Haggadah – New beginnings: A blog about spirituality, chaplaincy and renewal

Needing Another Pair of Eyes to See our Lives

Are we really asking and searching for the right things in our lives? Are we able to see in the right direction or do we always feel turned around? Is life feeling so challenging that we lose perspective on our bigger picture dreams and hopes?

Too often, the difficulties and challenges in life can feel so overwhelming that we get lost in the narrow, nitty-gritty details of what is going on and lose sight of the bigger picture. This is understandable, as we hunker down and enter a survival mode state of mind. In these moments, our hopes shrink down to surviving the immediate, short term, often at the expense of longer term considerations. This is normal. This is as one would expect.

In the Passover Haggadah, as part of the Maggid section, we analyze a series of verses from Deuteronomy 26 (5-8) as a way of rereading the Exodus story. One line from that section states:

וַנִּצְעַק אֶל־ה’ אֱלֹהֵי אֲבֹתֵינוּ – כְּמָה שֶּׁנֶּאֱמַר: וַיְהִי בַיָּמִים הָרַבִּים הָהֵם וַיָּמָת מֶלֶךְ מִצְרַיִם, וַיֵּאָנְחוּ בְנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל מִ־הָעֲבוֹדָה וַיִּזְעָקוּ, וַתַּעַל שַׁוְעָתָם אֶל־הָאֱלֹהִים מִן הָעֲבֹדָה.

“And we cried out to the Lord, the God of our ancestors” – as it says: (Exodus 2:23); “It happened in the course of those many days that the king of Egypt died; and the Children of Israel groaned from the servitude and cried; their cry because of their servitude rose up to God.”

In their pain and suffering, they cried out to God. According to Artscroll’s Rav Shach Haggadah (for more on who Rav Shach is see here), this passage contains a strange grammatical choice, which Rav Shach expounds upon:

We would have expected the Torah to state, “The Children of Israel groaned because of the servitude. Why does it write instead that they groaned, “from the servitude?” Rav Shach explained this expression as follows.

Man is often swept up in his routine, and finds himself incapable of rising above it to view life from a different perspective. When the Jews groaned and cried out to God, they did so “from” (out of) their servitude. They were certain that their lives would continue forever in the same miserable state as it was then. They prayed for an amelioration of their condition, but such ideas as total liberation or redemption were totally beyond their mental grasp. That this is so may be seen from the people’s reaction when Moshe first appeared before them and declared his intent to take them out of Egypt: “They did not listen to Moshe, from shortness of spirit” (Shemos 6:9) – i.e., from an inability to break out of their narrow mental mode of servitude and relate to the concepts that Moshe was describing to them.

It is because of this limitation of the human mind that it is so important to seek advice often from others, especially from wise Torah sages, who possess the necessary breadth of mind to look beyond the pressing and sometimes overwhelming issues at hand, and “see the larger picture.”
Rav Shach Haggadah p. 99-100

So many of our choices in life come from within a situation, from within the narrowness of the moment. Again, this is normal and expected. And, it is something that we must take into consideration. Rav Shach’s approach is to recall that we need not struggle alone. We need not think we have to solve the problem by ourselves. Once we are open to the possibility that someone is out there to help us, we can be more receptive to that help. The first step is to be open and willing, to recognize that our perspective in these moments is from within the pain and trauma and that with the help of someone not “within” we can take the next steps along on our journey.

We can and should seek out help from someone who can offer a broader perspective to help us see beyond the narrowness that results from the trauma, pain and difficulty we are looking to emerge from. Remember, just like the image at the top of this post, sometimes we just need help being able to turn around and see something from a different angle.

May each of us, in moments of challenge, be able to find the person or people to turn to who can best help us see things from a different vantage point, helping us to engage with and journey through the difficulties and challenges that we will inevitably face in life.

If you or someone you know is looking to forge ahead and set new goals for the journey of life, we are here to help foster spiritual and emotional growth and change. Schedule your appointment today here. For more information, please contact New Beginnings Spiritual Coaching and Consulting LLC at 732-314-6758 ext. 100 or via email at newbeginningsspiritualcoach@gmail.com

Searching for the Chametz inside of Us

We are now one month away from Passover. It is a hectic time for most people as the month prior to Passover is spent planning, cleaning and preparing for the holiday. In addition to the physical components of preparing for Passover, there is a practice that begins the laws of Passover in the Shulchan Aruch, which states:

שואלים בהלכות פסח קודם לפסח שלשים יום:

1. We learn the halakhot of Pesach for 30 days before Pesach.
Shulchan Aruch, 429:1

In light of this command, this is the first of many planned posts during this next month based on my personal reading and studying of the Passover Haggadah in preparation for the holiday. My hope is to share from a couple of different commentaries I am reading this year ideas that are not just of importance as we consider the holiday of Passover, but that are fundamental to our growth as spiritual human beings.

To begin, one of the more overused and yet highly important ideas about Passover is the reinterpretation of the laws regarding removing leavened products, Chametz, from our midst, that suggests not only the removal of Chametz in the food sense, but also the removal of our spiritual Chametz, the removal of our arrogance, our ego. We derive this latter idea from a prayer attributed to a Rabbi Alexandri, in which he connects the evil inclination to the yeast in the dough:

וְרַבִּי אָלֶכְּסַנְדְרִי בָּתַר דִּמְצַלֵּי אָמַר הָכִי: ״רִבּוֹן הָעוֹלָמִים, גָּלוּי וְיָדוּעַ לְפָנֶיךָ שֶׁרְצוֹנֵנוּ לַעֲשׂוֹת רְצוֹנֶךָ, וּמִי מְעַכֵּב? — שְׂאוֹר שֶׁבָּעִיסָּה וְשִׁעְבּוּד מַלְכֻיוֹת. יְהִי רָצוֹן מִלְּפָנֶיךָ שֶׁתַּצִּילֵנוּ מִיָּדָם, וְנָשׁוּב לַעֲשׂוֹת חוּקֵּי רְצוֹנְךָ בְּלֵבָב שָׁלֵם״.

that after Rabbi Alexandri prayed, he would say the following:
Master of the Universe, it is revealed and known before You
that our will is to perform Your will, and what prevents us?
On the one hand, the yeast in the dough, the evil inclination that is within every person;
and the subjugation to the kingdoms on the other.
May it be Your will
that You will deliver us from their hands, of both the evil inclination and the foreign kingdoms,
so that we may return to perform the edicts of Your will with a perfect heart.
Berachot 17a (translation includes commentary by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz)

In reflecting on this spiritual notion of removing Chametz, the egocentric barriers that exists in our lives that negatively impact our growth, I want to share an additional element based on a few select passages from Artscroll’s Rav Shach Haggadah (for more on who Rav Shach is see here).

…But is it really possible for us to search our own hearts and cleanse them of sin? As the prophet Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah) writes, “The heart is the most deceptive of all things, and it is undependable; who can know it?” (17:9). There is only One Who can truly know what is in man’s heart: “I, Hashem, search men’s hearts and examine their inner thoughts” (17:10).

…We must conclude, said Rav Shach, that although wise men, prophets and angels are incapable of ascertaining what lies in other men’s hearts, each man himself is indeed able to – and expected to – peer into the recesses of his own heart and detect and rectify the imperfections that he finds there.

The reason for this, he explained, is that although it is “I, Hashem, search men’s hearts and examine their inner thoughts” (Jeremiah 17:10), man possesses within him a Divine soul that emanates from God Himself. “The soul of a man is the candle of Hashem, searching all his inner recesses” (Mishlei 20:27). It is with this “candle” that we can indeed search for the “chametz” of our souls and attempt to eradicate it.

…In order to cause dough to be leavened, all one has to do is leave it alone and do absolutely nothing. Similarly, if a person lets down his guard even for a moment, if he ceases to strive for spiritual growth and enhancement, he opens himself up to the disastrous effects of the yetzer hara, who avails himself of the opportunity to sow the seeds of spiritual ruin.
p. 8-10

One of our challenges is sifting through our egos to the point of being able to make real strides spiritually. We make excuses and offer justifications for why we continue to act a certain way, even when we wish to strive towards growth and change. And more often then not, when we don’t see ourselves changing for the better, we stop. Or, when we think we have reached a new place, we stop. Yet, we can never stop striving to find ways to remove our excuses and barriers. Stagnation is not neutral, but it is actually a negative.

I have written about the importance and value of celebrating each step in our growth. Celebrating our victories along the way is of the utmost importance as a way to encourage our continuous striving. It is not about resting on our laurels. Rather, we take another step and then we search again so as to take the next step, and keep going through this process.

As we begin this thirty day stretch leading to Passover, the holiday celebrating our redemption from Egypt, may we not just clean our homes but also work to “clean” ourselves of those things that stand in the way of reaching the spiritual goals and heights we wish to attain.

Four sons as four different experiences of the Seder

The four sons described in the haggadah represent different approaches to engaging with each other and ourselves during the seder. In reflecting on this section of the haggadah, we most often focus our attention on the chacham, the “wise” son and the rasha, the “wicked” son, comparing and contrasting the questions they raise and the answers given. This debate is an essential element of engaging with the haggadah, in that we must struggle between our hyperfocus on carefully fulfilling the various rituals of the seder while also wondering what is tonight’s value and worth.

After the wise and wicked, we come to the third and fourth sons, the tam, the “simple” child and the one who doesn’t know what to ask. At first glance, most of us presume these “sons” are merely unable to reflect on the depth of Passover’s meaning. For the simple son, this means asking a direct and simple question, “what is this.” And for the one who doesn’t know how to ask, our picture is usually of a young child, with the lesson being that we are responsible to teach the story to all, regardless of how they are able to engage.

However, if we take a step back from our pre-conceived ideas about these four sons, perhaps our approach on the seder night can change as well. The Haggadah’s text doesn’t indicate if any of the four children is really so distinct from the other. All we have are the single word descriptions related to the type of question posed. Imagine all four sons being about the same age, the same type and having been educated in the same way. How do we know that these four are really so much different? Since we recognize that the four sons is a paradigm for four different ways to approach the seder, we can presume there is a commonality between the four. As such, allow me to offer a nuanced, variant way to read the four sons.

Wise son: The wise son, in asking about various details of the halachot for Pesach night, is the person whose relationship to the seder night is to the formal and intricate details of the night’s rituals. Notice that this is the only son for whom we do not quote from the Torah. Instead, the answer given is to review the laws of Pesach all the way until the idea of not eating after the afikoman. This is a means of encouraging the experience of Pesach being tied into the rituals of the night. Yet, while the intricacies are of value, the wise son’s question seems to be missing a whole other element, relating to the story of Pesach night. Nevertheless, we don’t try to steer this child into a different conversation. Rather, we meet the child in their “wisdom.”

Wicked son: The wicked son is always a complicated topic as we read the question, in which he asks “what is this worship to you,” in a more negative tone than the wise son’s similarly phrased question of “what are all the laws, statutes and rules that Gd commanded you.” Leaving aside the various debates about why the distinction is made between the two questions, I want to focus on the response. Sometimes, we sit at the Seder and honestly feel left out, feel alienated, feel like it isn’t speaking to “us.” It can get to the point where we just wonder what’s the point of all the fuss on Passover night. As such, the wicked son is saying, why are we bothering with all this, it doesn’t relate to me. The response is jarring, not to run off the “wicked” son, but to respond to the despondency and frustration with a harsh reality check. For this son, like the wise son, we engage the person where they are at in the moment. This person won’t relate to the discussion of the laws of the night, nor for that matter a whole review of the story, at least until such time as the “wicked” son is able to become reengaged in how this story of our redemption is a story that should relate to him.

As we can see from these first two sons, for many at the seder, the engagement with the seder is a deep, profound and also challenging experience. Yet, as is becoming clear, even in the dialogue of the wise and wicked, we are not just beholden to the script but must have the flexibility to engage with the person where they are at. I think this becomes more pronounced when we reflect on the simple son and the son who doesn’t know how to ask.

Simple Son and Son who doesn’t know how to ask: Often times, we wait and wait for the perfect, deep, profound question. On Passover night, many a times we contrive to come up with the philosophical question that allows for a long conversation around the table during Maggid. And while that is a lofty goal, perhaps there is another way to approach the Seder. If we approach the Seder “unprepared” then we can approach it as more of the experience of the night rather than the intellectual undertaking that it often becomes. In certain ways, the wise and wicked sons both seem to lose sight of the experience of the night. Meanwhile, the simple and the one who doesn’t know how to ask, provide two examples of how important the overall experience of spontaneity at the seder can be in relation to the impact of preparation and reflection before joining together Passover night.

The simple son’s question of “what is this” implies not simplicity from ignorance but rather, the question of, “as we sit here tonight, what is the lesson of the night? What is the message we are to walk away with?” The answer given, “With the strength of [His] hand did the Lord take us out from Egypt, from the house of slaves’ (Exodus 13:14),” indicates that the primary lesson of the night about Gd redeeming us, bringing us out of the slavery towards freedom, is the ultimate take away message. We might forget the long debates, the details of the arguments, but we should never lose sight of this most fundamental lesson.

Regarding the one who doesn’t know how to ask, the answer, strangely, is the same verse we offer the wicked son, “And you will speak to your son on that day saying, for the sake of this, did the Lord do [this] for me in my going out of Egypt (Exodus 13:8).” We deliver this verse is a softer way to this last son, not because the last son is a small child who just is too young to know what to ask. Rather, like the simple son, the one who doesn’t know how to ask is sitting at the seder, experiencing the rituals, reading the haggadah and presumes that there is nothing more they need to ask. Yet, the goal is to personalize the experience. We invite this person to join in by introducing the idea that just like Gd did for me, so too Gd does for you. We are not denying the experience in the moment of this last type of person. Rather, we want to make sure this last son is engaged in the seder as an experience of the present, not just of the past, so we personalize it.

When we look at the four sons in this way, we can now see the commonality of the types. All four are engaging in how to best experience the seder. Each approaches it from a different vantage point. And we respond from where that person is at. Yet, I would also suggest that within the various answers we are also trying to expand the experience beyond where the person is most comfortable. With the wise and wicked, we offer extreme answers to both engage and to push them to go beyond themselves.

Most of us have moments of all four types during the Seder. The four sons become the blueprint for how each of these modes of thought can be brought together to enhance our Seder night. As such, whether we feel wise, wicked, simple or just can’t seem to find the question, we can and should engage one another in ways that invites the different parts of ourselves to truly be able to fulfill, “In every generation a person is obligated to see themselves as if they left Egypt.”