In addition to our daily obligation, on Pesach, we are not
only obligated to remember the exodus from Egypt but to actually see ourselves as
if we personally left. We fulfill this commandment by reenacting and reciting
many experiences that the Jewish people went through in their departure.
Perhaps the most important of the practices is the recitation of three central
Pesach related items, Pesach, Matzah, and marror (biter herb), as well as what
they symbolize. The Pesach is in commemoration of Hashem passing over the
Jewish houses when He plagued the Egyptians. Our symbol for this commemoration
is a shank bone because of the Pesach sacrifice brought that night and every
year afterward. The Matzah is in commemoration of how the Jews hurried to leave
Egypt and didn’t have time to let their bread rise. The Marror is in
commemoration of the embittered lives the Jews lead as slaves. Raban Gamliel goes as far as to say that
one who does not perform this recitation has not fulfilled his obligation of
reliving the exodus, and the Rambam brings his statement in his list of the
laws on Pesach. However, the Nodeh B’yehuda
points out a glaring question. These three items represent the three stages
of our redemption. The Pesach sacrifice was our long awaited freedom to serve
and bring offerings to Hashem as we had not been able to for over 200 years.
The Matzah was a transition period as we were rushing from slavery to freedom.
Lastly, the Marror was our bitter lives before freedom was even in sight. Asks the
Nodeh B’yehuda, if these three items
are the most crucial part of seeing ourselves leaving Egypt- as if we’d really
gone from slavery to freedom, why do we recite them in reverse?! How is the
most crucial part of actualizing the process of going from an embittered life
to serving Hashem freely performed by starting with freedom and bringing
ourselves back into the bitter slavery?
Let’s
start with a simple question; why was it so much more difficult for Ron to say
the name Voldemort than for Harry? Clearly there’s a big difference in their
relation to Voldemort. Ron grew up in a house that knew the terrors of Voldemort.
His parents and two of his older siblings were old enough to remember what his
first rise to power was like. The name Voldemort was associated with nothing
but terrifying tragedy, and it was therefore ingrained within Ron, from a very
young age, that the name was not to be spoken. Harry on the other hand didn’t
grow up in the same fearful environment. The first time he could remember
hearing the name was when he was eleven, which is nearly too late to really
engrain such a fear within him. He didn’t understand what Voldemort meant. He
didn’t understand the extent of what Voldemort did. He didn’t grow up with it. Additionally,
within a year of hearing Voldemort’s name for the first time he was told by
Dumbledore to keep saying his name. Harry didn’t have the slave-to-Voldemort
mindset that Ron grew up with. He grew up free from Voldemort’s oppression and,
to his knowledge, free from Voldemort’s impact. When it came to saying his
name, Harry couldn’t understand what was so terrible; it was just a name. He
couldn’t understand what it meant to those who grew up with it.
The
question then becomes Hermione. She too grew up in a Muggle house to parents
who had never heard the name. She wasn’t instilled with fear from a young age;
she didn’t even know who Voldemort was until shortly before she started
Hogwarts- just like Harry. Why then was it so much harder for her to say
Voldemort’s name than for Harry? Throughout the fifth book she forces herself
to become numb to using his name, but what was her difficulty in the first
place? She was born free from fear. The reason needs to be attributed to a big
difference between Harry and Hermione. Hermione learned everything she possible
could have about Voldemort. She read the stories, the reports, and knew every
detail of what happened. She came as close as she could have to re-living his
reign of terror before she even started school. Then, in school, when her
interactions with Voldemort’s victims increased, and she saw firsthand what he
had done, her understanding only grew. Through learning, interacting, and even
seeing firsthand how Voldemort impacted the Wizarding world, Hermione, despite
being born free from the fear, where it’s so hard to relate to what it must
have been like eleven years prior, she naturally developed the same mindset.
This
understanding helps explain the Nodeh B’yehuda’s
answer. We were born free from Paroh’s rule. The terror he instilled is nearly unfathomable
for those who didn’t grow up with it. The bitterness of slavery isn’t relatable
for those born into freedom. If we want to fulfill our obligation of
experiencing going from slavery to freedom, and we plan on jumping straight
into the bitterness of the slavery mindset, we don’t have a chance of
performing the mitzvah properly. What do we know?! We were born too far from
the oppressed mentality to even fathom what it was like. That’s why we start
from our freedom, the Pesach sacrifice; we need to start with what we know. If
we learn enough about Paroh, about Egypt, and about the Jews’ embittered lives,
as the last page of tractate Megillah instructs us to do 30 days before the
holiday, perhaps, as Hermione did, we can start to understand. Perhaps we’ll
start to understand what the Jews felt transitioning from slavery to freedom.
If we pick it up a notch on Pesach, not just learning about the slavery, but
experiencing firsthand some of their struggles, perhaps, as Hermione did, we
can continue to understand. Perhaps we can understand the Jews’ mindset of
being enslaved. Only then can we properly visualize ourselves as if we had left
Egypt.
It’s important to recognize the
difference between Ron’s experience and Hermione’s. Ron, having been born into
the fear, couldn’t break away from it when fear was the last thing they needed
more of. His mentality was detrimental. Similarly, when the Jews left Egypt,
they had seen one of the biggest display of miracles in history, but as soon as
the Egyptians chased after them, they were ready to return to their previous
masters- deserting Hashem’s plan for them. The Ibn Ezra famously answers that they were stuck in a slave
mentality. The mentality was detrimental to their service of Hashem. Hermione,
on the other hand, only benefitted from learning about Voldemort. It helped to
know his past both for the sake of knowledge of the past and for the sake of
properly understanding the present built from it. And when this mindset that she
took on became a problem, she was able to break away from it. As Jews,
understanding where we came from is both valuable in the sense that we are
commanded to study our past and in the sense that it’s essential for
understanding our present. Pesach is a time when we can look back to how we
became a nation. We learn so much from the redemption process. Whether it’s
sensitivity to those less fortunate because we were once in the same position
or unity as a nation that came from common suffering, being saved, and being
given the greatest gift of all time at Har Sinai (Mount Sinai) when our unity
reached its climax. We were described as like one person with one heart.
Perhaps sensitivity to others and national unity are needed more desperately
now than ever. We need to use this Pesach to put ourselves back into that
mindset so we can come to appreciate, yet again, where we came from and what
kind of nation that makes us into. And by doing so gradually, we can develop that
mindset but in a way that is easily broken when we need to return to thinking
ahead, about the future of the Jewish people, and not get stuck in that
mentality to let it hinder our service of Hashem as the slave mentality once
did.
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