It is a curious thing. Each year we sit down to make a Pesach Seder to commemorate an event that the vast majority of the world thinks is fictitious. But, we do it anyhow, even Jews whose very lives reflect their firm disbelief in the very origin of this time-honored tradition.

We are not the only people to do this. Various different religions and cultures also continue to celebrate long-ago historical events, the spirits of which are often contradicted by the present-day lives of their celebrants. That’s the power of tradition: it can keep alive even that which, for all intents-and-purposes, is actually no longer alive.

Is it hypocrisy? A lot of times it is.

Perhaps this is what is bothering the ‘Evil Son,’ the main antagonist in the Haggadah because he dares to ask the question: “What does this service mean to you?”

And, though we ‘break his teeth’ for asking such a question and wag a proverbial finger at him, chastising him with the words, “Had you been there, you certainly would not have been redeemed!” the question is a good one. Indeed, it is one that the Haggadah, each year, asks us all to answer by the end of the evening, for the right answer is not only liberating, it is freedom itself.

You see, the problem with the Evil Son is not his question; it is his answer. Indeed, his question is his answer, because for him, it is rhetorical. He may have phrased his words as a question, but he was really making a statement: Though this service may have made sense back in the days of Egyptian slavery, today it is meaningless.1

Okay. For making fun of tradition we break his teeth, metaphorically-speaking. However, if he is in agreement that once-upon-a-time all of this was necessary, then why do we tell him that, had he been in Egypt at the time of the redemption, he would have been one of the four-fifths who died in the Plague of Darkness and did not go out?2

Because he has missed the point of the Haggadah, of the Pesach-Offering, of the entire concept of redemption. Sure, we no longer worship Egyptian gods, and therefore no longer have to parade through the streets with lambs, an Egyptian god, to prove that we do not fear our host nations or adhere to their religious values.

But, that was not the entire story of the Korban Pesach, just a part of it. For, when Kayin and Hevel brought their offerings to God (Bereishis 4:3), it was on the fourteenth day of Nissan —Pesach Offerings.3 And, as the Brisker Rav points out, Avraham Avinu ate matzah on the fifteenth of Nissan, hundreds of years before there was even an Egyptian exile from which to be redeemed.

Which begs the question: Do we eat matzah because there wasn’t enough time to bake bread upon our departure from Egypt, or was there not enough time to bake bread so that we would eat matzah each year on Pesach?

For, contrary to the Evil Son’s way of thinking, mitzvos are eternal. They supercede our daily reality and are never the result of circumstance. If anything, they make possible circumstances, such as the leaving of Egypt in Moshe’s time, and such as the leaving of exile at the End-of-Days as well.

It is the Chacham—the Wise Son— in each generation who understands this. Hence, the Haggadah’s response to his question is the opposite of the one given to his evil brother:

You, in turn, shall instruct him in the laws of Pesach, [up to] “one is not to eat any dessert after the Pesach-lamb.”

For, the Wise Son is the person who understands what is, perhaps, one of the most important ideas of Creation, and yet one of the least-known as well: Redemption is a de facto state of existence.

To understand the idea that redemption is a de facto state of existence, it is important to first understand the concept of exile. For, when we think of the first exile, we usually think of the Jewish people in Egyptian bondage. However, that is not correct, but rather, the Egyptian exile was really the result, and in many respects, a replication of the original exile of all of mankind.

In the beginning, man was created into a state of redemption. In fact, immediately after being formed by God, Adam HaRishon was placed in the Garden of Eden where he lived an idyllic existence. Indeed, the life of the first man is the one that we all dream of living if we merit to live into Yemos HaMoshiach—the Messianic Era.

Eating from the Aitz HaDa’as Tov v’Rah—the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil—changed all of that. Exactly just what was the sin that forced Adam HaRishon and his family into exile is the subject of deep, and often Kabbalistic, discussions. However, the bottom line is that within one day of being created and placed into Paradise, mankind was forced to leave it, and the question is, why?

The answer is: the transformation of man:

The creation of Heaven and Earth and their components was with the Supernal Light, and they existed on a very elevated and awesome level, specifically man who was higher than all of them. However, after the sin of the Tree of Knowledge and Good and Evil, he and everything else descended and was transformed from skin4 made of light to human skin. (Sefer HaKadosh, Sha’ar 6, Ch. 10)

We are used to the world in which we live. We know that it is not Paradise, but we don’t consider it to be the opposite either. However, that is only because we do not appreciate what Paradise once was, or how man originally existed. Like people born into slavery, true redemption is not part of our experience and therefore, not part of our intellectual vocabulary.

Though man has always consisted of a body and a soul, before the sin, they both existed on a much higher spiritual plane. Indeed, the human body once more closely resembled a soul than the body we now have, made of translucent light rather than of opaque skin.5 Sin changed that by creating distance between man and God, lessening the spiritual bond between human beings and their Creator, resulting in far lesser spiritual world and a far greater material existence. Being distant from God makes exile inevitable.

In fact, we see, the process of exile began before God had even pronounced judgment on man:

God called to the man, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard Your voice in the garden and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I did myself.” (Bereishis 3:9-10)

Even a blind man knows when he is naked! What does, “and they knew that they were naked” signify? They had been given one commandment and had stripped themselves of it. (Rashi, Bereishis 3:7)

Thus, the Hebrew word for exile—golus—and of to reveal— l’galos—are virtually the same,6 to make the point: Revelation of God results in redemption. Hence, even the word for redemption, geulah, contains the letters of Gimmel and Lamed, making the point that redemption is a function of the revelation of God in history. Hence, it says regarding the night before the Jewish people left Egypt:

On the first night of Pesach impurity had no power at all … for The Holy One, Blessed is He, emanated His holy light onto the Jewish people, as the author of the Haggadah has written, “The King of Kings was revealed to them.”7 Therefore, they could not remain in Egypt a moment longer lest the Sitra Achra become completely eradicated and free-will become eliminated, the purpose of Creation … Thus, the verse says, Egypt imposed itself strongly upon the people to hasten to send them out of the land, for they said, “We are all dying.” (Shemos 12:33). (Drushei Olam HaTohu, Chelek 2, Drush 5, Anaf 2:5)

Hence, once the light of God was revealed in Egypt, the Jewish people not only did not have to fight militarily, the enemy expelled them so quickly they didn’t even have time to make provisions for the way (Shemos 12:39). Indeed, God told Moshe that, “For the Children of Israel even a dog will not growl” (Shemos 11:7). After the light of God was revealed, all the Jewish people had to do was leave.

The relationship between the revelation of God in history and human freedom is actually expressed in the Hebrew word for man, Adam, which is comprised of three letters: Aleph-Dalet-Mem. Therefore, it is not by chance that the gematria of Adam and geulah are the same, 45,8 indicating that: Only one who achieves the level of an Adam is truly free.

Therefore, if the Hag-gadah is devoted to facilitating freedom, it must accomplish this by transforming the individual into an Adam. Apparently, it is a state of ex-istence that, today, is not merely a matter of birthright:

When Adam sinned, however, this was greatly altered. The amount of evil that existed initially was just enough to assure that man would be in a perfect balance, allowing him to gain perfection through his own efforts. When man sinned, he caused evil to increase, both in himself and in all of Creation, and as a result, it became much more difficult for him to achieve this good. (Derech Hashem 1:3:7:8)

The name Adam indicates the potential for such an imbalance between the spiritual and the material. For, the first letter Aleph, since it represents the number one, always alludes to God, and therefore, to the Godly part of man, his soul. The remaining two letters, Dalet-Mem, spell the word blood, and therefore represent the physical component of man. Therefore: An Adam is a being consisting of a soul and a body.

When in balance, the Aleph and the Dalet-Mem are each in their proper proportions. However, if there is too much emphasis on the Aleph, that is, a person has become too spiritual, then his physical presence will wither away.9 He will not attend to his physical needs as he should, and physical and psychological illness will result.

If a person becomes too material, then his Dalet-Mem are said to be out of proportion, reducing his Aleph significantly. As a result, such a person will become quite material and perhaps, even to the point of denying the existence of God and the spiritual world. Exile is the story of man’s struggle to restore the balance between soul and body.

The fact that God began the destruction of Egyptian society with a plague of blood indicated the nature of the imbalance at that time. Indeed, we are taught that at the time Moshe Rabbeinu came to redeem the Jewish people from the depths of Egyptian immorality, they too had been living on the 49th level of spiritual impurity, the level of Dalet-Mem; the Aleph was almost non-existent. Restore the Aleph, and a person restores his redemption.

Hence, while Amalek, the nemesis and antithesis of the Jewish people, exists, it is the Aleph that is said to be missing from God’s throne, upon which is engraved a likeness of Adam:

And God said to Moshe: “Write this for a memorial in the book, and whisper it in the ears of Yehoshua. For I will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.” And Moshe built an altar, and called the name of it Adonai-nissi. And he said: “The hand upon the throne—Chof-Samech—of God: God will be at war with Amalek from generation to generation.” (Shemos 17:14-16)

The hand of God is raised to swear by His Throne to have eternal war and hatred against Amalek. Why is it written Chof-Samech and not Chof-Samech-ALEPH … God swore that His ... Throne will not be whole until the name of Amalek is completely obliterated. (Rashi, Shemos 17:16)

For, Amalek’s war is against the Divine spark within man, the revelation of God within Adam. Amalek lives to reduce the Aleph to such a degree that man becomes unaware of its existence and can longer communicate with God, since it is the Aleph that makes the revelation of God possible:

Vayikra—And God called—to Moshe, and spoke unto him out of the Tent of Meeting, saying … (Vayikra 1:1)

A ‘calling’ preceded all statements and commandments. It is an expression of love … However, to the gentile prophets He revealed Himself with an expression of happenstance and uncleanness, as it says, “God chanced—vayikar10—upon Bilaam” (Bamidbar 23:4, 16). (Rashi, Vayikra 1:1)

This is the goal of the Haggadah. It represents the process by which a person can restore his Aleph until a balance exists between his spiritual and physical component, transforming him into an Adam, and therefore, a free person. Clearly this is not a once-a-year process, but the work of an Adam all year round. Indeed, the Pesach Seder is just the time to remind ourselves of this, and to refocus on the goal of life and the true path to redemption.

“The rest,” to borrow a line for the Talmud, “is merely commentary.”11

A crucial aspect of the freedom process is speech itself, which is why a person must tell over the Haggadah verbally even if he is by himself and is thoroughly familiar with all parts. For, it is not just the story itself that one recounts when he speaks the Haggadah, but the very purpose of man’s existence:

Rebi Elazar said: Every man was created to toil, as it says, “Because man was made to toil” (Iyov 5:7). Now, I do not know if that means to toil through speech, or actual labor. However, once it says, “A toiling soul toils for him, for his mouth compels him” (Mishlei 16:26), I know that a person was created to toil with his mouth. I do not know, though, if this means to toil in Torah or just in mundane conversation. However, once it says, “This Torah should not leave your mouth” (Yehoshua 1: 8), I know that man was created to toil in Torah [through speech]. (Sanhedrin 99b)

Indeed, from the beginning of man’s existence, speech has been the essential difference between man and the animal, which has reveal the Godliness of man:

God formed man from dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils a living soul, and the man became a living spirit. (Bereishis 2:7)

A living spirit: A speaking spirit. (Onkeles)

Hence, the essential impact of the human soul on man is speech, and it is even the determining factor of just how Godly a person is:

From a man’s mouth you can tell what he is. (Zohar, Bamidbar 193)

As it is pointed out, Pesach can also be read peh sach: the mouth that spoke, when the first letter peh is read as it sounds. Likewise, Pharaoh, in Hebrew can be read peh ra’ah—evil mouth, and the slavery that he imposed—pherach—can similarly be read as soft mouth.

This is extremely meaningful especially when we recall that Moshe’s main reason for refusing his mission to save the Jewish people is that he had uncircumcised lips, meaning that he had difficulty speaking well. And, when he finally did save the Jewish people from the attacking Egyptian army at the Red Sea, it was from a place called Pi HaChiros—the Mouth of Freedom.12

However, given the intricate between speech and Da’as Elokiom—Godly knowledge—and how both are the trademark of an Adam, it is clear that intelligence speech is a major part of the freedom process.

Seder

When was the last time anyone sang the Table of Contents of a program? Well, that is the way families begin their seder each year, and have been doing so for hundreds of years now. Why all the emphasis on seder—order?

Over the course of generations, we come to take things for granted, such as the name Seder. Of all the names to call one of the most important yearly events for the Jew, Order seems the least likely. Until, that is, we recall that it was order that God brought to the null and void at the beginning of Creation:

The earth was null and void, and there was darkness upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God hovered above the water. And God said, “Let there be light!” and there was light. (Bereishis 1:2-3)

The creation of light was the first step towards ending the chaos of the first day of Creation, and each subsequent act of creating increased that order, pushing back the chaos until it was almost non-existent. All that remained to complete the process was for man to abstain from eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil until Shabbos, a period of three hours.13

Had Adam HaRishon succeeded, he would have banished chaos from Creation completely, and would have ushered in the Messianic Era. Instead, he did not wait the three hours and violated the commandment of God, and not only did he not eradicate the remaining chaos in Creation, but he returned much of that which God had previously eliminated.14

History since then, therefore, is meant to be the rectification of that sin and consequence, and therefore: An Adam, who was made in the image of God, Who brought order to Creation, is a being who is also capable of bringing order to Creation. Order is redemption.

Sometimes. For, sometimes, the evilest of people can be the most orderly as well. Indeed, some have used their organizational expertise to be extremely effective in carrying out genocide. Witness the layout of the concentration camps, and the entire system that was used during Holocaust, to ruthlessly murder 6,000,000 Jews.

Clearly, what God calls orderly and what we call orderly can be two very different things, necessitating a revised definition of an Adam: one who is capable of bringing Divine order to Creation, which brings us to the next element of the Seder: Kadesh.

Kadesh

There are many ways to define the distinction between an Adam and an animal. However, one of the most important is a person’s ability to distinguish between the holy and the profane. Thus, the Torah commands the Jewish people:

God spoke to Moshe, saying: “Speak to all the congregation of the Children of Israel, and say to them, ‘You shall be holy, for I, God your God, am holy.’ ” (Vayikra 19:1-2)

Once a person loses this ability, he loses his Godliness and descends to the level of Dalet-Mem,15 to the level of the donkey, which also cannot make such distinctions. He descends the 49 levels of spiritual impurity at which point he becomes both destructive to the world and to himself.

To bring Divine order to Creation, one must be able to distinguish between holy and profane, and choose the former over the latter. Hence, at the end of Parashas Kedoshim, we are told:

You must therefore make a distinction between kosher animals and non-kosher ones, between unclean birds and clean ones. You must not make your souls disgusting by animals or by birds, or by any thing that creeps on the ground, which I have separated from you as a source of ritual defilement. You must be holy to Me, for I, God, am holy, and have separated you from the peoples, so you can be Mine. (Vayikra 20:25)

To develop one’s Aleph is to enhance one’s ability to recognize holiness in Creation and therefore, to be holy like God. Hence, as the Jewish people, with each subsequent plague, climbed out of the depths of the 49 levels of spiritual impurity, they simultaneously ascended the 50 levels of holiness. This allowed them to accept and receive the Torah 50 days later at Mt. Sinai.

The Talmud asks why it is that the insertion of Havdalah on Motzei Shabbos is in the blessing regarding God’s granting of wisdom to man. It answers that the ability to distinguish between holy and profane is a matter of wisdom.16 Wine, which is so central to Jewish ritual and the Seder in particular, also alludes to this:

Anyone who becomes settled through wine has the knowledge of his Creator … and the knowledge of the Seventy Elders. Wine was given with 70 letters,17 and the Mystery was given with 70 letters.18 When wine goes in, secrets go out. (Eiruvin 65a)

Thus, there are 70 faces to Torah,19 and four levels on which all of it can be learned.20

However, in the end, the Torah is God’s instructions to man in order to allow him to see Creation as He does, so that man’s definition of order can resemble that of his Creator. For, any other kind of order is just really the opposite, which is why Urchatz is the next step along the path to becoming an Adam and achieving true freedom.

Urchatz

Ritual washing is never about removing physical dirt, but about removing spiritual filth, or tuma in Hebrew. It is one thing to be able to recognize the difference between holy and profane, but it is something altogether different to be able to know the difference between spiritually pure and impure.

Hence, while other religions also deal with holy and profane, they have far greater difficulty understanding and relating to concepts of tahor and tamei— the ritually pure and ritually impure. Sometimes their very symbols of holiness, from a Torah perspective, can be symbols of spiritual impurity.

The truth is, even the Jewish people require the Torah to define spiritual purity and impurity, since many of the underlying principles are beyond human reason, what the Torah calls Chukim, or Statutes. Hence, those who do not believe in the Chukim of the Torah often mock the Torah approach to ritual purity.21

However, an Adam is someone who also understands and lives with the reality of spiritual purity and impurity, trying to achieve the former. This is why the Talmud refers to the Jewish people as Adam, and to the gentile nations only as the nations of the world.22

In truth, spiritual purity is a kind of checks-and-balances system for making sure that one is truly living a holy life. If one is really expanding his Aleph and truly becoming an Adam, then he will be able to recognize holiness and be inspired to live a spiritually pure life. He will naturally become a moral person, and his life will be a living example of Divine order.

The ritual washing of the hands is also a reminder of Temple times, when such a washing actually made a difference, and one had to be careful not to impart spiritual impurity to others or to food. It was a time, especially during the First Temple period, when mankind was able to experience, albeit in a limited, a more spiritually perfect environment.

Hence, Urchatz is a reminder that, no matter how pleasant exile becomes, we must always yearn for Temple times. For, without the Temple and the spiritual perfection it inspires, a person can never fully become an Adam, and therefore, never fully achieve freedom. We keep laws of ritual purity and impurity today, but mostly as a matter of tradition since we lack the actual means today to rid ourselves completely on impurity at this time. Yearning for better times is the first step in bringing them about.

Karpas

The Hebrew word karpas, when read in reverse—Samech-Peh-Raish-Chof—alludes to the 600,000 Jews who suffered hard labor during Egyptian slavery, since Samech represents the number 60, and the last three letters spell the word parach, which means ‘harsh.’ Hence, the karpas is dipped into salt water, which represents the tears the Jewish people cried because of their slavery.

In truth, millions of Jews suffered harsh working conditions in Egypt. However, for Kabbalistic reasons, when referring to the ‘host’ of the Jewish nation, the number 600,000 is representative. But, either way, the question is, how does this section of the Seder contribute to the growth process of the Aleph?

What is the essence of the growth process itself? Gilui Shechinah—revelation of the Divine Presence. For, the more intellectually and emotionally tangible God’s involvement in history becomes to a person, the more prominent his soul will figure in his everyday life.

The act of dipping karpas into salt water and eating it says that the Seder is not only about having an entertaining experience. It reminds us about the impossible situation we, the Jewish people, once found ourselves in, and how God overtly stepped into history to turn the tables on our oppressors in order to redeem us. The karpas reminds us how close call it had been, for we had been on the verge of both spiritual and physical extinction.

The net effect? Humility, a major theme of the entire evening, because an Adam is a humble person, someone who never takes for granted how dependent he is on others, and in particular, on God, for his survival and success.

For, nothing stands in the way of Aleph-based growth more than unwarranted pride. As the Talmud states, Torah flows downward from Heaven, and only that which is low enough can receive it.23 Not all knowledge is liberating, and essential for receiving the kind of knowledge that is necessary for true and lasting freedom, one must be free of selfish concern, as the Torah writes:

Moshe was very humble, more than anyone else on the face of the earth. (Bamidbar 12:3)

after which God Himself says:

“My servant Moshe is not so (i.e., like other prophets), who is faithful in all My house. With him I speak mouth-to-mouth, in a plain vision and not in riddles; he perceives the 'appearance' of God.” (Bamidbar 12:7)

You can’t have a greater Aleph-experience than this, and humility seems to have been the key to achieving it. The matzah will build upon this very point.

Yachatz

It is the breaking of the middle matzah that transforms it into Lechem Oni—Poor Man’s Bread—since a poor person, not knowing if he’ll have more food in the future, rations what he already has (Pesachim 115b).

However, explains the Maharal, there is another message behind Lechem Oni, and it is that poor people are free people. They have the freedom to pick and move any time they choose because they are not tied down to any one place because of ownership of property. And, how many times throughout history have Jews forfeited the chance to escape life-threatening danger because of personal posses-sions? As the Midrash ex-plains, it was one of the reasons why 12,000,000 Jews died in Egypt during the Plague of Darkness.

And, of course, poor people tend to be humble people as well. Lacking status and worldly possessions, they tend to think lowly of themselves, making the learning of wisdom possible. Hence the Mishnah concludes:

This is the way of the Torah: Eat bread with salt, drink water in small measure, and sleep on the ground ... If you do so, you will be fortunate in this world and it will be good for you in the World to Come. (Pirkei Avos 6:4)

and states elsewhere:

The story should begin with disgrace and end with praise. (Pesachim 10:4)

That is, we should never forget our humble beginnings.

For, then a person can learn wisdom in this world and experience the freedom that goes along with it, and reward in the World-to-Come for having pursued a meaningful way of life. And should someone be blessed with material success in this world, says Lechem Oni, then at least he should relate to it with a certain amount of detachment, so it never holds him back physically or spiritually, so that his Dalet-Mem never overcomes his Aleph.

Chometz, on the other hand, represents bloated pride. The Talmud refers to the yetzer hara as se’or sh’b’issa—the leaven that is in the dough—that is, within man (Brochos 17a), causing him to sin. Obviously it is far easier to remove chometz from bread than it is the yetzer hara from a person, but at the very least, matzah reminds us of the path we must following to return to the true state of Adam.

However, there is another crucial Aleph-building message to do with matzah itself.

Matzah is flour and water. It is well known that water always symbolizes Torah, but what about flour? To begin with, the Mishnah states:

If there is no flour, then there is no Torah. (Pirkei Avos 3:21)

On a simple level, this states the obvious: spiritual advancement can come at the cost of physical well-being, but up to a point. To completely ignore one’s physical needs, in the end, is to is to neglect one’s spiritual needs as well.

However, the following explanation goes deeper:

Flour comes from the grinding of wheat, which the Ultimate Wisdom made for this purpose. Through this, man is distinguished from the rest of the animals, as already stated in the Talmud: When The Holy One, Blessed is He, told Adam, “It will bring forth thorns and thistles” (Bereishis 3:17), a tear formed in his eye. He said before Him, “Master of the Universe! Will I and my donkey eat from the same trough?!” (Pesachim 118a). Thus, had it not been that his food was ground finely, he would not have been able to achieve the completion of Torah (i.e., receive Torah at Mt. Sinai 26 generations later).  (Meiri, Pirkei Avos 3:21)

Hence, the production of flour, the refining of an animal food, symbolizes the intellectual process of refining general ideas and concepts. Animals deal with reality superficially, as do people who live in the depths of the 49 levels of spiritual impurity.

However, an Adam is someone who delves below the surface of an idea to find out and understand its essence. The deeper a person probes reality, the more he expands his Aleph, and the more of an Adam he becomes. The matzah is meant to remind of us of the need to have a Talmudic approach to life.

The Meiri is explaining that had Adam HaRishon not realized that he had sunken to the spiritual level of the donkey and requested a reprieve, mankind would never have possessed the intellectual capacity to receive Torah at Mt. Sinai, 26 generations later. We would have remained intellectually and spiritually static forever. Kemach—flour—represents the historical transformation back in the direction of an Adam.

Ironically, a similar crisis occurred two millennia later, and once again, flour became the symbol of the separation of Adam from the chamor, the donkey.24

As mentioned previously, the Talmud refers to the Jewish people as Adam. The Maharal, on the other hand, explains that the Egyptian people were represented by the chamor, the donkey, because of their attachment to materialism—chomer. Once again, at least conceptually-speaking, Adam and the chamor were eating from the same trough.

This is why, though God calls the holiday Chag HaMatzos, because the Jewish people fulfill the mitzvah of eating matzah, the Jewish people call it Pesach, to recall that God skipped over the houses of the Jewish nation when carrying out the tenth plague of the death of the firstborn.

For, why was such a skipping necessary in the first place, if not because the Jewish people had been living amongst the Egyptians and sharing their outlook on life. This is what it means to have been living on the 49th level of spiritual impurity, the level of the Dalet-Mem, the level of the donkey.

Hence, the gematria of kemach—flour— and Pesach are the same: 148. For just as without the kemach of Adam HaRishon there could have been no receiving of Torah at Mt. Sinai two-and-a-half millennia later, likewise, had there been no Pesach, there could not have been Kabbalos HaTorah 50 days later.

No flour, no Torah … No Pesach, no Shavuos.

This is why the teeth of the Evil Son are broken in response to his question. Teeth are the first stage in the process of refining food, since they break down larger pieces into digestible form, just as the mind is supposed to do intellectually. Thus, the gematria of shain—tooth—is the same as seichel—mind: 350.

And thus, Sefiras HaOmer—the Omer-Count—begins the second night of Pesach, for it is the continuation of the process that was started the night before at the Seder. Once again, it is a process of going from animal food —barley—to human food—wheat, since in Temple times an omer of barley was brought up on the first day after Pesach, but 50 days later, at the end of the Omer-Count and on Shavuos, a bread offering, made from wheat, or human food, was brought instead.

But probing and investigating isn’t enough. The Greeks, whom the Western world calls the ‘light unto nations,’ also probed. Yet, the Midrash refers to the Greek people as ‘darkness,’ prompting the question: What is the essential difference between the Torah’s idea of searching for truth and the Greek way?

The Hebrew word Yavan—Greece—hints to the answer, being spelled Yud-Vav-Nun. On paper, the top of each letter begins at the same height, but the Vav descends further than the Yud, and the Nun extends further down than the Vav:

יון

It is as if to say: If your initial investigation fails to provide a satisfactory answer dig deeper, and deeper yet if that too does not provide an appropriate result.

But what does a ‘Greek’ do if all levels of investigation prove fruitless? This:

Among the causes of this scientific tunnel vision I would like to discuss two that result from the nature of scientific tradition. The first of these is the issue of methodology. In its laudable insistence upon experience, accurate observation and verifiability, science has placed great emphasis upon measurement. To measure something is to experience it in a certain dimension, a dimension in which we can make observations of great accuracy which are repeatable by others. The use of measurement has enabled science to make enormous strides in the understanding of the material universe. But by virtue of its success, measurement has become a scientific idol. The result is an attitude on the part of many scientists of not only skepticism but outright rejection of what cannot be measured. It is as if they were to say, “What we cannot measure, we cannot know; there is no point in worrying about what we can’t know; therefore, what cannot be measured is unimportant and unworthy of observation.” (The Road Less Traveled, Growth and Religion; Simon and Schuster, 1978)

Not so the God-fearing Jew, the Chacham, the Wise Son, for that matter.

The animal that best represents the Jewish people, we are taught, is the dove, or yonah in Hebrew.25 Ironically, the word yonah is spelled: Yud-Vav-Nun-Heh, or Yavan—Greece—with a Heh at the end.

יונה

The letter Heh often represents God, so it is as if to say that though the Jewish people embrace the concept of intellectual investigation, indeed, we encourage it, we do so only inasmuch that it ends with God.

Hence, it is not only flour this time that represents the distinction between ‘Adam’ and the ‘donkey’ but a mixture of flour and water. For Torah, represented by the water, is not necessarily enough to rectify a person; bad people can, and have throughout the generations, use Torah to do their own selfish bidding.

Rather, matzah represents a combination of two spiritual elements that must come together in a person: Torah and truth-seeking. Hence, an Adam is someone who pursues truth by refining ideas, specifically Torah concepts, to understand their essences. This allows him to pursue Torah in a truthful manner, which then allows him to live in the image of God.

Hence, it seems more likely that there wasn’t enough time to bake bread in order to make sure that we would eat matzah every Pesach rather than that we eat matzah because there simply wasn’t enough time to bake bread. After all, it only takes eighteen minutes to make chometz.

Maggid

Lechem Oni has three connotations: Bread of Affliction (Inui), Poor Man’s Bread (ani), and Bread of Answering (oneh). The latter is particularly relevant to Maggid, and the questions and answers that will follow. However, at this point, it should be clear that matzah itself is the answer.  

But, an answer is only as powerful as one’s understanding of the question that prompted it, and ironically, few are well enough acquainted with the question that the Haggadah actually comes to answer.

The first and most obvious question is:

Why do we eat matzah on Pesach as opposed to re-gular bread?

The Torah itself answers this question by describing the haste with which the Jewish people left Egypt:

They could not delay, nor had they made provisions for themselves. (Shemos 12:39)

The question is, why did they not have enough time to bake bread? After all, how long does it actually take to make chometz? Anyone who has seen matzah being baked knows that the problem is not one of too little time, but of too much time.26 Surely, in the process of being redeemed, there had been sufficient time for the dough to rise before putting it on their backs and baking it in the sun.

The answer traditionally gi-ven is that the longer they stayed in Egypt, the longer they remained vulnerable to the negative spiritual influences of Egyptian society. Since at the time of the exodus the Jewish nation had been teetering on the brink of spiritual oblivion,27 they could not afford to be pulled any further in the wrong direction and risk losing the opportunity to be miraculously redeemed from Egypt.

If so, then the final answer to all the question is:

We eat matzah on Pesach to commemorate how, on the threshold of spiritual destruction, God whisked us out of Egypt, not even allowing us sufficient time to bake bread and matzah was the result and symbol of the exodus.

However, this does present a fundamental difficulty:

They seemed to have been afraid of the Egyptians to the extent that they didn’t even want to prepare anything for the way, and thus the commentators explain that they had to leave quickly in order to avoid descending to the fiftieth level of the Fifty Gates of Impurity. However, this does not seem to be correct. Just the opposite! The strength of impurity had been eliminated as a result of the revelation of the Divine Presence, as it says, “For the Children of Israel even a dog will not growl” (Shemos 11:7); He judged their gods and killed their firstborn. If so, how can it be said that impurity have any control, God forbid? It is not relevant to say any of this except with respect to the end of the oppression and the beginning of the redemption.28 That is, had the redemption not begun at all and they had remained enslaved to Egypt, then there would not have been a rectification, God forbid, since they had entered the forty-ninth level of impurity … However, once the redemption had already commenced, from the time the plagues had begun 12 months prior, the Sitra Achra29 began to lose power and he continued to do so from that point onward, particularly from the time the actual oppression ended by Rosh Hashanah30 … In the month of Nissan, and especially on the first night of Pesach, he was completely beaten and conquered to the point of extinction. If so, how can one say there was concern about the power of the fiftieth gate? (Drushei Olam HaTohu, Chelek 2, Drush 5, Anaf 2 Siman 4)

This changes everything. According to this explanation, if the Jewish people had been hurried out of Egypt, it wasn’t because they had been on the brink of spiritual oblivion. If anything, by the time God carried out the tenth and final plague of the death of the firstborn, the Jewish people had become spiritual secure. If so, why did they have to leave Egypt b’chipazon?

The answer is perplexing and begs its own question:

It is impossible to say that the reason why they could not remain in Egypt was because they would fall to the fiftieth level, God forbid, since on the first night of Pesach impurity had no power at all. It means just the opposite, for The Holy One, Blessed is He, emanated His holy light onto the Jewish people, as the author of the Haggadah has written, “The King of Kings was revealed to them.” Therefore, they could not remain in Egypt a moment longer lest the Sitra Achra become completely eradicated and free-will become eliminated, the purpose of Creation. For, Egypt was the chief of all [spiritual impurity at that time] and had she been destroyed then so would the Sitra Achra and the yetzer hara have been destroyed completely. Free-will would no longer have existed, and for this reason they could not delay. (Drushei Olam HaTohu, Chelek 2, Drush 5, Anaf 2 Siman 5)

In other words, had the Jewish people remained in Egypt any longer then evil, not good, would have been eradicated from Creation. This is because the more God’s light filled Creation with each subsequent miracle, the less evil was able to exist, and this, in turn, was eliminating all possibility of free-will. Hence, in order to preserve free-will, evil had to be spared, and therefore the Jewish people were pushed out of Egypt.

The only remaining question is, what would have been wrong with that? Isn’t the eradication of evil the goal of history and role of mankind, as the Talmud states:

In the time to come The Holy One, Blessed is He, will bring the evil inclination and slay it in the presence of the righteous and the wicked. (Succah 52a)

What was missing that God arrested the process of redemption so close to completion, making possible thousands of years of exile?

This:

Since this had not been the result their actions at all, it was contrary to the purpose of Creation. Therefore, it was not possible for all these wondrous lights to remain with them, because free-will would have vanished as a result of the emanation of the Great Light. Therefore, the great influx of light was removed from them immediately after the first night of Pesach, because it was intended that its continuation be the result of their own deeds. (Drushei Olam HaTohu, Chelek 2, Drush 5, Anaf 2 Siman 5)

Indeed, had it not been for the promise that God made to Avraham that his descendants would eventually return to the land,31 we would have been left to assimilate and completely lose our identity and connection to God. We didn’t ask to be redeemed, and incredibly, even after the plagues began, four-fifths of the Jewish population in Egypt still chose to remain in Egypt.

Even the remaining one-fifth that did leave eventually rejected entering the Land of Canaan, and died in the desert.32 And, the fact that we’re still in exile over three millennia later indicates that the problem has still yet to be resolved We still have not fully chosen redemption.

Hence, the Haggadah states:

In every generation, one must look at himself as if he too has come out of Egypt.

For, it is true: all Jews in every generation have been leaving Egypt, and will continue to do so until Moshiach arrives and ushers in the Final Redemption.

Thus, another name for that historic time is Keitz HaYamim, literally the end of the days. The days? Which days? The days that were left unfinished in Egypt when the Jewish people, to avoid becoming completely lost amongst the nations of the world, left 190 years early.33 Hence, the gematria of the word keitz is 190,34 reiter-ating that the redemption from Egypt is a work in progress, spread out across millennia until Moshiach comes.

Therefore, the matzah does not symbolize what was accomplished at the time of the exodus from Egypt, but what wasn’t. Every year the matzah at the Seder is a stark reminder of a choice our ancestors failed to make, with the hope that the current generation will make the historical decision and finally usher in the Messianic Era.

The real question being addressed by the Haggadah?

What does it take to choose redemption?

Knowing the true question, it is now possible to embark on a journey in pursuit of the true answer.

Sipur Yetzias Mitzrayim is the recounting of the story of the exodus from Egypt. And, we are told by the Haggadah, the more one tells the story, the more praiseworthy he is. For, it is not only an issue of showing gratitude to God for our miraculous redemption from Egypt, it is also about showing our appreciation for our miraculous redemption from Mitzrayim.

Though Egypt is a physical location, Mitzrayim is a conceptual reality, one that can be embodied by any nation in the world. Indeed, throughout his-tory, there has always been some nation or culture that has played the role of Mitzrayim by virtue of its outlook on life. Thus, in every generation a Jew can look at himself as if he too is leaving Mitzrayim.

This idea is hinted to by the word Mitzrayim—Mem-Tzaddi-Raish-Yud-Mem— which is made up of two Hebrew words: meitzer—Mem-Tzaddi-Raish, which means boundary, and yum—Yud-Mem, which means sea.35 However, since the gematria of the letters Yud-Mem equal 50, they can also allude to the Fifty Gates of Understanding,36 with which the world was created:

Fifty Gates of Understanding were created in the world, and all of them were given to Moshe except for one. (Rosh Hashanah 21b)

and upon which Torah is based.37 Hence, Mitzrayim, in any generation, is the place or culture that most stifles the pursuit of Torah wisdom and a relationship with God.

Therefore, to leave Mitzrayim, at least conceptually, is to overcome the obstacles that stand between a person and access to Divine light. And, as Shlomo HaMelech wrote, that is not going to happen until a person appreciates the need to do so:

If you want it like money and seek it like buried treasures, then you will understand fear of God and Da’as Elokim you will find. (Mishlei 2:4-5)

Kabbalah explains that this is what Divine light is all about: Da’as Elokim—Godly Knowledge. And, one who receives it becomes not only smarter, but wiser, because his perception of reality becomes similar to God’s, as much as is humanly possible. It is this, Da’as Elokim, that builds the Aleph of an Adam.

This is why the desert of the meal is the Afikomen, matzah that is hidden for the children to seek and rewarded for one they find it. This teaches them that the true benefit in life comes from being a truth-seeker, from pursuing Da’as Elokim “like money and seeking it like buried treasures.” The entire Seder has been designed to facilitate that process.

Hence, every last detail of the exodus story, no matter how trivial it may seem to us, carries a message, and potential Da’as Elokim. This is why the greatest rabbis of Jewish history, who never wasted a moment, spent the entire evening elucidating every aspect of they story. And, the conclusions they reached after much give-and-take opened their eyes to nuances of understanding and appreciation of how God works in history in order to fulfill His purpose for Creation.

That is true Da’as Elokim.

Hence, there is a crucial difference between knowledge and da’as. Knowledge does not necessarily change a person’s behavior; da’as does. It is knowledge that breaks through the wall of cognitive dissonance that enslaves the minds of most people through history. It is knowledge and understanding that pushes a person to the point of choice, at which time he must either choose either to embrace the truth, or to live with falsehood.

There is a common expression: yeshuas Hashem k’heref ayin—the salvation of God comes in the blink of an eye. It is not from Tanach or the Talmud, but an idea that has emerged from experience. For, how many times in history have Jews been on the brink of disaster, only to see the situation turn around at the last minute, and from a direction that was totally unexpected?

Is this not a blessing? How great it is to have a God that, at the last minute, saves the day for His people?

True, but how many tragedies have occurred along the way to salvation? How many people have worried to sickness before their crisis was solved, if at all during their lifetimes?

The truth is, there is a reason why such an expression is not in Tanach or the Talmud: it is not l’chatchilah—ideal. For, as Jewish history also teaches, especially the redemption from Egypt, Divine redemption is a process that begins well in advance of the actual exodus. The plagues took 12 months from start to finish.

However, the Talmud teaches:

Who is a wise man? One who sees what is being born. (Tamid 32a)

In other words, a Chacham is someone who sees the events of everyday life, analyzes them, especially the unusual ones, and determines their meaning. A Chacham projects into the future, asking the question, “What could this lead to? What potential opportunity does this present?”

As a pursuer of wisdom, the wise person—a true Adam— asks such questions. As a recipient of Da’as Elokim, a wise person—a true Adam—gets such answers. For the Chacham, redemption does not come in the blink of an eye, because he is someone who can see it coming over time and prepares for it, and even does what he can, like Mordechai in the story of Purim, to facilitate it.

This is the goal of the Seder: to make us all into Chachamim —vessels for Da’as Elokim. To become a Chacham is to become an Adam, and to become an Adam is to be redeemed. To be redeemed is to fulfill one’s self personally, and when the entire nation experiences this, it is to fulfill the mandate of the purpose of Creation.

Hence, the more one speaks of the exodus from Mitzrayim, that is, the more he recalls the miraculous departure from spiritual darkness to Divine light and the gift of access to Da’as Elokim, the more Da’as Elokim he can pursue and find. Certainly such a person is praiseworthy, because he perfects his Aleph and becomes a true Adam, a true Ben Chorin living in the image of God.

This is the bread of affliction that our fathers ate in the land of Egypt. Whoever is hungry, let him come and eat; whoever is in need, let him come and conduct the Seder of Pesach. This year [we are] here; next year in the land of Israel. This year [we are] slaves; next year [we will be] free people.

The ideas in this short paragraph seem unrelated. What does matzah have to do with a mitzvah of tzedakah, or the fact that we are still in exile? However, it is the last sentence that ties all of this together: This year we are salves; next year we will be free people, as if to say, “Why are you still making a Seder in exile?”

Never mind the fact that we feel and act like free people, because of the materialism and social rights we have gained living in exile; it is still exile. With the Jewish people scattered to the four corners of the earth, the Temple still not built in Jerusalem, and the Divine Presence still waiting to dwell within it, exile is as bad as it ever was.

“This the bread of our affliction,” then, three millennia ago, and today as well. “Whoever is hungry, let him come and eat,” because we are all in this exile together, and need to be concerned for one another. “This year we are here; next year in the land of Israel,” not just physically, but spiritually as well. You can’t work on redemption if you disregard the reality of exile.

We also mention the Land of Israel in this declaration, which is not something to be downplayed. Make no mistake about it: The Jewish people have been in exile for over 3300 years because our ancestors rejected the gift of Eretz Yisroel in the secondth year after leaving Egypt, and we have never recovered since.

The Land of Israel is to the Jewish people what flour is to bread, or in this case, matzah. It is such an integral part of who the Jewish people are, and are destined to be. It wasn’t meant only to be the homeland of the Jewish people. It is the only place when the Jewish people can be the Jewish people, as the Torah states:

I am God, your God, Who took you out of the land of Egypt, to give you the land of Canaan, to be God to you. (Vayikra 25:38)

The Talmud takes this statement literally, stating:

Anyone living outside of Eretz Yisroel is like one who worship idols … It is better to live in Eretz Yisroel in a city that is mostly inhabited by non-Jews than to live in a city outside of Eretz Yisroel that is mostly inhabited by Jews. (Kesuvos 110b)

On one hand, this entire commentary could be about the centrality of Eretz Yisroel to the national goal of the Jewish people, and for all of Creation for that matter.38 It is not a secondary issue, as many have believed over the millennia, but a primary one, which is why we remain in exile to this very day.

Ultimately, the Holy Land is exactly that, which is why it acts as the best conduit for a close and profound relationship between Jew and God. It is the place from which every Jewish soul has been hewn, and therefore the place in which every Jewish soul must find its home.39 And, doing so is what allows us to complete our process of development of becoming an Adam, and achieving true and lasting freedom.

What changed this night [that it is different] from all other nights?

The question means: What, if anything, is unique about the night of the Seder that we do all of this? All of the events of the evening suggest that something more than mere commemoration is taking place. They suggest that every fifteenth of Nisan is the reliving of a special opportunity that began back in Egypt but which repeats itself each year.

It is as if some kind of spiritual portal opens up, and through the events of the Seder, we are able to enter it. We may not physically time-travel, but spiritually we do, at least those, unlike the Evil Son, who believe it is possible.

A major emphasis of the entire evening is contrast. We are interested in keeping ourselves and the children alert. We encouraged curiosity, because a person only absorbs that to which he pays attention. The more one pays attention to life, the more one learns from life.

The number one device that Amalek, the nation that is the antithesis of the Jewish people, uses to spiritually weaken the Jewish people is distraction. It doesn't really matter what he uses, just as long as the Jew is rendered incapable of taking advantage of the spiritual moment at hand. Indeed, the entire Haggadah was created to make sure that Jews are in the right place at the right time, and completely focused, on the night of the Seder.

And the questions are not mere questions either. Rather, they focus on major themes of the Seder, and freedom. They are not necessarily questions that our children would have asked, but they are questions that they should have asked, including the children within all of us.

On all nights we need not dip even once, on this night we do so twice!

And on all nights we eat chometz or matzah, and on this night only matzah.

On all nights we eat any kind of vegetables, and on this night marror!

On all nights we eat sitting upright or reclining, and on this night we all recline!

One theme that is prevalent, though not necessarily obvious, is that of discipline. For a night that represents freedom, we are certainly confronted by restrictions (we must dip, we at only matzah, etc.), and that may be the main question of the evening: How does restriction result in freedom?

It is obviously a fundamental question since we all have it. Yes, we were taken out of Egytian bondage, but fifty short days later we were compelled to accept 613 mitzvos.40 Disobeying the Egyptian commands resulted in torture or death, but disobeying God’s commandments can result in death in this world and the next world! How is that freedom?

Indeed, perhaps that is what concerned the four-fifths who chose to remain in darkness, and died during the Plague of Darkness. It certainly has been on the mind of many a Jew since that time as well, and one that the Haggadah comes to answer, without which freedom is impossible, as it says:

The Tablets are the handiwork of God, and the script was God’s script charus—engraved—on the Tablets. Do not read charus but cheirus—freedom—for you can have no freer man than the one who engages in Torah study. (Pirkei Avos 6:2)

The answer is that perfection in this world, aside from God Himself, is not an automatic or easy reality. Wheat must be grown, then harvested, then ground finely, and then sifted before it is usable as food. A lot of effort is necessary to change animal food into a far more dignified human experience, one befitting a being made in the image of God.

And yes, light does come from an olive, but only after squeezing it and extracting the oil, and then igniting it. The olive is the symbol of Greek wisdom, which is not even edible until is pickled. However, it is the shemen zayis—the oil of the olive— that symbolizes Torah wisdom,41 and the philosophy that, just as food must be refined to be improved, so too must a man’s traits be refined in order for him to become an Adam, and free person.

Quite simply, the mitzvos refine a person. They represent not just a disciplined way of life, which every culture acknowledges is necessary for harnessing human potential, but a Divinely disciplined way of life. By following the Torah, it is more likely that we will live up to our Godly potential.

This means that mitzvos are the way that we tap into the Divine light and feed the Aleph, allowing us to become an Adam in the ultimate sense of the term. Hence, the teaching is quite literal and quite accurate: freedom is in fact engraved on the Tablets. And, we taste some of that freedom by using the restrictions of Pesach and the Seder to channel our spiritual energy and to become better receptacles for the Divine light that emanates that night.

Ultimately, it boils down to two approaches to life: the big picture approach and the small picture approach. The big picture approach is global, incorporating all facets of Creation and history in search of patterns that clearly indicate God is running history, and we have a role in the completion of the Divine purpose.

The small picture approach ignores all that. It dispenses with historical context, concerned only about that which provides immediate benefit and gratification. The person with the small picture approach—the Evil Son in the Haggadah—opts out of the long-term national goals of the Jewish people, and therefore, retroactively, has become part of the four-fifths who died in the Plague of Darkness.

“For the living know that they shall die” (Koheles 9:5): these are the righteous who in their death are called living … “But the dead know nothing” (Shmuel 2:23:20): these are the wicked who in their lifetime are called dead. (Brochos 18a)

All of it is to get to the point described by the Torah in the following way:

Therefore choose life that you may live, you and your seed, to love God your God, to listen to His voice and to cleave to Him. For that is your life and the length of your days, so that you may dwell in the land which God swore to your fathers, to Avraham, to Yitzchak, and to Ya’akov, to give them. (Devarim 30:19-20)

The Jewish people were taken from Egypt so that we would choose life in a world in which most people choose living deaths. We were taken into the desert to learn how to rely solely on God in a world that has been learning to rely less and less on God. Ironically, man-made security services are called Bitachon, a word that, traditionally, has meant ‘trust in God.’

This was the beginning of Jewish history, and this will be the end of Jewish history. Indeed, the entire world is being driven to a single point and idea, expressed by the prophet in the following words:

On that day, God will be one and His Name will be One. (Zechariah 14:9)

On which day?

On the last day of history as we have known it, the threshold to Yemos HaMoshiach—the Messianic Era.

God will be one? God is always one.

Yes, but not necessarily in the minds of men. Amalek has used smoke and mirrors to create the illusion that God is not always involved in the affairs of man, that evil people can act with a measure of impunity, that our actions only make a difference in a general sense, but not in a specific sense.

Like Kayin who thought he could hide the murder of his brother from God,42 and Bilaam who thought that man could pull the wool over God’s eyes on occasion,43 we act as if either God doesn’t see everything, or that even if He sees everything, He doesn’t care. Some may think otherwise on some intellectual level, but their lives may not be consistent with that knowledge.

The messages of the Seder take place on many levels, including that of gematria, or Jewish numerology. One recurring gematria is the number four: four cups of wine, four questions, and four sons, etc. True, the four cups of wine correspond to the four languages of redemption that God spoke of to Moshe Rabbeinu, but why were there four such terms in the first place?

To begin with, the number four, which is represented by the letter Dalet, re-emphasizes the theme of humility being crucial for freedom. As the Talmud, when discussing the order of the Aleph-Bais and its inherent lessons for life, explains:

Gimmel-Dalet … Gemol Dallim: show kindness to the Poor. Why is the foot of the Gimmel stretched toward the Dalet? Because it is fitting for  the benevolent to run after [seek out] the poor. And why is the roof  of the Dalet stretched out toward the Gimmel? Because he must make himself available to him. (Shabbos 104a)

Hence, one many assume, that the 400 years the Jewish people had been meant to originally spend in Egypt, were significant for this reason, being the product of four and 100. Hence, the remaining 190 years that were cut from the Egyptian exile were not forgotten, only spread out over the course of thousands of years, as mentioned earlier. 

Likewise, even though the punishment of the forty years spent in the desert, as a result of the sin of the Spies, was based upon the amount of days they spied the land, it didn’t have to be that way either. Rather, forty is the product of four times ten, revealing that whatever level of humility the Jewish people had lacked by leaving Egypt prematurely, resulting in the sin of the Spies, the forty years in the desert had been designed to rectify.

Hence, the Talmud teaches that until the fortieth day from conception one may pray for the gender of a child, at which point Heaven finalizes whether the child will be a boy or a girl.44 This confirms that the number forty represents the end of a specific period of development, whether it is the determination of the future of a child or that of the entire Jewish nation.

This would also explain why the Zohar says that the period of history called Kibbutz Golios, or the Ingathering of the Exiles, is destined to last forty years.45 Understandably, it will be a period of time during which the Jewish people are meant to adjust to, and then enjoy, their return to the Holy Land and life in the Messianic Era.

The tray is restored to its place with the matzah partly uncovered. Now we say "We were slaves. . .":

We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Lord, our God, took us out from there with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm. If the Holy One, Blessed is He, had not taken our fathers out of Egypt, then we, our children and our children’s children would have remained enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt. Even if all of us were wise, all of us understanding, all of us knowing the Torah, we would still be obligated to discuss the exodus from Egypt, and everyone who discusses the exodus from Egypt at length is praiseworthy.

How is this the answer to the four questions that were just asked? It explains why we are supposed to be grateful for the redemption in the past, and why we are obligated to commemorate it each year. However, it does not explain why the fifteenth of Nisan is more than just a remembrance of what once occurred. Therefore, anticipating the question, the rabbis inserted the following account into the Seder.

Once, Rebi Eliezer, Rebi Yehoshua, Rebi Elazar ben Azariah, Rebi Akiva and Rebi Tarphon were reclining  in B’nei Brak. They were discussing the exodus from Egypt all that night, until their students came and told them: “Our Masters! The time has come for reciting the morning Shema!”

What is the point of this? Is it that these rabbis took the mitzvah of telling the story of the exodus so seriously that they remained awake the entire night just to fulfill it? Then, what is the point of telling us that they became so distracted by the one mitzvah that they almost forgot about another one, the all important once, to recite the morning Shema on time?

Then there is the next section, which seems to belong more in the Talmud than the Haggadah:

Rebi Elazar ben Azariah said: “I am like a 70-year old man, yet I could not prove that the exodus from Egypt must be mentioned at night until Ben Zoma explained it. It says ‘That you may remember the day you left Egypt all the days of your life’ (Devarim 16:3). Now, ‘the days of your life’ refers to the days, [and the additional word] ‘all’ indicates the nights as well!”

There are many details to analyze here, and many commentators on the Haggadah do. However, in light of the theme of this commentary, the question becomes, what is Rebi Elazar’s message, especially since the number 70 is one that is associated with the end of exile and the beginning of redemption?

It is to say that the exodus from Egypt did not end the day the Jewish people left Mitzrayim. It is a work in process, one that continues towards a complete break from Mitzrayim with the Final Redemption, but which, in the meantime, is ongoing 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all day and all night.

In other words, Yetzias Mitzrayim is not a mitzvah that we happen to stop to observe once a year in the midst of performing the rest of the Torah. Rather, we interrupt the mitzvah of Yetzias Mitzrayim to perform the other mitzvos of the Torah, such as the saying of the morning Shema, all of which, in the end, are part and parcel with the mitzvah to complete the process of leaving Mitzrayim for good.

The sages, however, said: “ ’The days of your life’ refers to the present world; ‘all’ indicates the inclusion of the days of Moshiach.”

On a deeper level, this is not a point of disagreement. Rather, the rabbis are teaching that one must assume that the process of leaving Mitzrayim does not end with the beginning of the Messianic Era. Rather, there will still be work to do even after all evil has been banished from Creation.

This is consistent with Kabbalah that teaches that even though in Yemos HaMoshiach life will become quite perfect, the perfection of mankind will still have been achieved. This is why death will be necessary even in that period of time, though a lot more pleasant than it is now, as it says:

The world will not begin to change from its present state and leave the zuhama (spiritual impurity), physicality, and nature completely until the time of the Resurrection of the Dead and onward, and even then only in increments …Before the resurrection, zuhama will be eliminated and physicality of the body will decompose, as it says: In the future righteous people will be dust, as it says, “Until you return to the earth from where you were taken. You are dust, and to dust you will return” (Shabbos 152b).  (Drushei Olam HaTohu, Chelek 2, Drush 4, Anaf 12, Siman 9)

For, leaving Mitzrayim is about more than changing the way we think. It is about changing our entire being back to what it once was before Adam HaRishon committed the first sin. Ultimately, it is about reverting back to Kesones Ohr—skin made from light.46

Blessed is the Omnipresent One, blessed is He! Blessed is He who gave the Torah to His people Israel, blessed is He!

This is the segue between the previous section and the Four Sons and their various different questions. It is short, and powerful, and must be understood in order to be able to appreciate what is meant to be accomplished by what follows.

The first point to make is the name of God that is used: HaMakom, which literally means “The Place.” It is a Name of God that indicates that God is not within Creation, but that all of Creation is within God. God is the place of all existence.47 Why is this important to know at this point.

It is, in effect, the answer to the questions that are about to be asked. Very often, as an educational device, the Talmud will present what seems to be a clear-cut answer only to ask, “What was the question that required such an answer?” Apparently, the answer was not as obvious as it previously seemed.

Likewise here. The answer to the question is: the revelation of God. Since God is the place of Creation, He is, by necessity, in all of it, and therefore if we can’t see Him, then it is because we have yet to reveal Him, the purpose of life, the purpose of Creation, and the essence of redemption. Having established that, it is time to look at the Four Questions and those who ask them.

The Torah speaks of four children: one who is wise, one who is wicked, one who is simple and one who does not know how to ask.

All commentators agree that on some level the story of the Four Sons is a metaphor, and that they really describe four very different approaches to life. In fact, each one can have applied to all of us at different points throughout our lives.

The question is, wise about what? And, what defines evil, or simple? And, which question does the last son not know how to ask, because surely he has, already, asked several questions throughout his life.

This, of course, gets into a whole discussion about good and evil, which can only be appreciated by going back to the original concept of good, as defined by the Torah:

And God said, “Let there be light!” and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good … (Bereishis 1:3-4)

Good as in what? As in: this, the creation of light, fulfills the purpose of Creation. The Torah is teaching us from the start that God had a very specific purpose in mind when He made the world, and that was the creation of light, and all that results from its existence: order, growth, life, etc.

The wise one, what does he say? “What are the testimonies, the statutes and the laws which the Lord, our God, has commanded you?”

A chacham—a wise person—therefore, is someone who understands that this is the purpose of life. And, what makes him wise, as opposed to only smart, is that he has also figured out how to create that light, or at least to release it into the world. He understands that this is the purpose of Torah, which God has given to us, and for which we thanked Him above.

You, in turn, shall instruct him in the laws of Pesach, [up to] “one is not to eat any dessert after the Pesach.”

As it says, “He gives wisdom to the wise, and knowledge to the discerning” (Daniel 2:21), and so should we. The Chacham lives to connect the dots in life, because he knows that the picture that will form is one of God, intellectually-speaking, and it is our job as parents and educators to help him do exactly that.

So, we tell him, in detail, what the Pesach is all about, and how it embodies out the very purpose of the Jewish people. We help him to realize for himself that there is nothing else more meaningful for the Jew than this purpose, and we help him to find his personal path to achieve this purpose.

The wicked one, what does he say? “What is this service to you?!” He says “to you,” but not to him! By excluding himself from the community he has denied that which is fundamental.

Not so the Rasha. Evil is defined as that which goes against the purpose of Creation, resulting instead in chaos and a spiritually-meaningless life. An evil person is one who could know the truth about Creation but who chooses to ignore that truth instead, usually in order to use, and mostly to abuse, Creation. It’s one thing to have personal weaknesses and flaws, but it is something altogether different and evil to build a world based upon them.

You, therefore, blunt his teeth and say to him, “It is because of this that God did for me when I left Egypt” (Shemos 13:8). “For me,” but not for him, for had he been there, he would not have been redeemed!

Redemption from Mitzrayim was never only about physical freedom, but primarily about intellectual and spiritual freedom. That is why it was no contradiction to be released from Egyptian bondage only to be led into acceptance of the Torah and its 613 Mitzvos. Freedom for a human is freedom of the spirit, something that is usually only expressed when sacrificing physical freedom for nobler causes. Unbridled physical freedom, history proves, only results in enslavement to material desires and passions.

Hence, when God opened the door for the descendants of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Ya’akov to leave Mitzrayim, it was only for those who intended to live spiritually meaningful lives. It was the Rasha’s approach to life, ultimately, that condemned the four-fifths to die in the Plague of Darkness and miss the redemption completely.

And, nothing blunts a person’s teeth more than reducing his approach in life to meaninglessness. We tell the Evil Son, “If this is what you think then you are living on borrowed time, because you have, retroactively, eliminated the need for you to be free of Mitzrayim.”

What does the Simple Son say? “What is this?”

The simple son is one who accepts the doctrine of good, but more as a matter of fact or training. He is the person who fails to delve into the reality of the Divine purpose for Creation, and though he may not hinder the purpose of Creation, he barely helps it either. He is stuck on the Pshat-level of Pardes.

Pardes is the Hebrew word for orchard. If the word sounds a lot like the word paradise, it is because the first paradise, the Garden of Eden, was an orchard. But not just a regular fruit orchard, but a spiritual and intellectual one, as the word Pardes indicates, for its four letters Peh-Raish-Dalet-Samech are the first letters of four different words: Pshat, Remez, Drush, and Sod—the four levels on which Torah can be learned.48

They translate literally as: Simple, Hint, Exegesis, and Secret, but refer to, in general, four areas of Torah learning known as Mikrah, Mishnah, Talmud, and Kabbalah. These, in turn, refer to the simple rendering of a verse from the Torah, a mishnaic teaching from the Oral Law that may be hinted to in the Torah, the Talmudic explanation of the mishnah which is often the result of exegesis, and the Kabbalistic understanding of Torah and mitzvos.

Hence, Pardes is not only about one’s approach to Torah, but also about one’s approach to life in general. One can deal with the everyday events of life on a simplistic level, overlooking their deeper meaning in a larger historical context, or one can learn to read between the lines and understand more about Divine Providence.

And, once a person has decided to develop a deeper appreciation of events and ideas, he can continue on his intellectual journey until he reaches levels of understanding that too sublime to describe. They can only be personally experienced. It is at such a point that a person truly connects to the purpose of Creation and becomes a partner with God in its fulfillment.

You shall tell him, “With a strong hand God took us out of Egypt, from the house of slaves” (Shemos 13:16).

How do you answer a person who deals with life on a simplistic level, especially when it comes to such a powerful idea as the leaving of Mitzrayim? Clearly the answer must be more about his approach to life than the actual information he feigns to seek. The answer has to somehow knock him from the level of Pshat to the next level of Remez, at least, for which a little drama works best.

As for the one who does not know how to ask …

People take for granted the power of asking a question. Questions unlock the mysteries of life. The Hebrew for question is sheilah, similar to the word for something that is borrowed, because knowledge is something that must be acquired, made one’s own, and questioning is a major part of the acquisition process.

A more difficult, and usually more profound question is called a kashah, which means hard. However, it is not only indicative o the level of question, but also a reminder that the acquisition of knowledge is not meant to be an easy process. Any enjoyable one, yes, but an easy one, no.

The key to asking a good question in life is by not taking anything for granted. Someone who cannot ask a question is someone who has yet to analyze his surroundings and his life setting. He merely exists within an unknown context, and this limits the meaning of his life and his involvement in the master plan for Creation.

You must initiate him, as it is said, “You shall tell your child on that day, ‘It is because of this that God did for me when I left Egypt.’ ”

This, of course, is the same answer that was given to the Evil Son, as if to say that such innocence may be fine for now, but you have to know that it can, and often does, result in a faulty approach to life, and even evil. It is also a level of evil when good people do not live up to spiritual and historical expectations.

For, terrible things have happened throughout history, perpetrated by very evil people, but often only because of the naivety of so called innocent people.49 Evil people prey on the innocence of others, some of which could have been avoided if such people took the time to deeper their understanding of history and the nature of man.

Thus we have the four questions, and the four different approaches to life. There is the Chacham, who spends considerable time and energy to connect the dots and solve the mystery of life, in order to use it to his advantage. He is a partner with God in the fulfillment of the mandate of Creation, the one who brings His Creator the greatest joy.

The Rasha lives to disconnect the dots. He does not want to know that there are higher levels of meaning, because that obligates him to take life more seriously and to use his time on earth more meaningfully. He lives for the moment, and is a slave to his passions, and is too intellectually lazy to even take the time to find out what he is better off being a more spiritual being.

The Tam is the one who just wants to do his own thing, the way he is most comfortable doing it. He means no one harm, and feels safe assuming that what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. But he is tragically wrong, for the best parts of life will pass him by, since he will not be intellectually around to notice and enjoy them.

The Aino Yoda’ah Lishol is, at present, spiritually hopeless. He may be gainfully employed, and perhaps even religious. However, he lacks the intellectual skills to notice even obvious anomalies to ask about them, and to gain greater insight into life in general. It takes people who care about them to kick-start their intellectual motors, after which it might be possible to move such people up the intellectual ladder.

One may think that [the discussion of the exodus] must be from the first of the month.

Why might one think that the discussion of Yetzias Mitzrayim should begin on Rosh Chodesh Nissan? Because, that is the birth date of Yitzchak Avinu, which has everything to do with leaving Mitzrayim, physically and intellectually.

God foretold that the descendants of Avraham would be foreigners for 400 years, and the end of which they would be oppressed, go free, and the nation that subjugated them would be punished (Bereishis ?). However, in the end, they left 190 years early making the prophecy seem inaccurate, God forbid.

Therefore, in order to allow the prophecy to be true on some level, the commentators count backwards 400 years from the date of Yetzias Mitzrayim, which is the year 2048 from Creation. This was the year in which Yitzchak Avinu was born, before which the prophecy was made, validating the connection between the birth of Yitzchak and the leaving from Mitzrayim after 400 years of being a foreigner.

But of course nothing is a coincidence, or even incidental. There has to be a deeper connection between the birth of the second forefather and the actual leaving of slavery by his descendants four centuries later. How much more so must be the case given the strange circumstances surrounding the actual birth of Yitzchak, and his near death during the Akeidah.

Yitzchak had been a miracle baby. He had been born under impossible circumstances since his parents lacked the ability to actually conceive and give birth to a child.50 Their physical bodies had to be miraculously altered to make possible his birth, making the birth of Yitzchak a tremendous revelation of God. Even at the Akeidah his soul left him and had to be returned to him in order to live.51

Thus, the birth and life of Yitzchak Avinu encapsulated the very essence of the Jewish people, especially in terms of being a vehicle to make the Presence of God know in Creation. Furthermore, his life of purity and straightforwardness also represented the need for a Jew to be holy, and to live an honest life, one that is, in the word of the mishnah, “clean before God and before man” (Shekalim 3:2).

Then there is the mitzvah of sanctifying the new moon itself, which was the first one given to the Jewish people while they were still in Egypt. Why would God begin with a mitzvah that could not even be performed until conquering the Land of Canaan, and settling it?

The Talmud states that:

Anyone who blesses the new moon is like one who has received the Divine Presence, as it says, “HaChodesh HaZeh”—this month …” (Shemos 12:2), and it says elsewhere, “Zeh Keli v’Anveihu”—this is my God and I will glortify Him” (Shemos 16:2). (Sanhedrin 42a)

In other words, the Talmud found a conceptual link between the mitzvah to sanctify the new moon, and Divine revelation, vis-a-vis the usage of the word zeh in both verses. Hence, the concept of sactifying the new month represents the goal of all of Torah and the Jewish nation as a whole: the revelation of God.

This is why it was the first mitzvah to be given to the Jewish, and while they were still in Egypt. The moon is an automatic reminder to the Jewish people once a month of why God redeemed them from Egypt in the first place, for as the Talmud points out, the moon represents the Jewish people:

When the moon is eclipsed, it is a negative sign for the Jewish people. (Succah 29a)

For, just as the moon waxes and wanes, so too has the Jewish nation waxed and waned throughout their long and often difficult history.

However, the most important comparison of the Jewish people to the moon is not in terms of its appearance, but rather, in terms of its mission. For, just as the moon reflects the light of the sun to the earth, so too are the Jewish people meant to reflect the light of God to the world.

Hence, though we are called ‘a light unto nations,’ in truth, we are more like a reflector to the nations. It is the Jewish nation’s role to bring the light of Torah to every last corner on earth, and to not fulfill this function is to become eclipsed, which results in historical darkness, and eventually, terrible anti-Semitism, God forbid, and thus, one might have thought to begin from Rosh Chodesh.

The Torah therefore says, “On that day” (Source). “On that day,” however, could mean while it is yet daytime. The Torah therefore says, “It is because of this” (Source). The expression “because of this” can only be said when matzah and marror are placed before you.

In other words, though Rosh Chodesh Nisan embodies the overall, general mission statement of the Jewish people, the matzah and the marror more specifically address the issue of true freedom, because they indicate that knowing and appreciation the history of the Jewish people is an integral part of the actual freedom process. Hence, what follows is an overview of that history.

In the beginning our fathers served idols, but now the Omnipresent One has brought us close to His service, as it is said, “Yehoshua said to all the people: So says God, the God of Israel, ‘Your fathers used to live on the other side of the river, Terach, the father of Avraham and the father of Nachor, and they served other gods. And I took your father Avraham from beyond the river, and I led him throughout the whole land of Canaan. I increased his seed and gave him Yitzchak, and to Yitzchak I gave Ya’akov and Eisav. To Eisav I gave Mount Seir, to possess it, but Ya’akov and his sons went down to Egypt.’ ” (Yehoshua 24:2-4)

The first of the Ten Commandments reads: I am the Lord your God who took you out of Egypt, implying that we owe our entire survival, and therefore, loyalty to God. However, as the Haggadah points out, it was God Who brought us down to Egypt in the first place, while Eisav merely went to live in the land of his possession.

However, though Eisav has an easier ride in this world, he does not go to the World-to-Come, whereas Ya’akov and his descendants do. But, not before all the trials and tribulations of this world, which seem to be an inherent part of the development process of becoming a nation that can earn its reward in the World-to-Come.

In other words, going down to Egypt was for our own good, the result of a God Who cares about His people and is involved with their destiny on a moment-to-moment basis. Hence it says:

Blessed is He who keeps His promise to Israel, blessed is He! For the Holy One, blessed be He, calculated the end [of the bondage] in order to do as He had said for our father Avraham at the Covenant between the Portions, as it says: “And He said to Avraham, ‘Know that your seed will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and they will enslave them and make them suffer, for four hundred years. But I shall also judge the nation whom they shall serve, and after that they will come out with great wealth’ ” (Bereishis 15:13-14)

This is really quite amazing, when you think about it. We are thanking God for keeping His of freeing the Jewish people from Egyptian bondage, and with great wealth as well. As promised, the nation that enslaved the descendants of Avraham were judged, found guilty, and duly punished. Unlike with respect to humans, when God makes a promise, it is as good as kept from the moment He makes it.

However, why couldn’t the promise have been different? What couldn’t God have something like, “Know that your seed will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and they will make great and wise business deals for four hundred years. But I shall also judge the nation amongst whom they thrived, and after that they will come out with great wealth”? Why are we grateful for the slavery as well?

As they say, it’s not the destination, but the journey. We don’t like to suffer, but we know that we’re usually better people because of it. Part of us wants an easy and smooth life, but we know that challenge builds us, and that nothing tastes sweeter than success in which we have invested ourselves. And, the more we make such investments, the sweeter the success tastes.

It is not just the way of life, it is the way of history. As the mishnah teaches:

According to the effort is the reward. (Pirkei Avos 5:26)

Eternal bliss, the reward of the World-to-Come, is completely based upon how much we sacrifice our own personal comfort, as required and when necessary, for the sake of Torah and mitzvos. Trillions of people have spent entire lives trying to cheat the system, cheating only themselves in the end.

Thank God that, from our inception as a nation, we learned that that path to becoming an Adam is not an easy or straightforward one. And thank God, we were shown, after time, that walking that path is totally worth it in the end, no matter how long it takes, or how difficult it becomes.

The matzos are covered and the cups lifted as the following paragraph is proclaimed joyously.

This is what has stood by our fathers and us! For not only has one risen against us to destroy us, but in every generation they rise against us to destroy us, but the Holy One, Blessed is He, saves us from their hand!

Put down the wine cup and uncover the matzah again.

In a nutshell, this has been the theme of Jewish history. No nation in the history of the world has ever faced as many deadly enemies as the Jewish people have, begging the question, Why are we still here?

That is exactly the point: we are still here, and obviously not by miraculous means. Jewish history testifies to the fact that Jews live natural lives against a supernatural backdrop. We are subject to the same laws of nature as the gentile world, yet somehow we still survive and continue to exist long after our stronger enemies have perished.

Just how supernaturally a Jew lives can vary from person to person. The basic rule of thumb is: Live like Eisav, die like Eisav, which essentially means that the more Ya’akov—the Jewish people —imitate the ways of his twin brother Eisav, the more is Divine Providence becomes like his, on the surface at least.

However, the more the Jewish people behave like a Yisroel, the more the Divine Presence, resides upon them, giving a Jew a more overt supernaturally reality. At such times, even the gentile world finds itself respecting the Jewish people and wanting to support them, as has happened periodically throughout history, such as in the case of Yosef while in Egypt.

As the Haggadah is pointing out, as a nation, the Jewish people will always survive even against the greatest odds. However, that does not mean that individuals will not suffer along the way if they choose to minimize or even abandon their status as God’s ‘treasured nation’ and cease to be ‘a kingdom of priests,’52 effectively focusing more on the Dalet-Mem of Adam than the Aleph.

But, for those who choose to live the life of a true Adam, they can expect the following:

Go and learn what Lavan the Aramean wanted to do to our father Ya’akov. Pharaoh had issued a decree against the male children only, but Lavan wanted to uproot everyone, as it says, “The Aramean attempted to destroy my father. Then he went down to Egypt and sojourned there, few in number; and there he became there a great, mighty, and numerous nation” (Devarim 26:5).

In other words, in spite of desire of our enemies to destroy us, not only have we survived, we have thrived. As it says with respect to Pharoah, who told his people, “Let us deal wisely with them, in case they increase …”53 to which God responded with, “In case they increase? For certain they will increase!”54

Hence, though Lavan wanted to destroy Ya’akov’s family, instead they thrived. Even today, as the Arab world, a massive and dangerous one at that, has tried to obliterate the Jewish people from off the map, instead the country has thrived, thank God, marveling many in the world. The Jewish people have constantly found themselves in potentially destructive situations only to turn it around and use it to their advantage.

However, even when we have not fared as well as Ya’akov Avinu, such as during the many pogroms over the millennia, and more recently, the Holocaust during which 6,000,000 Jews were ruthlessly murdered, we have miraculously recovered. Within a short period of time after the Holocaust, the State of Israel was founded and within 70 years is now home to just as many Jews and has become a leading nation in the world, nothing short of a great miracle. In case they increase? For certain they will increase!

And he went down to Egypt … forced by Divine decree.

The fundamental difference between the Jewish people and the nations of the world is Divine Providence. God runs every aspect of the world every moment of existence, but He often does it in a way that makes it look as if Creation is on autopilot. A person has to work hard to recall that nothing is random or automatic in life.

However, when it comes to the Jewish people, everything is more direct, what we call Hashgochah Pratis—personalized Divine Providence. For pursuing a close relationship with the Creator the Creator pursues a close relationship with the Jewish people, manifested by how much more obvious the events of our lives are the work of a God Who cares.

True, life is very much cause-and-effect, meaning that every event that occurs, no matter how peculiar, is an effect of some cause, which may have been the effect of some earlier cause, and so on. Not only does the train of cause-and-effect stretch back over and entire lifetime, it can stretch back over many lifetimes and generations.

However, very often if studies the causes and effects, one finds the hand of God guiding the process. For, certain events that didn’t have to happen, but which made all the difference in the world to the outcome, did happen. And, when that observation can be seen extremely often, it moves out of the realm of chance and clearly into the realm of Hashgochah Pratis.

Not that anything happens by chance. However, sometimes the truth of that is only clear after much investigation and contemplation. Yes, famine forced Ya’akov Avinu’s family down to Egypt, but, the Haggadah makes it clear, it happened in the first place to fulfill the Divine decree of descending to Egypt.

And he sojourned there … teaches that Ya’akov Avinu did not go down to Egypt to settle, but only to live there temporarily. Thus it says, “They told Pharaoh, ‘We have come to sojourn in the land, for there is no pasture for your servants’ flocks because the hunger is severe in the land of Canaan. Please, let your servants dwell in the land of Goshen’ ” (Bereishis 47:4)

This is a very interesting and extremely relevant point here. There are different Hebrew words that can be used for settling in a place, but the Haggadah has chosen an usual one: l’hishtakayah, which is similar to a word than means invest. For, what is the essential difference between settling down in a place and simply sojourning? The extent of one’s investment in the place of sojourning.

As the Maharal points out, one of the main messages of the matzah is that poor people are free people, because they lack the wherewithal to invest in any particular location. Without investment one feels freer to come and go as he pleases, and to run when he senses danger. The stories of Jews who have lost their lives in spite of advance warning of danger, remaining in danger to protect their investments, are tragic and numerous.

As Rashi points out, Lot had a difficult time leaving Sdom, in spite of the fact that it was an angel of God who was tugging at his hand and warning him about impending destruction, because he had invested so much in the place.55 It was his physical property that endangered his life, as it has so many times for Jews in the past, and does once again today.

Ya’akov Avinu may not have known how long the Egyptian exile would actually last. But, he knew that of the Jewish people became invested in the place that when the time to finally leave came along, too many would choose to stay, and forfeit the chance for redemption. And, once that happens, the Egyptian exile has proven, then redemption comes the alternative, unpleasant way.

Few in number … as it says, “Your fathers went down to Egypt with seventy people, and now, the God, your God, has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven” (Devarim 10:22).

Who was the first person to ever refer to the Jewish people as a nation? Pharaoh, when he said, “He said to his people, ‘Notice that the nation of the Children of Israel are more numerous and powerful than we are’ ” (Shemos 1:9). Not exactly the person one might have expected to be the first one to call us a nation, and not exactly the place that one might have expected it to happen.

Usually, when people live in a foreign country they lose the nationhood, not gain it. Either they die off, or they assimilate, or both. The fact that the descendants of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Ya’akov, were not only able to survive in Egypt as a people, but to thrive in Egypt as a people, is nothing short of a miracle, one that has also been the basis of Jewish survival in the Diaspora until this very day.

And there he became a nation … teaches that Israel was distinctive there.

Distinct in which ways? We had yet to receive Torah, and as the Ramban points out, even the Forefathers were not strict about keeping the mitzvos outside of the Land of Israel before the Torah was given. Nevertheless, traditions remained from over the years, enough of them to make them different from their host nation, which at that time dressed the part.

However, since then, the nations of the world have become increasing more civilized in the way that they dress and eat, until today, when in many places there is little to separate a Jew from his gentile host except his Torah and mitzvos. Hence, as Jews gave up their Jewish heritage, they also lost their uniqueness, at least externally, and assimilated amongst the nations.

But, as the Holocaust revealed, all it takes is some serious anti-Semitism to surface missing Jews, proving that it is better to stay unique as a nation, and safe, than to assimilate and have uniqueness imposed upon us.

Great, mighty … as it says, “The Children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly, multiplied, and became very, very mighty. And the land became filled with them” (Shemos 1:7).

Numerous … as it says, “I made you as numerous as the plants of the field; you grew and developed, and became charming, beautiful of figure; your hair grown long; but you were naked and bare. And I passed over you and saw you wallowing in your blood, and I said to you ‘Through your blood you shall live,’ and I said to you ‘Through your blood you shall live!’ “ (Yechezkel 16:7, 6)

In the Haggadah, this marks a turning point. The last paragraph reiterates that the Jewish people are subject to unique Divine Providence, and that are survival until the end of history is nothing short of miraculous. In spite of all the conditions that have put the survival of the Jewish people at risk, the nation has always, and will always survive.

That was the good news. The bad news is that in order to become the nation we are destined to become, at the end of which we will merit eternal closeness to God and all the infinite pleasure that comes from such a relationship, we have to go through trials and tribulations. The prognosis for the patient is good, but only after going through the surgery. Now comes a recounting of that difficult development process.