata tov yes i thank you for it but what have i really done i've admitted that you did something that something real happened over here this is reality i admitted i admitted to the reality that you helped me now cough weetaw was very very interesting on the other hand cuff cuff away comes from the word cough cough means palm it's a person's palm so imagine i gave you that cup of coffee and you the person would take their palm and hide the cup of coffee if i hide the cup of coffee i made it and made it as if you didn't give it to me i twisted reality into thinking that because i don't want to owe you anything that you didn't do anything for me and this is fascinating because in the passover story if you read through the book of shamos paro pharaoh is the person exemplified this attribute of kafuitov he's the one who said joseph i don't know who joseph was joseph saved egypt joseph the the the one of the 12 tribes was the viceroy the prime minister literally saved egypt made it the most powerful uh empire in the country in the world and pharaoh said i don't know him why because i don't want to be mocker tobe i don't want to recognize the good he did for me so pharaoh is the first it represents really skewing reality a person who basically hides from reality skews reality in the prophets uh it's actually quoted pharaoh said i created the nile river meaning you could skew reality so much and create illusion that your ego is so big you think you're a god that's represented by pharaoh arrogance creating illusion on the other hand moses his whole name comes from recognizing that um he was saved by the water motion means messieu to be drawn out of the water his mother bus uh basia called him moshe because she drew him out of the water every time she said moshe he was um confronted with this idea that his life was saved by his mother and the water so he is the epitome moshe is the epitome of a karate toe of shown gratitude to the extent that he won't hit the um the nile river that saved him when they do the plagues he won't hit the ground which covered the egyptians he killed purely because it would go against this incredible uh character trait of akara sato but the way i explained it it's much more than just a nice thing a social convention gratitude is really the entry point to relating to what is what's real and we've always understood judaism that what is real in life is god is the one truth the reality standing behind all the things in this world so if you want to have a relationship with reality with god god is reality to jewish people is truth if you want a relationship it must start with this meter this character trait of a karsatov it's like a flashlight that will trace back say the branches of a tree all the way back to its root that's really what a karsatov is it's the most important important ingredient in in judaism and that is what the haggadah is trying to do now to take that just a step further this is all about belief in god and you need a karasutov you need to see an and understand from abraham in detail and try to re-experience that in terms of the jewish people and also in your own life and realize that hashem loves us by seeing all he's done for the jewish people by understanding how he works on our own lives we see this incredible love that god has and he brings us out of egypt makes us a chosen people makes us a people that's going to change the entire world reveals himself to us on mount sinai raising us up to what we call that chosen people to be a light unto the nations this is a tremendous tremendous sense of love now that first mitzvah that god gave us at sinai the first to ten commandments introduces himself to us i am the lord your god not the creator of the universe that's too philosophical he says no i'm the lord your god who took you out of the house of egypt the bondage that's who i am it's personal i love you and it's personal and this is the point of departure for our service to god because when someone loves you and does for you and you recognize all the person does for you all you want to do is return that service and that's why the jews have had this unbreakable bond with hashem it comes directly from feeling his love and feeling that it's incredibly incredibly um incredibly credibly personal now this is a lifelong struggle battle and opportunity to feel god in our lives day to day minute by minute hopefully the seder should be the start but this takes day in and day out and it's not just seeing deliverance from bad times from seeing us us becoming um you know seeing the light at the end of the tunnel i once had a person i was teaching i learned a lot about this this mitzvah and um she told me that her aunt was um really making not nice comments to her mother and her because her mother was trying to become a little more spiritual she was lighting candles and her aunt the mother sister was being derisive and saying it's you know it's for old-fashioned and close-minded you know it was not very nice what she was saying and i asked this woman though i was learning with big executive in a bank in manhattan i asked her did your does your uh aunt have a you know what kind of life does she have and i thought she was gonna tell me she has a pretty miserable life and that's why she's so negative and she told me something which blew me away she said my aunt has a life which i can only describe as incredibly blessed in every single dimension totally blessed good children great husband very financially successful endeavors charity everything and it hit me that oh and she i asked her so why is she so negative so she told me she's mad at god why she met a god because unfortunately her daughter had a she had a disease very treatable and it was being treated but she's mad at god because it didn't work out and i it hit me so deeply i said to myself you know why she's mad at god because all the things that she got in her life the beautiful blessings the children the husband the the financial success everything lockstep she never attributed those things to god imagine she had attributed all those wonderful things all those presents those great parents she had where she grew up what college she went to in other words a little bit of like that because going back back back back and she her life was filled with gratitude and the connection to the almighty that gratitude brings us on a day-to-day basis do you think she would have had a different way to understand this negative if she had appreciated all the positive i think she would have been able to handle it in a very healthy way because it would have been in context it would have been in a context where the the negative or the the struggle or the challenge is in this overwhelming um delivery of positive throughout a person's life very similar to a loving parent who does everything for the the child and you know when a negative thing happens or the parent withhold something the child if he's healthy and mature doesn't say you're not my parent you hate me my little kids used to do that i hate you when i when i didn't give them the 12th you know lollipop whatever it is it used to drive me batty because i realized you know what that means they're not seeing it in context and when you see your life in context in other words the big picture all of your life with all of your blessings and then you see the struggle and the challenge in that context that's called the muna that's called belief belief is real connection to god seeing reality seeing the true context i'm not making anything up i'm not wishing away the negative i'm seeing the negative in context to all the positive and that's exactly what happened in mitzrayim they said it was a night which shone like day a night which was glowing which was a lit like day now usually in judaism day and night are symbolic of a non-clarity at night on the diaspora is at night god's hiding at night cloudy dark dangerous the daytime is always associated with gula with redemption with revelation so you see that all of the jewish holidays typically are on the 15th of the month the highest with the new moon is the moon is totally full and it's all of our things we do the chauffeur uh lulav and esro building a sukkah they're typically date time in its vote because daytime is associated with revelation and we're experiencing a godly revelation passover is the one exclusion to this rule because passover is is the one time where the night and the day were won we saw god's hand so clearly that all the struggle all the difficulty and the redemption came together like all the pieces in the jigsaw puzzle now we're trying to re-experience that as we go through the seder on our in our own way to see that oneness to feel that love and whenever you experience oneness and judaism you're always touching hashem always touching hashem so the the promise of the seder is trying to connect trying to up that level of you seeing the context of you seeing reality and hopefully if you upgrade it then over the next year you'll be able to put things into context more you'll have glasses which have a little more of a prescription to see the whole the oneness of life and not just get stuck in the fracturedness in other words a negative a difficulty a sorrow is like a broken picture and pesach was the model for putting the picture back together now we have three mitzvahs in the seder three misters in the seder which is alluded to in this source first if you go back in the source first it says right tell your children on that day saying for the sake of this god took us out of egypt what does it mean for the sake of this this is the hundred thousand dollar question in the source verse the rabbis say and comes right out of the gutter that za means as robin gamaliel said pesa mata and mara so the pasik if you the verse if you read that back would really be telling us tell your son on that day it's for the sake of passover matzah and marour that god took us out of egypt meaning that god put us into egypt and took us out so we'd have a seder and do the filth of the midst of pat pesa matsa and mara how could that be we understand the mitzvahs of pesach and mara as commemorating the historical experience of going into egypt and being brought out of egypt that it describes we ran out of egypt we didn't have time to make the dough it was on our backs we also ate that bred as slaves in egypt what are you talking about we didn't we didn't go into egypt to eat pesach matsumar we ate it because we were there so rashi's really bothered by this because literally that's what the verse is saying that god took us out of egypt to make a seder and to have his mitzvos seems incredible so rashi the famous biblical commentator says he comments on this and says he adds in a couple of words he says that means no but avoir for the sake that i will do mitzvos for example pesachmats and mara he says these are just three examples the real reason that god put us into egypt and took us out to eat out of egypt was we'd enter into this incredible covenant with him of mitzvos flowing from our desire to serve flowing from the love that he's shown us in each mitzvah we say mitzvah means to to bind or to connect each mitzvot would connect us to god in an inexorable way each mitzvah a different portal a different way to connect to reality to connect to to our creator that's what the myth that's what the mitzvahs really are the rashi is is really going like god when he told moses at the burning bush you know let my people go that speech he said when you go and take him out of egypt they're going to serve me on this mountain that mountain was mount sinai and the jewish people were going to serve um god and mount sinai with the torah so rasheed that's what raj is telling us rashi's saying what this source first means is that tell your children on that day saying that it's because of mitzvahs and the covenant with hashem because all the beautiful you know talk of relationship and and recognition of the good and all these kinds of things is lip service without action so god gave us this beautiful torah with pathways of action to make that real to make all these lofty ideals real and that that was mitzvos this always bothered me though you know i love rashi and rashi's the the man but whenever you can learn something literally and read it into the verse where it makes sense the rabbis typically usually prefer this and i felt wait wait a minute it says for the sake of these three mitzvos and what's more if you if you go back to what we said about rubbing gum leo rubble gum leo if you go back over here after we go through the guts of the seder all the way to number 10. reverend damil says if you don't explain pesach matsumara and explain why it's um all the details of it you didn't fulfill your mitzvah of telling the story and we said before what are you talking about telling the story we've been talking about it forever so if you think about it if we go back to our source verse and read our source first literally our source first says tell your son on that day saying it's for the sake of these three mitzvahs that god took us out of egypt these three mitzvahs the focus is on these three mixtures that must contain according to roman gamaliel the essence of the story the essence of the story is contained in these three mitzvos what you learned before was just the preamble was just getting you to kind of re-experience the storyline but this is the essence still it seems a little narrow rashi is much more appeals to us much more mitzvah's the whole system that makes much more sense these three mitzvahs and these three mrs alone so i saw a beautiful um explanation of this which i think really fits very very well and it's from the base halleavy vasa levy very famous rabbi lived actually the beginning of the 20th century and the base of levy um raises an interesting point we know that lot back in the beginning of the torah and voracious lot was avraham's nephew and went to this very wicked place saddam and god said i'm gonna turn that place over and destroy it because all they are evil and he went to sent angels to save low so low brings the angels in to his home at the risk of of of death capital punishment we're not allowed to show kindness in sedona and the the torah says he served the angels matzos very strange you know if you're gonna you're gonna mention what the meal consisted of mention something great something good racks of lamb caviar whatever he says matzos what's he getting at and why such a meager meal so rashi explains that it was leo pesach it was the night of the passover seder and that's why he was serving in matsus now that's a nice answer but the obvious problem is passover didn't happen for 400 years that was four years in the future what was loads serving them matzos and the answer that vasa levy gives is stunning we all know and the mystical tradition tells us god looked into the torah and created the world meaning the torah was primordial the torah was first what's the essence of the torah the 600 points of light that we call them it's vote 613 mitzvot each of them a spiritual point of reality it's like gravity like spiritual gravity any of the forces in the natural world that's what the 613 mitzvahs are spiritual points of reality now therefore it was understood by abraham we taught at the lot that in the night of the 15th of nisan matzo will set you free we eat matzah on the 15th of nisan because it sets us free the world's breaking free of its vines it's it's winter hibernation and nissan on the night of the 15th of nisan so you see matzah came before the midst of matzah in the primordial torah god's torah came before historical experience of egypt it could have been revealed any number of ways depending on man's free-willed actions it happened to be that because of the choices that were made we went down to egypt and went into the bondage and that is how those mitzvoths came to light but the purpose of egypt and the purpose of the enslavement was to bring these three mitzvahs to light and the connection that these three mitzvahs bring about between us and god that that is why ramadan leo i i believe could learn the verse source first literally that god indeed put us in and took us out for the three mitzvahs of pesach matsumara now i had an instance which really made this understandable to me about 10 years ago i went to a a funeral of a woman i never met she was a matriarch of a very prominent family and i listened to the very moving tributes the eulogies that were given for her and they were all different and they had a different story a different connection to the grandmother and the mother but they had the same three four five main attributes of this woman's character the points of light i want to say that comes out of her story there was the story each one of them had a separate story but what came out and what they were going to remember for all time and what i remembered and what was left in the audience with these six things about their grandmother now i think is the idea here with the mitzvos mitzvos are the points of light which connect us to hashem and there are specific points of light for passover to do with freedom to do with coming close to god in terms of relationship and belief the foundations of belief and that's why we have to understand pesach mats and mars so fully and the mishna which brings ribbon gum leo's rule in the after the rule it says because of rubbing gum wheels because of pesach mats and mara it um it um says that we have to each in every generation see ourselves as if we went out of egypt as it says in our verse he got it to lavin meaning how are we who didn't live through israel how are we supposed to get out of our own egypt and egypt means limitation it means imprisonment how do we get out of our own imprisonment we don't live in egypt you know how these mitzvahs will bring me my children my children's children my grandfather my great grandfather they will take us out of our own particular enslavement we don't have the story of misrayam we didn't live through that but we each have the mitzvos and and we understand the mitzvah and we take it to heart and we study it and we do it in a way to try to connect us to god those mitzvoth will take us out and will make us free that's open to all of us for all time now i want to just go through in the next just 10 minutes remaining time that we have let's look at these three myths now we'll start with matza matzah has a dual connotation matzah is poor man's bread lechon oni the bread of suffering but it was also the bread of redemption it really within matzah you see the entire story you see that the good the redemption came out part and parcel grew out of the struggle the pain that served us it was one a night which shone like day the bread of affliction actually was what which actually was that which freed us the masa gave us life made us free matzah has two connotations one is that it is all bread i say bread because i really mean it meaning what's the difference between bread humates and matzah the difference is masa is flour and water real bread without the fluff without the puff without the additives without the fake out it's a symbol of reality remember our goal we were talking about before was gratitude was helping us get back to reality so matzah helps us detach from the world of illusion i like to say this world is a bakery window and we look in the bakery window that's comets the bakeries of hummus with rise and dough and beautiful breads and cakes and every additive and flavor and it sucks us in and we have desire and we want it all and usually we take it home we eat it it doesn't give us the bang for the buck it's not the real essence it's not the real bread and on passover we pull back from the bakery window we pull back and we hopefully disentangle free ourselves from the desires that have gotten hold of us over the last year we detox from the desires of life that physical world which is beckoning to us and we go after simplicity that's on the worldly level on the personal level which is which is even more uh powerful in terms of enslaving us the greatest enslaver and jail master in the world is you is me it's you human beings we hold ourselves back and the greatest impediment to life into freedom is arrogance is that a trait that pharaoh had matzah is humble it's low it's not puffed up it doesn't build illusions about self-aggrandizement which usually is a cover-up for insecurity so matzah is a symbol of pulling back from the illusions in life external and internal the corbin pesach corbin pencil is amazing because what does it represent it represented the idol worship of the um egyptians to us you know what i worship is those foreign gods that we bow down to those desires whether it's physical desires whether it's money whether it's power all the different things that we bowed down in front of that altar we are told take that desire and checked it checked it means you know um sacrifice it get rid of it that's what the corbin pestoc represents and we eat it with the matzah and we eat it with the bitter herbs because the bitter herbs really is again the vehicle the sweet it's sweet you can't eat the corbin pesach and the matzah without the mara because it wouldn't be sweet it's almost like the relish rabbi's asked a question it says pesach matsumaru passover symbol of freedom matzah symbol of slavery and freedom symbol of the slavery the rabbis say shouldn't have been the other way around isn't mara that which came first and i think one very important answer is most often you can't see how the negative helped except in the rear view mirror it's got to be at the end but once you go through the situation you go through the struggle you go through how it's built you and built us up then we can often see how oh that was the sweetness on which my delivery was based and now i just want to swing to the situation that we all find ourselves in now and it's a situation that's constraining and in some way we're enslaved there's definitely a physical slave we can't go out when quarantine i just want to remind you that the original passover the entire jewish people was in quarantine we were told by the angel by god do not go out of the house put the blood on the doorposts we were in the original quarantine that night 12 o'clock midnight a night like that shone like day we became free we became free in quarantine we walked out the next morning like free men but we were freed at midnight at the plague of the firstborn i think it's poetic unbelievable poetic irony that we're in a quarantine and we have an incredible ability to go free this pesach like almost no other time all the distractions are removed we are focusing we ate we have an ability to focus on that internal jailer really the internal jail is so much more potent than anything external the external jailer we can deal with that that's easy stuff the internal jailers right in front of us am i growing am i changing am i fighting am i quitting how am i doing in my relationships with my wife and my children i'm here i have nowhere to go am i running am i hiding am i with them single free will struggle that we have and every single idol that we bowed down that holds us back we have an ability to think through now we have ability when it's quiet when we're in quarantine to decide how we're going to blow through all of these things which hold us back we're too frenetic we're too busy we're too we're too drowning in the seeming freedom that we have in the outside world but how free are we really we have an ability in our coronaville quarantine have the greatest pesach of our lives to check the corbin pesach the passover sacrifice to get rid of the idols or identify them and work on strategies to remove them to really understand the lessons of matzah to to tone down our arrogance and self-importance and self-centeredness and to really try to break away from those things that's got to hold on us and the marauder imagine that every time you had mara in your life you had bitterness you had a struggle and you came through on the other side that you marked it down in a book a notebook that you kept and you referred to it when the next struggle happened and pretty soon you got used to hey god when are you sending my next challenge to help me be great like a chess match when are you sending me that next great opponent to make me amazing that's really the challenge in front of us and that's really the opportunity in front of us imagine imagine we can all go through life feeling wow i want to grow i don't care i can struggle i can take pain when i was on that football field as a kid i did two a days in the hot sun in august i loved it why because i saw my goal in front of me we all have to just see our goal in front of us and we can do it the talmud the talmud says that anybody who hasn't experienced cyrus some type of difficulty or struggle in 30 days they got to get worried they got to get worried that god's kind of wrote them off and just paid them off in this world imagine what that means imagine we had an attitude that i want my next puzzle i want my next chess game i want my next challenge it's not something i want to run away from it's something i want to embrace if we can come out with that mentality and pass it over to our children this can be the greatest password of our lives that's my brother to you all that's my brother to myself have a happy and kosher passover