Spiritually Preparing For Pesach

0:04but there are certain things that a person needs to know that are important but they're not a priority, meaning if you have kids, you learn how to adjust, what to do, and how to do it. Your kids learn more, and so on. But there are certain things that a person needs to know that are important, but they're not the priority, meaning A lot of people, the way they think of Pesach is they think of the food. You know, they think of the food, they think of, "What am I going to cook?" You know, aside from the matzah, "Who's going to eat this? Who's going to sit where?" In reality, the meal of Pesach, although it's important, it's good for it to be delicious, it's good for it to have all different types of varieties and so on, but it's not the number one priority in Pesach.

1:09The priority in Pesach is not the food. Okay, the priority in Pesach is actually quite different. In fact, the Gemara in Masechet Pesachim, page 115b, says that if somebody swallowed matzah, he fulfilled the obligation, meaning he just swallowed it without chewing it. He still fulfilled the obligation. But if he swallowed the maror, the bitter herbs, he did not fulfill the obligation. not fulfill the obligation. Now, there is actually a discussion in the Rambam, in Hilchot Chametz u'Matzah, Chapter 2, Halacha 6, where he posits that if someone swallowed the matzah without chewing, he still fulfilled the mitzvah. However, if he did not chew the maror, the bitter herbs, he did not fulfill the mitzvah. elaborates and also he says, "Why is this the case? Because the whole point of the matzah and the maror is to signify specific things, where the uh..."

2:25Matzah is, of course, to remind us of the difficulties that we endured when we were in Egypt. One of the things we have to remember is that one of the main things that highlights this is actually the maror, the bitter herbs, and that's one of the most critical parts to discuss and to think about. uh during Pesach, during the Seder, it is actually the bitterness of our suffering. The story of our suffering, you know, is something we have to think about—the fact that the Egyptians took children, little babies, and put them instead of cinder blocks. uh if their parents, you know, did not meet a quota of making a certain amount of bricks, how many children they killed every single day just to, uh, uh, heal the wicked Pharaoh. The Chachamim say that Pharaoh was told by his necromancers that in order for him to heal... From tzarah that he had all over his body. He had to bathe in Jewish blood, so they would slaughter 150 Jewish babies in the morning, take their blood, and make it into a bath for Pharaoh, and then another 150 at night. Each day, he would slaughter this amount of children. Okay, aside from that, you know when they made, when Pharaoh made things even more difficult for the slaves.

3:48As if it wasn't difficult enough, you know, if they didn't meet the quota of making a certain amount of stones, the Egyptians would take the Jewish children and put them instead of the cinder blocks. There was an endless amount of suffering where they took the Jewish people and did everything they could to break their morale. They made the men do the jobs of women, and the women they gave the jobs of men. This broke the morale of the people, and worst of all is that Pharaoh wasn't really looking to rebuild. Egypt and make it as magnificent as he really told Am Yisrael initially, when he initially promised them to pay them a lot of money due to their patriotism, only to fool them into slavery after they've abandoned their businesses and had nothing else to do. He turned everybody into slaves, but aside from that, one of the horrible things that Pharaoh did to break the morale of Am Yisrael was to give them work that is never-ending because whatever they built would collapse. He would specifically have his people target a place where he knew there was either quicksand there or just an unstable foundation or whatever he could, where he knew that once they built this building, the whole thing would collapse.

4:57was to give them work that is never-ending because whatever they built would collapse. He would specifically have his people target a place where he knew there was either quicksand or just an unstable foundation, or whatever he could where he knew that once they built this building, the whole thing would collapse. So, even though they're slaves, there's still a certain amount of joy in achieving something. Even though it's due to slavery and agony and pain, at least when you see that you've built something, there's a certain pleasure that you get from doing something. Today, people get pleasure out of, I don't know, sending a message on the internet and receiving a certain amount of likes. You know, of course, Am Yisrael was not looking for likes; they simply wanted to see that whatever they'd been building, whatever they had been sweating blood and tears for, at least built something. Even that pleasure Pharaoh did not want to give them. So that bitterness is symbolized by the מרור (maror).

6:03uh 116 years of agony and slavery out of the 210 years that Israel was in Egypt. For 116 years, we were slaves, and it got worse and worse day after day, making something dramatically bigger than what the most recent Holocaust that we saw by the Nazis seem insignificant. That's how much death and disaster we had. in Egypt, and this agony is supposed to be symbolized by the maror. Now, the matzah, on the other hand, is supposed to symbolize how fast Salvation comes when a salvation eventually came after a whole round of miracles and so on, that Hashem gave us all of the different plagues, all of the different miracles that happened. This eventual salvation was really culminated in such a quick second that Am Yisrael was not even given enough time to...

7:06uh make their uh bread uh uh you know, so they they were left with matzah. So here, this is something that is of significant value for Am Yisrael, and Rabbi Yosef Karo says that the reason why somebody that eats the matzah uh, without chewing it fulfills the mitzvah, but somebody who does not chew the maror, the bitter herbs, and simply swallows it does not fulfill the mitzvah. This is because even if you swallow the matzah without chewing it, you still feel a certain amount of satiation that can give you a connection to that salvation that we got. ...still something different about that matzah than the rest of the year, of what you eat. On the other hand, if you don't chew the bitter herbs, you don't taste the bitterness, and therefore, you're missing the key part of the mitzvah, which is to actually see yourself as if... as if you are living through the difficulty right now. Many people can perhaps feel the freedom to a certain extent, but very few realize that one of the priorities you have during the Seder is actually to feel the agony that we were in, in order to truly feel the salvation.

8:29So that's why the Seder Chachamim, following the Rambam and others, pasken that it's not just to feel and see yourself as someone that went through this agony and now has the salvation, but actually to appear as if you've just gone through this agony and now you're going through salvation. This is the reason why there are customs that Rav Chaim and his family have, and other tzaddikim do as well. They actually perform a kind of play. The children, when they ask, "Oh, who are you?" and He says, "Oh, I am, uh, you know, I, uh, I'm, uh, I'm going to... where are you going? I'm going to Eretz Yisrael. Oh, where did you come from? I came from Mitzrayim. What did you do in Mitzrayim?" And he starts telling the story of, "Oh, we're in Mitzrayim, we're enslaved. We, uh, you know, they, uh..." They tortured us, they enslaved us, they did this to us, and then, after all this torture, the salvation came. This whole play, sometimes with costumes, sometimes without, has the point of making the whole thing as alive as possible, as real as possible, to truly feel the transition and not just focus on when we eat.

9:48The "when do we eat" is not as important as the story itself of why we are here in the first place. As a rabbi, I must emphasize that this mitzvah is mandatory for every Jew as it ensures all members of Am Yisrael can properly celebrate the holiday with dignity and joy. The importance of kimcha depischa stems from the fundamental halacha that one must ensure everyone can experience true simcha, happiness, during the holiday.