The Haggadah (1) - A Brief History of The Jewish People

Today's limud is Haggadah shel Pesach. And we have the essence of Hashem in the beginning of a new endeavor dover b'ito matoiv going to go through the kabura the Haggadah shel Pesach k'pshutai with a little bit of raid in Aramaic. But before we start we need a little bit of an introduction. And I believe that the introduction to the Haggadah shel Pesach is really the history of the Jewish people. So, I think we're going to be maschil b'ginus, we'll be mesayem b'shevach, and really tell the briefest version of the story and the history of the Jews. Avraham Avinu our patriarch was born in the land of Charan, modern-day Turkey, to a family of ovdei avodah zarah. At a very young age, he realized that the paganism that he was raised with was silly, and he started to wander in his mind and try to figure out who the creator of the world is and what the meaning of life is. At some point, he came to hakara. And the pasuk says that when he was 75 years old Hakadosh Baruchu revealed himself to him for the very first time. And he told him lech lecha me'artzecha u'mimolad'techa u'mibeis avicha el ha'aretz asher arecha. I want you to leave your background, I want you to leave your family, and I want you to go to the land, I'm not telling you where asher arecha. Intuitively and instinctively, Avraham Avinu felt that the right direction to head in was the land of Canaan, and hence Avraham Avinu, together with his wife Sarah they were childless at the point, his nephew Lot v'hanefesh asher asu b'Charan left Charan and they went in the direction of Canaan. Avraham Avinu spent the remainder of his life in the land of Canaan. Avraham Avinu lived until he was 175 years old, which means that from the age of 75 until the age of 175, 100 years, he lived in Canaan. Avraham Avinu had a son Yitzchak who spent the entire kufah of his life in Canaan. Yitzchak had a son Yaakov who also, with the exception of the 22 years that he was in the house of Lavan working for his wives to live in the land of Canaan. The Torah says that Yaakov had 12 sons. The shivatei kah, but he loved his son Yosef more than he loved his other sons. In fact, v'asu lo kesones pasim. He made for him very, very special shirt. He made for him kesones pasim. Pasuk says that Yaakov's other sons, the brothers of Yosef, were jealous about the fact that Yosef was being shown this favoritism. Additionally, Yosef was having dreams, visions of grandeur, and he would share those dreams with his brothers. That didn't help the situation, either. If the brothers were overwhelmed with kinah, which ultimately led to sinah, and finally they decided that they have to figure out to make this issue of Yosef go away. Their idea initially was to kill him. Ultimately, they decided to sell him. They sold him to a group of Midianite merchants who then flipped him and flipped him again, and eventually Yosef was a slave living in Egypt in the house of Potiphar who was the sar hatabachim. Yosef was very, very talented and immediately climbed the corporate ranks within the slave world of Potiphar. But then, because of a bilbul with Eishes Potiphar, he was thrown into prison. He was thrown into the beis hasohar. The Torah tells how when Yosef was in the beis hasohar, there were two other ministers of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt at the time, that were there as well, the sar hamashkim and the sar ha'ofim. They had very disturbing dreams. They were very worried about it. Yosef was able to interpret the dreams on their behalf and it was that story that really planted the seeds for what ultimately would allow Yosef to get out of jail. Vayehi miketz shnasayim yamim, fast forward 2 years later. At that point, the sar hamashkim was no longer in jail and Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, the most powerful man of the known world he, too, had a dream. And then he had another dream. And he was very disturbed by those dreams. And he called in all his chachamim and all his kishuf machers, and nobody was able to make any sense of what it was that he was dreaming about. And then the sar hamashkim told Pharaoh, "You should know that when I was in jail I had seen some young kid who knew how to interpret dreams. As a matter of fact, I had a dream, the sar ha'ofim had a dream, and he was able to interpret both of our dreams in an incredibly impeccable way. I think it would have behooved you, your majesty, to meet this young person, hear what he has to say." And the pasuk says that the avdei Pharaoh went very, very quickly and swiftly, and they took Yosef out of his blotter that he was in at the time. They brought him in front of Pharaoh. Yosef listened to Pharaoh's dreams, gave him an interpretation, and Pharaoh felt nikarim divrei emes that what Yosef was telling him was 100% the way that it was going to be. As a matter of fact, Pharaoh told Yosef, "You're not going back into the beis hasohar, you're staying with me. You're going to be one of my ministers. As a matter of fact, I am going to make you the second in command. You're going to be the mishneh l'melech. Now, as it relates to the specific dreams that Pharaoh had and the interpretation, the general idea was Yosef told Pharaoh that you were just told in a dream that there were going to be seven fat years, but those seven fat years, booming economy, was going to be followed by an incredible recession, a ra'av ba'aretz like the world has never seen. And really, what the sar hamashkim is telling you, Yosef told Pharaoh, is to start hoarding during this kufah so that when the time comes and there's a ra'av ba'aretz, you're going to have reserves, you're going to have food that you'll be able to use for your kingdom, not just that, sell to all the different kingdoms of the world. So, Pharaoh tells Yosef that "I hear what you're saying, it makes a lot of sense to me, and you're going to be the one that's in charge of all this." In the meantime Yaakov was mourning the fact that Yosef had been sold into slavery. Hadn't seen him already at this point for a very, very long time. Just so happens, because of the ra'av ba'aretz, Yaakov was forced to send his sons to Mitzrayim to go buy food. And after several encounters with Yosef, the brothers not knowing that they're talking to Yosef, Yosef knowing that he's talking to his brothers Yosef eventually revealed himself to his brothers. And when they heard that they couldn't believe what was going on, and Yosef said ha'odenu chai, I want to meet my father. So, the brothers go back to Canaan and they tell Yaakov that Yosef is alive, and not only is he alive, he's moshel b'eretz Mitzrayim. He actually is from the most powerful people in the world. And Yaakov says, "If my son Yosef is alive, I'm old, I don't know if I'm ever going to have another opportunity. I want to go and I want to see him." So, Yaakov together with his family sets on this short journey to go from the land of Canaan to the land of Mitzrayim. When Yaakov is traveling towards Mitzrayim, he stops off in the city of Beer Sheva. And when he's in Beer Sheva, Hakadosh Baruchu reveals himself to Yaakov. And he tells Yaakov, "I want you to go to Mitzrayim as you're going right now. But I know in your mind you're just going to visit Yosef. I don't want you to just visit Yosef. I want you to go to Mitzrayim and I want you to stay there. I want you to stay there until I tell you it's time to leave." So, Yaakov, who was already en route to Mitzrayim, but he was just going to spend a couple of days there, maybe now was told al pi Hashem hadibur that he's going to have to remain there and he's going to remain there until it's time for him to leave. As a matter of fact, Hashem told Yaakov, "You're going to be there until I tell you to leave. Your children are going to be there. I want your family not to be living in Canaan now, but to be living in Mitzrayim until it's time until it's time to finally return back to your home in Canaan." So, Yaakov goes he meets Yosef, and he settles in Mitzrayim. As a matter of fact, he lived the last 17 years of his life in Mitzrayim. After Yaakov Avinu passed away, his children, like Hakadosh Baruchu had told Yaakov in Beer Sheva they, too, continued to live in Mitzrayim. As a matter of fact, Yosef lived out the rest of his life in Mitzrayim. All the shvatim lived out the rest of their lives in Mitzrayim. Kol hador hahu lived out their lives in Mitzrayim. And things were actually pretty good for the family of Yaakov and Yosef at that time. They had tremendous protetziah. They had a very, very key person in a very, very high-ranking position and life was good. And it remained that way for approximately 100 years. But then vayakom melech chadash asher lo yada es Yosef. There was a new king that suddenly emerged, and this king didn't know Yosef. Everyone knows the machlokes Rashi and Ramban, was he literally a new Pharaoh? It's 100 years later. Or maybe it was the old Pharaoh, but suddenly his attitude towards Yosef and Yosef's family changed. And this Pharaoh, this melech chadash was paranoid. He saw that the family of Yosef was starting to multiply. They were starting to grow from a population perspective in an incredible way. And he felt that on some level they were going to potentially pose a national security threat. He said, "What's going to be if we're going to engage ourselves in war and the family of Yosef, Yaakov, the brothers are going to decide to be on the other team. Well, that may cause us a lot of harm. They're very big. They can attack us. They can force us to flee the land. I think we need to do something to try to figure out a way to stop, curb their growth. Make sure that they're not going to multiply at the same rate that they're doing it now. And he called together his advisers and said, "We have to come up with a plan." And they came up with a plan. The first point of the plan was, "We're going to make the Jews work very, very hard. By them having to work very, very hard, that is going to weaken them, and it's going to psychologically mess with them. And like this, they're not going to be in a physical or mental frame of mind to be able to continue to multiply the way they have. And I think that's going to allow us to accomplish what it is that we're trying to do." The second idea that emerged was Paroh called the midwives. He called the midwives, and he told the midwives that, "Listen, when the Jewish women give birth to boys, I want you to wink wink, go and make believe it was an accident, but I want you to kill these little boys. So, like this, obviously, if we start killing some of these babies that are born, that's going to accomplish what it is that we're trying to do." And then finally, finally, what Paroh said was that every little baby boy that's born is going to have to be thrown into the Yar, which at the time was the Nile River. All three of these ideas were rolled out at different times, but they were all coming to accomplish the same goal, which was the primary goal of Paroh, which was to try to get the Jews to no longer multiply and procreate the way they were, simply because of the threat from a security perspective that Paroh believed that they posed. So, although the first 100 or so years that Yaakov's family was living in Mitzrayim was pretty good, dare we say the best of times, but what followed from the time that Paroh imposed these gzeiros was the exact opposite. Shall we say the worst of times? And really, this tkufa of the Jews being enslaved by Paroh, being subject to very, very difficult work, it was something that progressed, and it got to the point where it was so bad that it was vayimoreru es chayeihem. And again, the objective of Paroh was not so much to kill the Jews. It was to wear them down physically, mentally, so that they wouldn't be in a frame of mind that they're going to continue to grow at the rate that they were growing. But the bottom line is is that things started getting really bad, and that lasted for approximately another 100 or so years. And whereas the first tkufa was pretty good, that latter tkufa was really, really bad. It got so, so bad that the Jews were completely broken. They were broken physically, and they were also broken spiritually. This group of people, the descendants of Yaakov and Yosef and the brothers, they came from big stock. They came from Zeideh Zaydeh Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov. But after spending at this point over 200 years living in Egypt, and especially the last 100 years mitzvah nisayon, where they're being beaten up so terribly, they eventually started picking up and adapting a lot of the Egyptian culture. And just as much as the descendants of Yaakov were beaten up physically, they were also very, very much beaten up emotionally. And the situation that they were in was very, very bad. Fast forward. Amram and Yocheved, both descendants of Levi, one of the sons of Yaakov, had a son whose name was Moshe. Moshe at the time was married to Tziporah, who was the daughter of Yisro, and he was working for Yisro as a shepherd out in the Sinai desert somewhere. >> [snorts] >> And one day, Moshe is attending to his flock, and he sees a a bush. A bush was burning, but the hasneh einenu ukal, it wasn't being consumed. And he was very taken aback. What exactly is >> [snorts] >> going on? So, he goes a little bit closer to the bush, and all of a sudden, he hears a voice, and Hakadosh Baruchu bechvodah v'atzmo reveals himself to Moshe. And he tells Moshe that I want you to know that I am the God, the creator of the world, and I've come to appoint you as a messenger. I want you to be a shliach. You're going to be the liaison. I want you to be the one that's going to take the Jews >> [snorts] >> out of Egypt, take the Jews out of Mitzrayim." Moshe Rabbeinu's first reaction was, "What? Me? No way." Very, very overwhelmed. But finally, after 7 days of negotiation, Moshe Rabbeinu agreed to go through with this mission, albeit with a partner, his brother Aharon, who was very well spoken. And the two of them together were going to go to Paroh, and they were going to try to negotiate the release, the Exodus of the Jewish people. The pasuk says that Moshe and Aharon went to Paroh, and initially it backfired. Not only did Paroh not listen, but he said tichbad ha'avodah al ha'anashim. But then, Hakadosh Baruchu started getting very serious with Paroh, and he started inflicting him with makos. The first makah, the second makah, the third makah. With each makah, Paroh got worn down a little bit, but he wasn't budging. At the end of the day, he was not going to allow the Jews to leave. Fast forward. Paroh had already experienced nine makos over the course of approximately a year. And again, [snorts] he's holding very, very strong. And Hakadosh Baruchu comes to Moshe and to Aharon, and he tells them, "Od negah echas. There's one more makah. There's one more klop that I'm going to impose, and when I impose that klop, it's going to come to an end. But for this negah, for this makah, the Jews are going to have to prepare a little bit. The first thing that you're going to have to tell the chevreh to do is that every single family is going to have to take a sheep. Why a sheep? Because a sheep was very sacred in Egyptology. The sheep was the constellation of the tleh, and it was one of the avodah zarahs that the Egyptians used to worship. So, I want you to take the sheep. I want you to tie it to the corner of your bed for 4 days. At the end of the 4 days, it's going to be the 14th day of Nissan. That's going to be the month on the solar calendar. And then, the Jews lunar calendar, the Jews are going to have a mitzvah to go and to shecht that sheep. Okay, now what? You're going to take the blood, and you're going to put it on the mezuzahs of your bayis, and on the mashkof of your bayis. Okay, not just that. At that next night, which is already tes vav Nissan, you're going to sit around, and you're going to eat from the basar, from the meat of that tleh. Now, while you're doing this, says Hakadosh Baruchu to Moshe, "I'm going to go and I'm going to inflict that 10th makah. And what the 10th makah is going to be is I'm going to kill the bechoros of every single Egyptian family, what we know as makas bechoros. And as soon as that happens, Paroh is going to be running in pajamas b'emtza laylah. He's going to tell you to leave, and this time he's going to mean it. You're going to see him finally go." And that's exactly what happened. And Paroh starts running, "And where's Moshe? Where's Aharon? Just go already." And the next morning on tes vav Nissan, the Jews left Mitzrayim. Now, what was the purpose of all these different makos? So, if you look in the Rishonim, it was really twofold. On the one hand, the purpose of the makos was to punish Paroh. I mean, Paroh had really, in an unjust way, enslaved the Jews for a very, very long time. It was not okay what he did, even though there was some national security cheshbon that he made, but it was still considered wrong. And as a result, he deserved to be punished. And that's for sure the primary function of what the makos were all about. But there was another objective. There was another goal. And that was this was Hakadosh Baruchu's way of showing the world that he exists, that he's the creator of the world, that he knows what's going on in the world, that matters to him what's going on in the world, and that this charvo einash, that Hakadosh Baruchu will reward you or punish you for doing the right thing or the wrong thing. And by the way, he can reward you and punish you in any which way that he chooses. And it was very, very important that Hakadosh Baruchu give over this message, because to be honest, the world had never seen this. Avraham Avinu, going back to the beginning of time, had tapped into it on his own. And then Hakadosh Baruchu revealed himself to Avraham Avinu. And there was this little secret society of Avraham's family who knew the truth. He passed it over to Yitzchak, who passed it over to Yaakov, who passed it over to his family. But the world at large, they had never seen this. They had never been exposed to this. They had never experienced this. I mean, the world was spiritual on some level, but it was all avodah zarah. It was all paganism. And the concept of monotheism, the concept of one God that created >> [snorts] >> all the other gods, so to speak. The Elohei Elohim, the Melech Malchei Hamlachim, this was a foreign concept. It was a novel concept. No one knew what this even meant. And Hakadosh Baruchu felt that for the world to exist, for there to ultimately become a Jewish people, it was critical, it was necessary for this message to be disseminated. And there was one time in history, one time that Hakadosh Baruchu said, "I'm going to show the world in high definition how this goes down." And that all played itself out. It was all manifest during that last year or so that the Jews were in Egypt through the makos dam, tzefardea, kinim, arov, dever, shechin, etc., etc., culminating with with makas bechoros. This was all an objective to show the world the truth of who created the world and what exactly man's purpose on this world is. So, what happened during that last year was the Jews are finally being freed from this last 100 years of torture, but additionally what happened was the Jews and really the world at large received the clinic. This was the ultimate ultimate seminar in terms of understanding >> [snorts] >> the deepest and most philosophical and theological questions that people ponder and that is me borrow a sailor. And what exactly is my purpose? And do I have free will? And is there carbon is all of that was made crystal clear to every single person that experienced the events of the Exodus. Now, because this message was so important and because this message was so critical and because this message would not repeat itself the whole it's for that reason that spoke will told my share in real time as the events are playing out that I want you to tell the Jews that what I'm going to do for them right now is going to be incredible, but it's very important that the Jews find a way to always remember these events. Never ever forget because it's so important. It's so critical for the whole and the foundation of everything that it means to be a year everything that it means to be a moment because without the events of you see us trying to make and it's so so critical that you're going to have to tell the Jews that the events that they saw they have to find a way to constantly remember. As a matter of fact, it has to become part and parcel of their conscious part and parcel of their every single day because [laughter] it's so so so critical. As a matter of fact, I shall told my share told the unit that they're going to be misses at some point that are going to be 100% related to you see us trying to get you didn't going to put on which is related to you see us trying to get away to fill in which is related to you see us trying to get to have a at their door which is related to you see us trying to get to say Christmas for my and which is related to you see us trying to get to be so many misses that they're going to do every single day. They're going to be surrounded by the senior because it's so important. It's so critical because without this what really do we have to to base our system on. This is so so important, but in addition to that I shall told my share I want you to tell the Israel that even though every single day we're going to engage in this, but there's going to be one week a year one week a year where we're going to double down. We're going to triple down with the entire week from the minute we wake up until the moment we go to sleep. We're going to be surrounded. We're going to be consumed by this idea. The idea of the fact that we were once slaves in we were taken out and we were taken out with and it's because of those that we have the foundation of our and my share told my share told my share but it's even more than that that I want you to tell the that within that one week a year there's going to be one day. As a matter of fact, it's not even one day. It's one night where all of this is going to be so manifest. It's going to be so important. We're going to dedicate the entire night and you're going to make such a big deal about it. You're going to put on your nicest clothing and you're going to set your table in the most beautiful way you can and you're going to cook the best foods you know how to cook but the best foods that you know how to cook and the family is going to come together and everyone's going to sit around and they're going to have a a respect for the older person in the family that they own maybe always have. But it's all going to be done with the understanding that this night is the one night of the week which is the one week of the year which is going to be dedicated to go and to remember these events on such an intense level and why? Why is this so important? It's so important because our entire our entire faith is rooted. It's founded. It's based on this understanding and it's not enough that you have even if you have it every single day the years scattered throughout the day and it's not enough that you have this week with a middle where you get to reminisce a little bit. You need that one night that's so intense and that's really the punchline of the way that the remembers these very very important events and this is really this is really what the night of the is all about. The reason the night of was chosen as that night is obvious because that's the night that the Jews actually left you know what happened by the way Marcus happened at the at the at the that's when the ate that original carbon that's when the was sitting in their house and they had blood literally on the and on the their houses and who who was killing the was jumping over the Jewish houses and it all happened on that night and then early that morning was the morning that all the got up and they wanted to make their breads, but they were forced to immediately leave because they had no time. It was already time to leave this all took place on that night and it makes a lot of sense that that would be the night that would be designated as the night that the year goes and he reminisces and he recounts. The reason we're reminiscing on this night. The reason we're recounting on this night is because we understand that our is so rooted in the events that took place on this night and really really if you look back, it's 3,338 years from the year left the year left 2,448 the and now we're holding in the year 5,786 3,338 years the the during the best of times and during the worst of times have engaged in this very very special night. The world stops on this night and it didn't matter if the were this and they were we are the carbon being brought beauty me or if the Jews were in the worst or they were in concentration camps or they were in the process of being expelled from Spain. This was a night that every single year sat down. He remembered. He remembered together with his family. The father of the house gave over the what he heard from his father. What he heard from his father and it's with that chain. It's with that with that that we are the nation that we are tonight. The night of might be the most important night of the entire year. Probably is. Our entire is predicated on that night. That's the of the now this is a share not so much about the this is a share about the but the is of course the handbook that every single Jew takes with him to the what exactly is the in a more specific way is the of the has >> [snorts] >> We went through the briefest version of the history of the Jewish people, but there's certain elements of it that require a little bit more that need to be highlighted where we need to zoom in a little bit and understand it a little bit better to understand the story of you see us trying that and much much more will be be the topic of this series again should be to learn together the in your name of the and that's us. We'll be the to be the be a man on it.