Dear Friends,
Rosh Chodesh has arrived, and with it new energy and plenty of work to absorb it all! It is great to have your body and soul on the same page, getting rid of all of the junk.
It is hard to envision what leaving Egypt must have been. The families were huge; the balagan must have been enormous. Imagine what it must have been like to leave behind 210 years worth of history, 86 years of slavery, and the memory of all of those who didn't live to see this day, to pack everything you ever want to see again, and to just go!
You have to try to put yourself in their shoes, if you want to really maximize what your Pesach will be. Redemption is an ongoing process. Every year is part of the evolution of events that are taking all of us to the destiny that G-d had in mind for us when He created the world. There is no escaping the exiles and new beginnings that define our history.
The question is how you can make sense of it. You can easily fall into the trap of thinking that the One who brought about our freakish continuum of persecution isn't really doing us any great favors by authoring our salvation time after time. If someone tripped you, wouldn't you expect her to help you get up? The comparison is engaging, but very superficial. In the example of tripping, there was no inherent meaning in the fall. If you both could replay the moment, you would watch where you walk, and she would be careful about not being a living booby trap.
In actual historical reality exile is no trip up; it is the seed of redemption. Exile is the backdrop of the helplessness and vulnerability of suffering, that opens your eyes to who you aren't and who you never, never want to be. You then see Hashem's compassion in exposing you to yourself and to others, and then breaking all the rules to show you that He was there all along, suffering with you with unknowable love. Take this in, and the way you see life will be completely different.
If you were going to take this idea, and "search for it" at the Seder you would find a hint of it in the way the rituals are set up. At the Seder, you first eat matzah, which symbolizes the unbelievable speed that G-d used to get us out of Egypt. He knew that we were on the edge, and got us out at the last possible moment. From that angle, the matzah is a symbol of His "timelessness" and His love.
After eating the matzah, you eat the maror, which symbolizes the bitterness of the unspeakable suffering that the Jews in Egypt went through during their enslavement. The question you might ask is that since the slavery preceded the exodus, why not approach things logically and have the maror before the matzah?
When you see external reality in a linear way, no other order makes sense. You learned history that way, and it leaves its imprint. Remember learning about how World War One laid the foundation for World War Two? This is one way of looking at history, but there is an alternative way. You can observe the end results of a process. You can then realize that you have not yet come to grips with essential reality. The steps leading up to the end result were planned! Every step along the way was leading each and every protagonist to his destiny.
From this angle, getting us to the split second moment of liberation, symbolized by the matzah, is the cause of the exile itself. Bringing the Jews to the recognition of how beloved we are, and how willing G-d is to break every rule in the book to give us the greatest gift of all - ourselves -- was in the plan all along. Matzah - liberation -- is what G-d had in mind when he exposed us to the maror -- the bitterness that we had to have to be free.
Hearing this story again and again is essential, because it is still happening. You can see it in your own life, and in the life of the Jewish people. This is what the sages in the Haggadah discussed when they engaged in debate about why the Seder should take place at night (the symbol of darkness, in which nothing seems interpretable) while the exodus took place during the day. As you see when you read the Haggadah, the key is realizing that a "whole day" includes the night, and that "all of our history" includes the Messianic era when the process that took us there, and its meaning, will become clear.
There are four "sons" who live inside of you. Your wisest self wants to know HOW to unravel the enigmatic puzzle that is what you mean when you say, "my life". That "son" wants to see G-d's hidden Hand. The wicked son is also there. He is self-interested and has no reality beyond his momentary gratification. For him there is no meaning, only trivialization of what the entire picture means. Dull his teeth! Don't let him trivialize the significance of your choices. Don't let him mock you and destroy your inner yearnings with his cynicism. Hear the voice of the simple son, who wants to know how events that take place make this world a better place. Your answer is to see how every moral system stems from the Torah. In order to receive the Torah, we had to know that the One who gave it cares, is there and intervenes, and can do anything. The most dangerous voice is that of the son who has no more questions. That is the voice of despair. You may have heard its heavy silence. Be kind to yourself! Address that voice the way a mother address her baby, with love, compassion and understanding.
Hashem believes in us and loves us. We have to learn to believe in ourselves and care about ourselves enough to actually look inside and like what we see.
Love,
Tziporah
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