Pesach in Israel is something else. Only here could you walk out onto the street and see a huge pot of boiling water and a blow torch to kasher all your kitchenware, and a few days later see small fires every 10 meters on the side of the street. After a break that’s been filled with both physically and spiritually preparations, tonight we have the Pesach seder.
A short dvar from a sicha of the Rebbe:
In the Haggada, we read, “G-d, our G-d, took us out from there [Egypt] with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm”. The Rebbe asks, why is a strong hand emphasized here? In order to understand how Hashem took us out, we need to ask why we were exiled in the first place. Shaloh explains that it was a way to rectify Adan’s sin- to become spiritually pure and cleaned from the contamination at the time of Adam and Chava. But then, how could it be said that Hashem did not take us out of Egypt Himself, we would still be enslaved to Paroh- if Hashem promised Abraham we would only be enslaved for 400 years in Genesis? We learn from the Torah and also from those around us, that even when a slave is released from his servitude, it is possible for him to still have the slave mentality, and to miss the ‘perks’ of being a slave. So even if we were released before the 400 years anyway, it could have been possible to still have this type of mind set. This is seen even in our time. As in Mauritania, in western Africa, many years after slavery was outlawed in their country and the slaves were freed, slavery still had not left their psyche. As one of them told a New York Times reporter in 1997, eighteen years after slavery was abolished, “Just as G‑d created a camel to be a camel, He created me to be a slave.” If so it is likely that the Jewish people would have even returned to Egypt, especially with the difficulties in the desert. Even more so, it with too much suffereing the intention of rectifying the sin could have proven otherwise, making us numb and passionless. But since Hashem took us out with a strong hand, and took us out actively, we received enough revelation that we wanted to cleave to Him! To serve him and dance and sing at the end of the Sea. True the exile would have ended by 400 years anyway, as Hashem promised, but by coming down into this world of action and physicality Himself, without sending an angel or a messenger, we were able to rid ourselves of the slave mentality so that we would chose to remain free and not return to Egypt. Even in the desert there were times when we wanted to go back! If we hadn’t seen such revelation with the miracles of the plagues that happened, they most likely would have actually returned.
Even now, while we are not in Egypt or in slavery, we each have our own limitations and things we fight to become free of. We can all work on getting out of our personal Egypt, by stepping out of our comfort zones or boundries and doing something good that can bring about ahvas yisrael (loving your fellow Jew) by helping other people and serving G-d with joy.
May we all merit to have a pesach free from all chametz (leavened bread) which will bring about a new year of no sins, and this redemption that we are constantly leaving Egypt everyday, should bring about the final and complete and true redemption with moshiach now
Have a kosher and freilichen pesach!!
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| cleaning away with Sara |
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| kashering pots on the side of the street |
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| searching for chametz |
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| burning the chametz |
