06 April 2022

"Pesach Haggadah" — from the compilation of divrei Torah on Parashath Tazri'a by R' Pinchas Winston

  5 Nisan 5782 | ה' ניסן ה"תשפ"ב

 

 

"Don't Be a Slave" —  Source



Pesach Haggadah

(Read the whole compilation HERE. Emphases mine. -HDG)

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 lives reflect their 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 dead.

Is it hypocrisy? A lot of times.

Perhaps this is part of what is bothering the Evil Son. He’s 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 saying, “Had you been there, you certainly would not have been redeemed!” his question is indeed a good one. In fact, it is one 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.

The problem with the Evil Son is not his question; it is his answer. 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, it is meaningless today.

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 those who did not go out?

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 to prove that we do not fear them or adhere to their religious values.

But that was not the entire story of the Korban Pesach, just a part of it. After all, when Kayin and Hevel brought their offerings to God (Bereishis 4:3), it was on the fourteenth day of Nissan. They had brought Pesach Offerings. 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!

This begs the question: Do we eat matzah because there wasn’t enough time to bake bread, or was there not enough time to bake bread so that we would eat matzah? Because, contrary to the Evil Son’s thinking, mitzvos are eternal. They supersede our daily reality and are never the result of circumstance. If anything, they make circumstances possible, such as the leaving of Egypt in Moshe’s time, and the leaving of exile at the End-of-Days.

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.”

The Wise Son is the person who understands one of the most important ideas of Creation, and yet one of the least-known: Redemption is a de facto state of existence. To understand this, it is important to first understand the concept of exile.

When we think of the first exile, we think of the Jewish people in Egyptian bondage. However, 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. Immediately after being formed by God, Adam HaRishon was placed in the Garden of Eden where he lived an idyllic existence. The life of the first man is the one that we all dream of living if we merit to make it to Yemos HaMoshiach—the Messianic Era.

Eating from the Aitz HaDa’as Tov v’Ra—the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil—changed all of that. 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 skin made of light to human skin.
(Hakdamos uSha’arim, Sha’ar 6, Ch. 10)

Though man has always consisted of a body and soul, before the sin they both existed on a much higher spiritual plane. A human body once more closely resembled a soul than the body we now have, made of divine light rather than of opaque skin. Sin resulted in skin, and the distancing of man from God. That is the very definition of exile, and the Pesach Seder comes to reverse that. To be continued…

Rabbi Pinchas Winston
Thirtysix.org

*** 

More reading: 

An Important Announcement | Messianic Light in the Month of Miracles | Political Bombshell: Coalition Chair Quits, Breaking Israeli Govt. | Muslims Continue Violent Month of Ramadan... | Joe Biden Wants a New World Order | Opposing the Se*ual Abuse of Children is the New Hate What?!?!?!? | Questions Israelis ask when there is a terror attack |

So do we need Mashiah NOW??? Most certainly, YES!!!

04 April 2022

Until the next time we say Tachanun...

BS"D

light of 4 Nisan 5782 | אור ד' ניסן ה"תשפ"ב


Who gets credit for this picture? I don't remember where I got it from!

 

Nisan is the Jewish people's birth month. In our Rosh Hodesh prayers, which fell on this past Shabbat this year, we call it Rosh Roshei Hodashim ראש ראשי חודשים, the first of the first of months. You can find reference to the establishment of this month in Exodus 12:1-2.

This year, it also coincides with a time when other nations make a lot of trouble for us, especially our neighbors (meaning the Arabs, led by the Muslims)...because it coincides with Ramadan (which was called Ramadam by a local media personality as a portmanteau including the Hebrew word for blood). Some Israelis comment on the regularity of this phenomenon. It happened during May last year, which was, for the most part, our Iyyar, spilling over into Sivan. In fact, it tends to spill over from the last days of Adar to the beginning days of Sivan.

***

We are commanded to keep Pessah (Passover) in the spring; we accomplish this by adding an extra month according to the calendar that we were given at the beginning of this soon-to-be concluded exile, be"H, nearly 2,000 years ago by Hillel II. How he did this without computers...I'm not the address for that. 

He meant it to last until the Jewish year 6000. That's still 218 years away.

Leap years generally happen 7 times during every 19-year period. The next one will be in 2024/5784. Yes, two years from now!

***

Because we are face-to-face with our enemy again, I'm not sure why, at this very dangerous time in human history, we can't plead and cry out all year long for the leadership and government we're supposed to have. I'm not any kind of leader, so no one has to take my opinion seriously.

But, honestly, doesn't it seem that our government can turn the terrorism on and off at will? Why is our ongoing war so predictable (every Ramadan, even before and after, for example? It's not the only time annually...) there's even a blog by that name? We can set our clocks by it, practically. Why is our ultra-expensive security fence now in shambles, despite claims that the proper authorities have been informed, over and over again?

Why have we been in emergency measures without letup ever since Israel officially became a state in 1948???

All attempts to bring this about ourselves have failed until now.

I guess it depends on who the government considers to be "the people" that they are responsible to defend. The arabs, mainly the muslims, have plenty of countries that are responsible to defend them. 

The Jews have ONLY ONE COUNTRY, and it seems our leadership defends the arab/muslim population over and above the Jewish one.

The people — whether they have Jewish mothers or not — who benefit from the system we have now, cobbled together like a Frankenstein monster from Ottoman and British law and other unethical, despicable parts that should have been rendered null and void decades ago — whether they serve it or just hold it to be the hope of our people for whatever reason, should understand that we're not here to serve them and their nefarious purposes, which have become more and more obvious over the years, culminating at this point with a government dependent on Arab good will to survive — which may be their death knell.

Let it not be ours as well, Abba sh'baShamayim! Let Your righteous government be established instead!

 ***

 R' Alon Anava has given us something to do this month. Find out here and pray the Tehillim he recommends, while considering what else to do.

***

 I'd like to balance this post with several positive thoughts:

*The root of this month's name, Nisan, ניסן, as a Hebrew name adopted from Babylonian, comes from nes, נס, miracle. This is considered a hint that the final redemption will come in this month. (With the ending "-an" — the Hebrew equivalent of -er in English ("one who does") — I have interpreted the month's name as meaning "miracle worker". I know someone who seems to live up to that a lot. Not the Mashiah; but you never know.)

*There is no bad in the world...that will last beyond geulah shlemah גאולה שלימה (the complete redemption).  We'll all understand (including me!) what the seemingly bad was all about in the end; and evil will be wiped out. G-d didn't make the world in order to keep evil in it.

*We'd better make sure we're not on the side of evil in any way. All the bad in the world is to wake us Jews up to how we've been following foolishness, in one way or another.

*Not every human in authority has our best interest at heart — so we have to take back our trust from them, if we ever had it to start with. This will be good for us. We need to separate ourselves emotionally, mentally and spiritually from a system that punishes regular Jews similarly to the gentiles or worse, if not in the exact same way.

*It would be a good time to consider a Torah state versus what we have now. Something to ponder:

The fact of a planned depopulation around the world is now well-known. This is the step we seem to be at now: a planned worldwide famine, starting in the US and spreading all over the world. (Of course it should be during Israel's shmitta year...but see national food bank Leket's call for donations in order to save food that might be thrown out in Israel on Going Home...To Yerushalayim. Also you might want to check out Leket's Food Waste and Rescue Reports, going back as far as 2015.)

It seems that the US government, by contrast, doesn't want to rescue their food, but to do the opposite.

The people behind this evil plot want 95% of the world gone by a date only a few years from now. Whereas, HaShem's worst scenario depicts two-thirds of the world gone, with the strong possibility of only one-third. Which do you like better? 

Of course, we'd all like it not to happen at all; but H' is serious about wanting things His way, despite His having hidden Himself from the world for thousands of years; and He is the only one who has the right to demand it, as our Creator!

*** 

By the way, the next time we say Tachanun after the month of Nisan begins will be after Rosh Hodesh of the following month, Iyyar, which includes the last day of Nisan this year. So, Tuesday, 3 May on the business calendar. 

Happy 3,334th Birthmonth, Am Yisrael! May our deliverance come this month!!!

***

More reading:

The Authentic Torah View & Response to Jew-Hatred, Based on the Teachings of Rav Avigdor Miller | The Lion's Roar | Chevlei Mashiach Becoming Unbearable | "...in Nissan they will be redeemed" | Rav Berland on the War in Ukraine, in English: part 1, part 2, part 3 | Ukraine shows hating Israel isn't about the Palestinians | Third Rome: Russia, Ukraine and Moshiach (VIDEO - very interesting!) | The WEF: World Economic Forum Versus Western Culture |