Spiritually Preparing For Pesach

[Music] now one of the main things that a person uh has to understand when it comes to PES is that you cannot prepare for p a couple of days before PES PES really requires a very long preparation a spiritual preparation a a material preparation there's a lot of things that need to happen of course as the years go by you you you get better at it if you have kids you you learn how to adjust what to do how to do your kids learn more and so on but there are certain things that a person needs to know that are important but they're not priority meaning a lot of people the way that they think of PES is they think of the food uh you know they think of the food they think of what am I going to cook you know the the uh the aside from the matah who's going to eat this who's going to sit where and in reality the meal of PES although it's important it's it's good for it to be delicious it's good for it to be uh to have all different types of varieties and so on but it's not the number one priority in P the priority in PES is not the food okay the priority in PES is actually quite different uh in fact the um page 115b says that if somebody swallowed matah he fulfilled the obligation meaning he just swallowed it without chewing it he still fulfilled the obligation but if he swallowed the the bitter herbs he did not fulfill the obligation he did not fulfill the obligation now this actually was the RA in in Chapter 2 second that if somebody swallowed the mat without chewing he still fulfilled fulfilled the Mitzvah but if he uh did not chew the the bitter herbs he did not fulfill the Mitzvah did not fulfill the Mitzvah and elaborates and also and he uh says why is this the case because the whole point of the uh of the the matah in the is to signify specific things where the uh matah of course to remind us of the difficulties that we endured when we were uh in uh in in Egypt is one of the things we have to remember that's one of the main things that highlights it is actually the mar the bitter herbs the the uh and it's uh one of the most uh critical parts to discuss to think about uh during PES during AEL is actually the the bitterness of our suffering the bitterness of our suffering you know is you know we have to think about that the fact that the Egyptians took children little babies and and put them instead of the cinder blocks uh if their parents you know did not meet a quot of making a certain amount of stones how many children they killed every single day just to uh uh heal the wicked par where the uh the say that would was told by his necromancers that in order for him to heal fromat that he had all over his body he had to bathe in uh Jewish blood so they would Slaughter 150 Jewish babies in the morning take their blood and make it into a bath for par and then another 150 at night each day he would Slaughter these amount of kids okay aside from that you know they they when they made when par made things even more difficult for is as if it wasn't difficult enough you know they uh if they didn't meet the quota of uh of having a uh making a certain amount of stones the Egyptians would take the Jewish children and put it instead of the cinder blocks uh there was an endless amount of suffering where they took the Jewish people and uh did everything they could to break their morale uh whereby they made the men do the uh jobs of women and the women they give them jobs of men uh this broke the morale of the people and worst of all is that parau wasn't really looking to really rebuild Egypt and make it as magnificent uh as he really told am initially when initially promised them to pay them a lot of money and be due to their patriotism only to fool them into slavery uh after they've abandoned their businesses and uh you know and had nothing else to uh to do the he turned everybody into slaves but aside from that one of the uh one of the horrible things that did to break the morale of was to give them work that is never ending because whatever they built would collapse he would specifically have his people Target a place where he knew there was either Quicks sand there or just an unstable Foundation or whatever he could where he knew that once they uh built this building the whole thing would collapse so even though they're slaves there's still a certain amount of joy in achieving something even though it's due to slavery and Agony and pain at least when you see that you build something there's a certain uh you know pleasure that you get from doing something today people get a pleasure out of I don't know sending uh sending a a a message on the internet and getting a certain amount of likes uh you know of course am is was not looking for likes they simply just to see that whatever they've been building whatever they were sweating Blood and Tears uh uh uh for at least built something even that pleasure par did not want to give them so that bitterness is uh symbolized by the uh and for over 116 years of Agony and slavery out of the 210 years that am Isel was in Egypt 116 years we were slaves and it got worse and worse day after day making uh uh something that's dramatically bigger than what the most recent Holocaust uh that we saw by the N seem insignificant that's how much death and disaster we had in the uh in Egypt uh and this Agony is supposed to be symbol symbolized by the now the matah the other hand is supposed to symbolize how fast the Salvation comes where when a Salvation eventually came after a whole round of Miracles and so on that Hashem gave us all of the different plagues all of the different Miracles that happened uh this uh eventual salvation this eventual salvation was was really culminated in such a quick second that am was not even uh given enough time to uh to uh uh make their uh bread uh uh you know so they were they were left with matah so here this is something that is of significant value for and R says that the reason why somebody that eats the the matah uh without chewing it fulfills the meat mitv but somebody that does not chew the the bitter herbs and simply swallows it does not F the fulfill the mitvah is because even if you swallowed the matah without chewing it you still feel a certain amount of satiation that can give you a connection to that salvation that we got it's still something different about that matah than the rest of the year of what you eat on the other hand if you don't chew the bitter herbs you don't taste the bitterness and therefore you're missing you're missing the key part of the Mitzvah which is to actually see yourself as if as if you are in uh living through the difficulty right now many people can perhaps uh feel the the freedom to a certain extent but very few realize that one of the priorities uh that you have during the SED is actually to uh feel the agony that uh we were in in order to truly feel the uh the salvation so that's why the the certain the r and others that ping that it's not just to uh to feel uh and see yourself as a someone that went through this Agony uh and and now has the salvation but actually to appear as if you've just gone through this Agony and now you're going through salvation and this is the reason why there are Customs uh that and his family does and other sikim do which they actually do like a play they do like a play and you know the kids when they ask oh who are you and he says oh I am uh you know I uh I'm uh I'm going to where are you going I'm going to Y oh where did you come from I came from Egypt what did you do in Egypt and he starts telling the story of oh we were in Egypt we were enslaves we uh you know they uh they uh tortured us they enslaved us they did this to us and then you know uh uh after all of this torture the Salvation came but this whole play sometimes with a costume sometimes without but the point is is to make the whole thing as alive as possible as as as real as possible to truly feel feel the transition and not just focus on when do we eat okay the when do we eat is not as important as the story itself of what why are we here in the first place as a rabbi I must emphasize that this mitzvah is mandatory for every Jew as it ensures all members of Amel can properly celebrate the holiday with dignity and joy the importance of Kima stems from the fundamental Al that one must ensure everyone can experience true Sim happiness during the holiday