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A Torah Anytime original series.
I once found myself in Gatorland, which
is a theme park in Orlando, a park that
boasts more alligators and crocodiles
than almost any other place on Earth.
And after strolling through its massive
grounds, looking at all the alligators
from every corner of the globe,
seeing them swallow whole chickens in
one bite, watching thrill-seekers
zipline over a pond filled with these 15
1,000-lb beasts, and trying to stop my
4-year-old from dumping in his entire
bag of Bamba into the mouth of one of
them,
we made our way to the park's main
attraction, the alligator wrestling
show. So, we're in the arena packed with
people, and a trainer enters the pit.
He's facing off with a massive gator,
and with a mixture of skill and
craziness, he managed to climb on top of
the alligator's back and hold its
powerful jaws shut. And the crowd is a
mix of awe and horror. My kid has his
hands over his eyes tighter than a rich
man holds his $10,000 estrogen succus.
And then the trainer, who's calmer than
someone having tea with the Queen of
England, he turns to the audience and he
asks the famous alligator question,
"If an alligator is chasing you, what
should you do?"
So, hands in the crowd shot up. One kid
shouted, "Poke it in the eye!"
And a woman yells, "Hit its tail!" And a
man screams, "Throw something at its
snout!" And someone else says, "Freeze
and wave your hands to look really
strong!" And another guy calls out,
"Start whistling in a wo- low whistle
then retract in a 45° angle in a zigzag
pattern!" So, everyone has a theory,
everyone has a strategy, and the trainer
just laughs. And he shakes his head.
And he says, "Folks, it ain't that
complicated.
You want to survive an alligator chasing
you? There's only one thing you do.
You just run as fast as your two feet
can take you."
Sometimes in life we search for
complicated and sophisticated solutions
to our spiritual struggles. Siguls,
inspiration hacks, graves in far-flung
countries, matzah teaches us something
else. It whispers a quiet truth. Try
making things simpler. Try going back to
the basics. How many of us can truly
claim to have souls free to live the
spiritual lives that they want to they
want to live? How many of us are holding
our own souls hostage in prisons built
on money and food and ego and the
illusion that we can conquer the world
if we just work a little bit harder.
Pesach isn't just a celebration of
Hashem
freeing us from physical slavery. It's a
celebration of being freed from the
mindset of slavery. Pesach is the yuntif
in which we are spiritually reborn, both
collective and individually. The avodah
is to go back to the basics, to stare at
the increasingly complicated world and
choose to see through the illusion, to
ask ourselves, are we slaves to our
pleasure-hungry, hyper-stimulated,
overly complicated bodies,
or are we governed by our souls, pure,
calm, and free? Chametz is banned on
Pesach in the harshest of terms because
Hashem wants us to rediscover the
pleasure of simply being in a shamah.
And our neshamahs can't breathe when
they're trapped in a dungeon of
complicated materialism. Yes, we're
people that have rich rituals and depth
and nuance, and there's beauty in that.
But there's a reason the symbol of our
freedom, perhaps the most famous
spiritual symbol in the world, is
nothing more than 2 oz of flour and an
oz of water, because real freedom isn't
flashy, it's not complicated, it's
honest, it's immediate. You just have to
pick up your matzah
and run.
