It's NOT 'Passover' - Discover the TRUE NAME - Tehila Gimpel: The Land of Israel Fellowship

Okay, I've heard the most interesting idea and it really touches on something that we're all that that we're always talking about about the special meaning of time and how every time has its own quality. And I heard this great metaphor. The holidays are like chargers. Like imagine that you have your phone that you need to charge and your computer runs out of batteries and some people have electric cars that they need to charge up. It's like all of this stuff in your life periodically needs to be charged. And just like in our physical world, we have things that just kind of go, they run out of energy and then they need to be charged and suddenly they start like working properly again. We have different parts in our souls that will become a little bit deflated. And these certain aspects in our souls, each aspect in our soul has a time, a holiday where it's able to get charged up and then it like is reinvigorated and so and so it's like try to understand the festivals to understand which part of us is being recharged like you know uh sukot is called the time of our happiness but where am I having enough joy like where is the joy in my life and like getting that charged up for the rest of the year and revelation and am I am I am I connecting to the Torah enough. We have shalo. So, I really want to try to like think what is Passover charging for us in our spirit? What is it filling up for us that needs to give us that kind of spiritual energy for the rest of the year? So, I was thinking a little bit about the name of this holiday. You know, there are a lot of actually has a bunch of names that appear in the Bible. We have and in our traditions. We have we have the holiday of of of matzah. Okay, that sounds pretty snazzy, right? Like that kind of sums it up. We eat a lot of matzah. We have kagiv, the holiday of the spring because like everything out in nature is becoming new and we're becoming new. That would be like a pretty snazzy name. And then uh we have Zanutenu, the time of our freedom. That that would have been like my that would have been on my bingo card as the winner because yeah, like that's the main idea, right? And yet like in the in sort of like the collective spirit, we all just call it Pesak. We all just call it Passover. Yes, it has all these names, but we don't really use those names. most beloved kind of like flows off the tip of our tongue name for this holiday is pesak. Why? Why was that chosen by like the spirit of people? Because when like when you think about it, it's referencing not to minimize that moment of of the firstborns being killed. It's not it's not a small moment, but it's also not the main idea of the holiday. So what is like why is that kind of eternalized in our collective memory as the main idea of the holiday? What is pesak trying to take to us? So the kind of traditional understanding the the intuitive understanding is that pesak means to pass over which is why in English it would be called Passover because the English is just translating the popular understanding of the Hebrew word of pesak. But that's not actually necessarily what it means. The when you think about it, this this kind of death came over Egypt. And the idea of this name is that it God passed over the houses of the Jews. Why is that so exciting? All of the plagues, God skipped over the Israelites. Like, we didn't have blood and we didn't have frogs bothering us. It seemed relatively obvious and expected that we're not going to die in the plague that's coming to save us. Why would we die in the plague that's coming to save us? We haven't even done anything wrong. Why is it so important to think that to commemorate God skipping over our houses? So maybe if it seems really strange, it actually is really strange and we have to kind of go back and think what does the word pes and is Passover actually the right translation. So there are two main usages of the word pesak in the Bible. To be a p means to be a Now think about what a is like. Now we have prosthetics and c you know somebody who's god forbid uh you know doesn't have the use of one or both of their legs can have a wheelchair or crutches. But imagine in biblical times, what did it mean to be pa? What did it mean to be crippled? Like in Jeremiah 30 when he says that the that the pregnant women and the pim the cripples are going to come back to the land of Israel. What does it mean? Why is it so surprising that that that that cripples are going to come back to Israel? Because a can't really move. He just sort of stays in place unless somebody moved him. He didn't have apparatus to move around. A wasn't hopping anywhere. He wasn't getting over things. He was like kind of stuck in his place. And when Elijah in the mount Carmel is rebuking the nation for worshiping the Bal, what does he say? He says in Kings in first kings uh chapter 18, I'm going to just read it to you guys. He says, "Elijah drew near the people." And he says, "Until when," and this is the English translation says, it says, Until when are you hopping between two ideas? But was that is that really the right translation? Because the people were not hopping between two ideas. They were dwelling on two ideas. Just like the dwells in one place, the people were dwelling both in the worship of God and in the worship of the Bal. They weren't skipping over them. they were being present in these two religious ideas. So if you look at those two words in the Bible, they do not necessarily give the connotation of an absence of like being gone from something but actually the connotation of being really really present really like being somewhere. So if you actually look at the meaning of the word pesak in its other sort of references in the Bible, simplest meaning of PES is when Hashem says I was on the houses of Israel. We're so used to reading that as I passed over the houses of Israel, but actually that's not the obvious Hebrew meaning. It's that I dwelt. my presence dwell in the houses of Israel. Well, now that's really a whole different way of looking at things because there are two two kind of ways of looking at things when darkness, debt, war, destruction are coming in the world. Some people say does God do all these bad things to me, right? Why does God, you know, like and then and you know, he should have skipped over me. Another way of looking at it is that this this plague came into the world Where was Hashem? Hashem brought his presence through the pascal offering. Brought his presence in to the houses of all of the god-fearing Israelites. Like if if if you look at it that way, it's a whole different ballgame. Why is our spirit so attached like as a nation, as as you know, as a collective to this name Passover, which sounds like God skipped over us, which is like nice, thanks for not killing us, but it doesn't sound that meaningful. Why would we be so attached to this name? Because maybe it means something so profound that when all of this destruction was whirling around Egypt, where were we safe? We were safe by turning our homes into a sacred space that would invite the presence of God to be close to us. And when the presence of God is close to you, that is your protection. The question is not how do I get God to like not bring all the bad stuff onto me, but it's like how do I plug myself in to a connection a connection with Hashem to bring his presence into my home so that I can be in this sort of cocoon of this shelter away from all of all of this destruction. You know, we live now in a world where there's like is there going to be war with Iran and is there going to be war here? Is there going to be nuclear war? There be destruction and it's like what do I do? Yaf is teaching us. You invite Hashem into your home. And you know, Ari and Jeremy were talking about how they feel like the redemption is so near. And I'm like, yes, I want to be with you guys, but I'm so busy scrubbing my house. I don't feel like any redemption is near. I feel like I just have to clean another pantry. But when you if you're doing it because Hashem skipped over the Jewish house, it's like, okay, doing it because I have to do it. But if you are tending to your home now and preparing your home to accept and invite in the presence of Hashem, that's like, wow. Oh my gosh, of course I want to be tidying my house. Of course, I want to be, you know, cleaning and buy going shopping and buying everything because Hashem himself is coming. So if every holiday is to plug our soul into some kind of particular aspect of godliness, a particular aspect of holiness, I would suggest that Passover, which I'm not going to call Passover anymore. I'm going to call it come on over Hashem is not just charging one aspect. It's actually connecting to the holy one. Blessed be he who is telling us that he will come and dwell with us when we create a space with our homes and our families to invite him in. So we are charging not just one side of ourselves but charging our entire soul which is a a the godly part in us is actually able to be completely unified with Hashem on Pesah. And so with that, I just bless all of us to create a beautiful home, beautiful space with our families, to invite Hashem in fully and to experience his presence. This [Music]