Rabbi Simcha Barnett - Pesach Prep, Part 3: Making the Seder Appeal to Everyone

good evening everybody is the last edition of the private inspire inspiration series before Passover and I'd like to continue this is my third a part in a series on the Hagana and tonight we're going to try to talk about making a seder creating a seder which appeals to everyone and that is a very tall order we're chewing off you know a very big piece of meat here so I'll try to make it applicable to as many types of people that I can this is mostly for people who are having satyrs with secular or less affiliated people with families which have various levels of knowledge of interest and you know now a lot of us are confined without even choices and that's a good thing actually to be able to you know be with those closest to you and to really try to make something special happen over here so it's best if you have a gut up to follow this tonight we'd be the best and I also just want to say I have prepared a seder companion which I'm going to draw on a lot of the material from that companion throughout this presentation and I want you to download the companion if your body can be obviously by a computer if you can download this companion actually there are two documents there one cartoon in one companion and the website is project inspired com backslash Passover project inspire com backslash Passover so you don't feel you don't have to pay attention to every little nuance and take notes because I'm going to give you a pretty comprehensive guide which has most of the the ideas and the novel points that I'm going to bring up tonight so we first have to have introduction the goal of the Seder is to give everybody there a positive experience and first and foremost to really try to transmitted the tradition to your children this is probably the most important night of a Jewish year for transmitting our tradition to our family so really there's there's typically more enthusiastic people and less enthusiastic people now because you're on this call you're going to be called the enthusiastic people that's pretty obvious you're here too now you want to make this something special and I guess I would say the most important thing is to not overshoot where your crowd is holding I'd almost say you know the popular show Curb Your Enthusiasm I would almost say this Seder should be the Curb Your Enthusiasm Seder and I mean that not in a way to dump it down but I mean look the whole point is to stimulate interest and you'll see going through the scene or it's all about question and answers so you have to really plant or inspire people to ask questions for the answers to make a difference we don't Elektra tonight we really try to encourage and invite so that's going to be the spirit of the evening now there are a few things which I think you can do to make it a little easier on people number one most people who are less affiliated they are not used to starting late so late as the traditional seder starts you know candle lighting this week in New York is 7-eleven most authorities say you really can't start the Seder before 8 o'clock a p.m. so let's Cal it on the late side a p.m. but that's the that's once that's when Passover comes in this year clocks changed 8 p.m. and that's when you make Kidder's that's the first part of the Seder Kaddish now it's it's late and even if someone makes a short seder you're really not going to get to your meal for at least an hour now a typical Seder were you really going through everything even if it's on the quick side is an hour and a half I'm forty-five minutes a cedar which is taking its time and kind of exploring the passages my Center is probably closer to three hours in other words I don't really get til the meat till the matzo till around eleven o'clock if I start at 8:00 I'm probably not getting the air till around 11 o'clock now if someone's not used to that they're gonna be they're gonna night all day and they're gonna be starving I remember the first Passover I ever did as a traditional Jew in Israel I didn't eat the whole day because I always understood Passover was all about eating so we didn't eat the dinner till about 12 o'clock at night and I kind of I kind of asked for seconds of the moxa I was so starving so the custom I have in my house which I think works very well is to serve food 5 in 5 to 6 o'clock range some kind of me some type of you know just so people aren't hungry because that's gonna set your your stator up for technical failure if people are starving the other thing is that you need to give the people in your household expectations about how this even is going to go and you might even want to discuss with them what you're intending to do and kind of take their temperature a little bit because that's going to help you decide what kind of seder you want to put together so what um the other thing is doesn't always always work we try to encourage the kids and the adults take a nap on Aerith pace off because it is a late night typically tonight you're really supposed to finish your Seder by about 12:30 a.m. so for kids little kids it's a little bit on the late side so it's a great idea to help them to try to get them to go and take a bit of a nap now another good idea to incur to get people into it this year people are home next couple days they're not going anywhere so - to give your young adults your teenagers even your children videos to watch the next two days there's a new video on torille live half-hour video very very well done about a 13 year old who's uh encountering Passover it's like a movie 26 minutes excellent there's excellent little short videos in H comm look on Chabad you know it's a good time to encourage people to get more aware you might even do a Passover trivia game next couple of days to feed them answers to questions that you might come up on the seder because everyone likes to have the right answer and it kind of buys them into it so that's one thing I think I would definitely definitely do there's also a Torah workbook on the Torah live site as well so that would be something you can give people to pique their interest now and there's a couple days the other thing is you like when you have to be get done tonight you're gonna pick out the sections you want to focus on it could be that you could assign so you have young adults college kids or even older kids or they're into it somewhat why don't you assign them a section assign them the four sons assigned them to manage to not assign them the plagues they get into it that'll be the best way to really get them pumped up for the Seder is to get them you know giving them some responsibility for it now you really can't rely on trying to figure it out when you sit down for the Seder the person who's trying to run it the person who is you know taking responsibility for it you really have to look it over before hand and know what you want to do what you don't want to do and really how much time you have and how much time you want to spend now I'm going to go through start going through the gun in a moment and there's kind of three levels I think you can you can go here you can have people sometimes people like to read along that also gets people's attention it gets them involved in the Seder to have them read along with with everybody so if that works for you by all means have them read along now reb shmuel common etske big rabbi in in america mentioned to me once i asked him to try to speak things a little bit he says you don't have to read every paragraph you can summarize a paragraph and really summarize it very very quickly like yeah homers coalition example is a paragraph it's about when we start you can say this is about let me start by the 15th if you just look at a few of the paragraphs you want to go through quickly like the wise men in Bnei Brak or what other powder if you don't think is gonna resonate because it is a bit of a code all the different paragraphs and for someone on not initiated in some of them don't you know don't have that much applicability at the get-go some of them have much more read there isn't any much more people some a little bit less so you can choose to whip through some of those and not read them just kind of say this is doing this this is doing this this is doing this and the ones that you want to focus on you can stop a little bit that could be a very good way to move it along to keep people interested in also they're gonna they're gonna realize you're not trying to kill them you're gonna you wanna skip over the things that you feel aren't so applicable to them they're not going to be that interested in that that is also an approach I'm going to give you in the city senior companion some stories even a cartoon different things which which are examples that can be brought out of the text but it's not the text itself it's not a different Torah on a text it's going to be a story that highlights something important I found that it is more relatable to people and that's kind of my approach now when you when you download it you'll be able to pick the one you like the best the ones that resonate with you the best and those are the ones you can focus on and your Seder three of them for the five and whatever you feel the capacity is of you are other people you're at your at your table now the other thing is after the the old favorites the Montana the four sons as an example we don't you want to make sure that they get to the section right after the four plagues called Pesach matzah and Mar its Robin gum wheels rule we're going to go through it because everyone holds all of the halawet literature rules that is the minimum that you need to do to tell the story so it could be it could be for the quickest stater possible but those who really aren't with you too much you can - tada you do the you do the four sons anything that's familiar to people they really really enjoy then you say you sing - hey no because they knew something you mentioned the ten plagues you know and you you sing da no and then you do the peso from us and Mara and you explain that I'll give you ideas to get the major themes of the holiday out of those three myths about those the three myths or the day then you can do the Mitzvah you're at the matzo you're at the bitter herbs and you have the you know you've had two cups of wine at this point and then you have your meal now that will be probably perfect and great for a lot of folks at that point they'll probably receive you know though you know get lost at that point they won't continue to the bitter end but you could go back and fill in the gaps in the moggy the first portion because you want to read the whole thing you want to actually you know do a little bit more that's fine so you can kind of like jump through and then circle back a little bit later on okay so let's let us let us begin fifteen steps to freedom fifteen parts of the Seder and the first part is is Kaddish and that's when you make the kiddush sanctifying over a cup of wine you pour the wine it's the custom is not to pour your own glass we want to accentuate freedom and a free person like a king didn't pour his own wine glass so it's very beautiful like customs before your neighbor's wine a for for them so that's cottage work work hot so we try to change things up to get the kids asking questions the first part of the Seder really does a lot of things taking the seder plate on taking it off you know - turn on the car pots all these things are deviations from the normal way we do things we usually don't wash before eating a vegetable typically a observe Judaism traditional Judaism you wash before bread you do the hamachi and watched for bread here we don't do it because we want to get the kids to ask questions so many of these things are for kids asking questions one nice thing is that whoever gets a question you you actually bring to the table not sweet something kids like and every question that they have and remember I mentioned before you can even give them trivia the next day or two to plant them with some answers and as you go through you can ask questions and give them rewards and that also has the ability to keep them and keep them in the game so the next thing we do is car puss and car pots is dipping a green vegetable now the interesting thing about car pots again this is on your handout if you download it you can follow along with me this is the bloggers hand handout the Seder freedom companion the word car passes four letters a Huff a race a pay and a sauna a cuff every every letter in the Hebrew language you say it out in this particular instance it means something cough is upon the next letter race is one who's poor it actually literally means one who's poor the third letter is a pay I pay is pet the mouth and the fourth letter is a son some if also means if you spell the letters out support so the idea you want to get across to your family at your table is that the Jewish people are all one we can support our fellow brethren two ways if we're rich we can open our hand we can open our palm and actually give them money or give them food and if we're not a poor we can always we can always give by supporting them with our words with our encouragement that is that is a beautiful idea of karpas imagine relatives from Russia that you've never met they are arriving suddenly with their three children in America they have no means of support Federation wasn't able to give them the apartment that they had promised and they don't speak the language and their accounting you to house them for a month so what do you do well you know they're family you know you get you get over and you do it recently I had a situation which shed a little bit of light on this the car broke it wasn't gonna be ready for a month the part they were ordering just didn't come in it was gone on and on and you know what we may do never thought we'd be able to got used to having two cars we switch schedules around we had a little bit of patience and lo and behold something we thought we could never do without we were able to do without I think this resonates a little bit with us now in our quarantine situation as well there are a lot of things we've learned to do that now and there are a lot of things would seem that their value isn't isn't as gray as we placed on them before I think health I think happiest I think family are all ideas that have come to the fore so that the point about the car cost and the next thing we're going to talk about is the idea that we're one family now what you do after the car passes you break the middle matzah into two it's it's symbolic of the left him owning the poor man's bread a poor man never eats a whole loaf he breaks it because he wants to hide the other one from later when he's going to be hungry and the larger half we only break it in half we don't you never get it quite even the larger one is going to be the afikomen and the afikomen we put it away in the back for later now why the afikomen is symbolic it's a stand-in for the Paschal Lamb we don't eat the Paschal Lamb anymore we don't have a temple so we have the afikomen as a standing but it represents Redemption it represents the ultimate redemption and the reason why we have the bigger piece of matzah is it's almost as if to say you ain't seen nothing yet this Passover Redemption as wonderful as it was wait till you see wait till you see that final redemption wait till we lift through that Messianic age so we put the larger section of matzah away for later so now there's a couple more sections that we're going to go over now we're not going to we're not going to do that and we open up the story of Maude open with Maggie which is Halawa onion was hungry come and eat anyone needs a satyr come come the idea is again we're one people what are the points of the Seder is to try to get everyone feeling part of amuse from a part of Jewish people the polity of Passover as well as freeing us as well as giving us a connection to God through the mitzvahs that we got it Mount Sinai but it made us a people it made us of people that were connected together that went through like like everybody knows you know when you go through your armed with your army buddies go through a war you know you never get with any closer to any people in this earth because you're one you you bonded together in the crucible and the furnace and you're one story about a young man who was in college named Sam and he had a part-time job and his part-time job was as a census taker I mean on the Ohio Kentucky border he was trying to earn some money to go on spring break to Florida and every twice a week for about a month and a half two months he they would go with the Ohio State worker and he would organize his students never go from door to door in eight count heads so right before he was ready to go to spring break he wanted he was went to his distinct worker first check and he said I'm sorry but the state had some problems you know issuing the checks and it's going to be about a month late so needless to say he was very upset and he spoke to him and he expressed his dissatisfaction with that they said hey what I'm going to do you meet me tomorrow at 12 o'clock at TD Bank so okay so he meets him at TD Bank the worker takes out the thousand dollars that he owed him he gives it to him and he said you know it's it's it's a personal loan oh I trust you and when you come back then you get the money from the state just pay me back so he says he said to him why are you doing this he answered you're Jewish aren't you he said I am too and that makes us brothers so don't tell anybody anybody about this just send me the money when you get it Sam said thanks that was the last time he I saw this man we we are one we are one people and I we have one people with a common past and hopefully incredibly common destiny together with one another the next part of the Seder that we want to take a look at is right after Halawa Anya is the mana stone ah now the modest announced famous everybody likes the monster not the youngest get up and they do it and the point about the Montana is that there are two expressions of slavery and there are two expressions of freedom freedom is you know why do you dip why do you recline and the slavery is why do we matzo and why do we bitter and why do we eat bitter herbs so the question is what do we what are we celebrating I'll be celebrating slavery or we celebrating freedom and the answer is that it's all one it's one story where the delivery came about because of the affliction one led inextricably to the other and when the story was done in the rearview mirror we can see how everything was a unified story where our challenge of going down to Egypt made us the people we were and without that that adversity in so many different ways and and in such a harsh manner we never would have had the right stuff to make it through it's almost like a boxer who goes through you know a torturous training regimen and it's because of that training regimen that he's able to then win the championship that was the idea of the Jewish people we if we didn't go through that crucible that furnace of mitzraim as they call it we never would have had the ability in the faith and the foundation a relationship to God and to each other - last season years would have been absolutely impossible and I think as we've seen the Jewish people bounce around from nation to nation without our own land persecuted and plagued all these different things for thousands of years it really as the years roll by it's more and more understandable that we needed to get the right stuff to become become the Jews that we are today now the next powder is a button by Ito it's the answer to is it about slavery and its freedom about freedom and it basically answers yeah it's about both you know you were slaves to Pharaoh and then God took us out with a mighty hand and in my arm and if God didn't do that we would still be enslaved in Egypt today and obviously it doesn't mean we be enslaved in a physical sense but we would not have the internal ability to transcend our limitations in other words we wouldn't have the capacity to free ourselves wherever we find ourselves in the world we'd be totally at the mercy of quote-unquote our jailer from the external prison they put us in we now after Passover we could be in a quarantine we could be in a jail cell and we could be as we can be free people totally spiritually totally psychologically free we we gain that capacity from God's bringing us out of Egypt and it makes us who you are it's our most valuable asset so we thank God for that so what I want to mention now is this idea of gratitude now gratitude is something you can talk about at this point you could also talk about this in the middle of the the story near the 10 plagues because really what I won very formative idea that you want to get across to everybody is that God made himself our personal God throughout this Egyptian experience the plagues were fine-tuned to afflict who God wanted a flick to save who he wanted to save the the splitting of the Red Sea there's an argument brought at the end of it where one rabbi says it was you know 50 plagues young pen that had five plagues apiece once said 200 once said 250 what we can learn we care 200 100 500 10,000 what does it matter we know I'm sorry we know it was the splitting of the Red Sea but what does it matter how many how many little mate plagues that it translates into and the idea is that we learn to be experts at appreciating just what God did for us not just at this moment but all the way back all the way back from beginning Jewish history and when we develop glasses to see the good that was done for us and since God is the ultimate doer of good he's the the source that stands behind all the messengers your mother they say your only feeds a baby is the long arm of God so one of the main parts of the whole entire Seder is to is to get us to be grateful grateful for all God does for us and through that gratitude now we want to give back and that was really the basis for our covenant and the basis for our connection to Shem to God and that is really why we want to do the mitzvahs it's because we see the good God's given us and when someone gives good you want to return and you want to turn that favour in kind so would it really be in such a big deal if parents didn't teach their kids to say thank you and kids didn't say thank you it would be and what's the reason cuz there's nothing worse there's nothing worse than an angry just like no one wants to be called an ingrate no one wants to be married by one with two one be friends with one what a raise one thus the magic words thank you listen to this all ingrates end up in prison maybe not the kind with bars but impenetrable walls erected by ego which locks the world out and shuts the ingrain in a world of bitterness and illusion that's fascinating because what ingratitude does is it forces you into illusion God our God we reduce the world all that truth is all about reality so gratitude which is in Hebrew okarin Sato the recognition of good fine-tunes our ability to see reality to see truth the more were grateful the more we see it's almost like the prescription our glasses getting more and more fine-tuned the Hebrew word for thank you is toda the word you have done the Jew you who team come from the word toda but the word toda to thank at its root means to admit because whatever you thank someone you're admitting they did something to you and when you admit that even though we don't want to admit it why don't we want to admit it sometimes because we don't want to pay we have his inborn feeling not to admit someone did something for me because I'm automatically obligated to give back and kind and if we don't appreciate all those messengers that God says we can never ever have a relationship with God all spirituality depends on his trade of a car's atone so now we're going to go on to the four sons the four sons we're going to skip rebel user and Bnei Brak or buzzer Ben Azaria and now we say bara comical mom bar who somehow to have a custom to sing the song it's a nice song you could look it up on the on the Internet there are four sons you know we're very familiar with this there's the Huckle there's the why son the Russia the rebellious um the simple son and the son who doesn't know how to ask now it's interesting the order that it's written it is interesting from wise to the rebellious to the simple and then to the does not ask now if they're written the order of you know who's good who is the good child to the court of background the rebellious child should be low in the bottom not in the second so what the order is birth is reflected of an intellectual curiosity exhibited by the questioner and questions and detail questions so the COFF from the wise son is first has the best question of the most nuanced question then comes the rebellious son the simple son has a very simple question and then the last son has no question at all so the tremendous I have lesson that one of the lessons you get out of this is that the entry point into being a having the ability to become the great person a good person you awesome person is question and answer is just trying to dig into the reality of life through questions there's nothing worse we say than apathy which is exhibited by unfortunately this fourth son and we even say even though the second son the rebellious one is asking questions and they're challenging questions and they're tough questions and they're questions that parents and rabbis don't like to hear it means asking questions even tough ones means you're engaged you're in the fight and you can be flipped around you could be you can be made and shown to understand the era of what of how you're thinking so that's why I go it goes in that direction now the essence of the evil sons question the rebellious sons question is he says what's the purpose of this work to you and the rabbi's mentioned that he's relating to Judea there was a burden now this is something I think that many of your parents and grandparents can probably probably relate it to and maybe even related that to you throughout your life that when Jews got to America it was hard to be a Jew they walked around like it was a sack of rocks on their backs now if you get into Judaism as I did later in my life there's a freshness is a vitality when you really understand you go below the rituals when you get down to what's really going on there there's an excitement and a depth and intellectual fiber that challenges anything that I ever encountered University or in my readings I went to Dulli college I was investment banker I was blown away by the depth incredible depth of the wisdom and I am Telling You it's inexhaustible it's like the onion you know you go one layer and another layer and another layer just it just keeps going all the way down so we want to ask questions we want to encourage our children and realize also that every one of us has one of these children you know sometimes where the the huh come the wise son and we ask good questions and we want to grow other times we're lazy and we just want to say you leave me alone and we mock and we're probably the rebellious and other times we just you know put it on autopilot with a simple son but the answers that we give to the rebellious son to the why something simple son what we're really trying to get across is we're really trying to reach the one that has no question the the ball of gotta the author the gutta says you got to pique his interest you got to open the discussion up for him and that's what we're trying to that's what we're trying to to get across so that's that Fifth's that fourth side doesn't become the son that doesn't come to the Seder the next year the simple side to side here are the simple son and this is something that also I think an impact the one with no question when your child asks you a simple question like why does a magnet stick to metal what are you gonna say right or how about this one why does it ever snow in the summer most of us are like I'm nishan the eyes were our children and we find ourselves running for cover when they ask these quote-unquote cute questions I'll be right back we sheepishly assure them and we're suddenly reminded is some urgent call that has to be made why don't you turn on the Discovery Channel you know what weed all the answers for our kids because we did what we secretly hope they will soon would do we stopped asking questions what a tragedy we've sacrificed youthful curiosity simplicity on the altar of intellectual sophistication that's one of the things we can get we can restart at the Seder is our beautiful question of why why is a beautiful question and why helps us dig down Albert Einstein said the most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious key to whom this emotion is stranger who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe as as good as dead his eyes are closed could it be that quote what is this is not such a simple question at all so now we're going to move on after the a novela shawl we're going to go to the really the kind of the formal beginning of the story and it's interesting it goes back it says nephew lhasa updatable Azara originally our ancestors were idol worship why should were worshippers but now the omnipresent has brought us near every service and it goes back to the story of Abraham now we're reminded at this point what we know and that is we mentioned before that were responsible for another one another and we have to teach one another Abraham was an amazing person one of the things that Abraham did was he was he brought monotheism to the world he actually quote/unquote discovered God he was a philosopher a world-class philosopher and it didn't matter that the whole entire world was were steeped in idol worship he wasn't going to bow down to them that wasn't going to kowtow not not not Abraham Abraham ruthlessly fought for God it's a story's told that the philosopher the great philosopher Pascal he was a religious philosopher he used to argue and debate with the king louis xiv louis xiv lose Diagnostics they were debating whether there was god where the god really existed and louis xiv got fed up once with Pascal and he said stop with your philosophical proofs give me one good reason practical to believe in God he thought for a second he says the Jews are majesty the Jews the Jews fight in this world was beyond all odds it was like a cat with 99 lives however I'm understood that our story was going to be a witness to the entire world of the truth of our Jewish religion or tradition and he bequeathed that to us to stand and fight for it not on the basis of blind faith but on the basis of knowledge based you know the greatest thing we can all share is our history our common history many non-jews Mark Twain amongst them John Adams and looked at the Jewish people's history and said of course there must be of God in the world I remember Anatoly Sharansky I heard him give his speech 25 years ago and the students asked him when he started believing God he said once he started reading Jewish history that's what I brought up Abraham did he started the family business the family business was introducing the world to it's a famous story about Abraham one day Terah Abraham's father asked his son to mind the family business he happened to have an idol store so Abraham didn't want to be bothered with these idols but he said you know what I'm gonna teach my father quote/unquote a real lesson over here he took a hammer that he found lying around smashed all the aisles with the hammer and he left the biggest Idol standing on Smith he took the hammer put in the idols hand when the father comes back as a conniption Abraham what did you do what happened is well I left you know for 10 minutes doing Aaron you know a locked the door the the the biggest Idol took a hammer smashed all the on the idols up and you see it's still in his head he says that's ridiculous he can't pick up a hammer let alone smashed all the idols so he said if that's the case why do you worship these idols one represents the wind one represents the Sun one represents the surf one represents light the power's different powers he says why don't you worship the one power God which is behind all of these sub powers and in that he became the originator monotheism he says those are all just subsets of one power which stands behind the many so that's what Abraham Abraham was a person that found God that preached and shared what he knew with other Jews like the Soviets did here they learned from Abraham if they knew an Aleph in the Soviet Union the refuseniks in the 80s the 70s and 80s they taught an Aleph if they knew a base they taught a base that is a that is Abraham our our original ancestor as I said before Abraham found himself on the other side of the river now he was called the Ivry the Hebrew and one of the Hebrew really mean it meant that he was on the other side he came from the other side of the Mesopotamian River right that that's what it meant literally but it meant figuratively is that he stood against the entire world they believe that idols he believed in God he was originally I like to joke like to say who said just say no if you know truth it doesn't matter truth isn't arrived at by majority opinion here the truth one man against against Millions he wasn't gonna back down there's a story Rachel had a couple of very cool friends who had cool parents one of his parents Chris Chris's father used to get them tickets to concerts the greatest shows all the time she another another friend Shelly Shelly's mom was a cold mom as well and she managed a Mexican restaurant the Mexican restaurant they go there Saturday night she'd give him free food and I always tell the waiters to give him a couple of beers even though we're there about 15 16 years old and she loved the weekends with us with her friends she loved them but she also felt a little pressure to do certain things she really didn't want to do and it was difficult she don't want to give it up give them up by the other hand she was getting the territory she didn't want to get into one night her very uncool Rachel's very uncle father said can I share something with you she said sure dad she says you know when I was 17 years old a couple of friends and I decided we were gonna break into the school we're gonna steal a bunch of tests and we're gonna get all the answer these tests and we're gonna like you know ace all these these final exams in our I guess it was our junior year he said I don't know what happened but right before we're about to do it I decided wasn't for me my friend said my friends told me you're chicken you're scared he says nah he says I'm braver than all of you he said you know they got they got the test that they all did a lot better than he did on the test on his desk but he never regretted it for one second he says Rachel I trust you I really really trust you Jews have always felt different the question is what do you do when you feel different do you cave in or do you stand for what you believe in that's the kind of the fortitude that the Jewish people have always had so now as we go down we were we were in we were in we were idol worshipers all the way over and Abraham really was very in doubt over whether his children had the strength to make it through history he felt as I alluded to really before that we weren't going to survive he might have been strong enough but he just had this inkling that he wasn't going to going to they were going to last and God promises Abraham your children are going to be the chosen people just how do I know and the next thing we know it we were brought down to Egypt and God was saying I'm promising you they're gonna make it and you know how they're gonna make it I'm gonna have to bring them down to Egypt I'm gonna have to train them I'm gonna have to put some heat on them I'm gonna have to get them to come together congeal and get powerful for them to make it but you can believe me they're gonna make it so if you go down to the to the next song usually saying it's a very famous paragraph Anisha UMDA he should um - la vez a nova Lana it is stood is this that stood by our fathers and us for not only has one risen against us to an island us but at every generation they rise up to annihilate us but the Holy One blessed be he rescues us from their hand this it couldn't be anything more true than this this is written thousands of years ago but it just seems like in every generation someone's trying to destroy the Jewish people for groms Hitler Chum and its key Massacre the Cossacks anti-semitism skinheads in 1/4 the Muslim world in one form or another this seems to have legs this promise now the simple explanation is this promise which is in the paragraph before the promise that's made forgot that's what stood behind us on our 45s meaning guys not going to let them have their way with us they might rise for a time they might inflict damage but not going to decimate the Jewish people and the Jewish people's ability to survive from persecution spread out around the entire world there's something inexplicable in natural human terms no one's we don't understand how they were how they been able to survive so can stupid the following story from World War two a true story it was a sergeant he wasn't Jewish in the aftermath of the war they set up some military governments in the different German cities to get them back on their feet and this sergeant saw these two girls by the river and he said where do you guys live what do you girls live and they said well we used to live in Berlin but Hitler gave my father a shoe factory here in this town Mike said I think it was or Pilsen so he said where did they where did he get the factory from he said well it belong it belonged to the Jews where's your house do you live do you live near here he says yeah that's our house so sergeant bill sees this gorgeous gracious beautiful home and he says whose homes that he says that well that was also the home of the Jews that our Father you know thought their home and their factory so he said to himself they never bother you that [Music] other people's homes and businesses were taken away from them and given to you so the two kids looked innocently at it and said they were just Jews he said but he said like well how would you feel if someone took your house and your father's business and gave it away and they said but they were just juice this is the attitude that we've come to accept them and it hasn't unfortunately like the states of aberration I'd like to say it's something that just happened in a little pocket in time but we've seen this again and again and again even this coronavirus how many are blaming it on the Jewish people how many this is that we've always been the universal donor for the taters so I want to just ask a question and the question is is there a silver lining in this anti-semitism because one way to read this paragraph he should undone is that the the anti-semitism has stood by us so they wouldn't annihilate us so my question to you how could the anti-semitism actually provide a silver lining to protect us all these thousands of years now if you were if you were here I'd be able to ask you be able to have an interaction but unfortunately or not but the the the answer is is that anti-semitism has probably kept the Jews Jewish more than the love of the non-jews and unfortunately you see it not in our times any society where we've been accepted and we've been with open arms whether it was in Germany during the Enlightenment or France or even in America now we have put it into our own Judaism so to speak we've got a better job and putting an end to our own Jewish identity Judaism and so forth with assimilation than any anti-semite ever ever was able to do so some reason when they come at us as as Jews because we're Jews we rally together we realize intuitively there must be something about us which makes us special I don't know why I'm just like them you know in Germany you mad the the 50 year old who was decorated in World War one who fought for the Germans his motherland and fatherland was Berlin not Jerusalem and he was sent to the gas chambers perplexing they couldn't they weren't able to even put that into any type of perspective that's because there's this anti-semitism that's always going to be there to make sure that we're going to do our job to make sure we are the Jewish people and we're going to continue to be the Jewish people so now if you go on from here the guts of the story is from save the lo mein which means go and learn what lovin the aramean tried to do to our forefather Jacob and this is very interesting because this section these is really based on four verses these four verses are found in the fifth book of the Torah devar him chapter 26 verses 5 to 8 four verses and they basically go through the sweep of Jewish history all the way back from Jacob to the splitting of the Red Sea and the Jews being saved and going through now the Bahuguna the word for the gutta he amplifies each verse but I really invite you if you have my packet take a look if you're over the packet looking to your either Haggadah or your commission but the first verses aramean tried destroy my father he descended to egypt soldier lear with few people and there he became a great a nation great mighty and numerous the story starts with Jacob and Egypt we were forged as a nation my bold comments I want you to those are ideas I want you to remember and he taught his children Abraham taught his children about God just like we're teaching about our children tonight and he was independent he independently stood as an Avery on the other side of the river the Egyptians did evil to us afflicted is the second verse and imposed hard labor upon us now not long after Jacob Joseph rather saves them from starvation it makes him the greatest but just empire in the world and by the way Egypt land of Egypt means restricted comes to the word restriction Pharaoh makes himself forget all the good done by the Jews Jesus I don't know this Joseph and he starts oppressing them and starts putting all these terrible decrees on the imagine he saved your country and this is how you pay him back but yeah he hasn't expelled the Jews he needs the Jews have non-jewish as this this love-hate relationship and Jewish people I wanna I want them my country because they're gonna build my country and make my country great live three we cried out to a Shem the god of our fathers and I shouldn't hurt her Christ or our affliction our burden and our impression we remembered what our forefathers taught us about God we the Jewish people we woke up we remembered and we cried out to our Father in heaven we've cried out to our Father in heaven incredibly sincerely and he listened I just want to show you a cartoon that I have and hopefully you you took this as well this is the idea anti-semitism I know if you can see this see this well you can read this but it says says Orthodox conservative reform I for one prefer not to dwell on differences the anti-semitism is the universal universal donor to the Jewish people but God's with us and the last line hashem brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and with an outstretched arm great law with signs and with wonders now at this point remember I said the beginning that peace about gratitude you can also say this over here at the ten plagues when God saved us but few things we learned from the whole Egyptian experience of the templates we learnt that God created the world the ten plagues mystically they say that each ten plagues undid one of the ten statements of creation God created the world in ten steps and this was like as if he had ten pieces of clothing each cloak was taken off when we realized God was in control of the peace of the world from the physical from the land to the skies and all the other powers we saw that there was nothing that God was not in control of even life itself and it wasn't just life he was he was in control it was the first Born's life because that's parallel to the creation of the world the first cause man's first creation is their first child God's first creation is the world so in that plague of the first born the Egyptians realized God was also the creator and heavens in the earth he didn't just go away he's actively involved he's loving rape going to pay back well on the one hand pay back the good for the good that they that they do but also he's gonna he's gonna settle the score card with the enemies the Jewish people and people that are immoral in the world and the Jewish people saw at this at this building going to see in great detail every single Egyptian was taken care of and punished to the finest degree possible and we walked away from the the plagues and the splitting of the Red Sea with such a state of awe and love for God because we saw in a flesh how all the negative turned into incredibly incredible positive and our nation was born in this surge of gratitude and love for a creator and that's what propelled us into a covenant with God we made a covenant with God because it was personal we stood at Mount Sinai a few months later after this experience and we committed out of love not out of fear yes we assumed another master but this master was someone you want to follow someone you want to give everything you have to and that is really a relationship to God so then what we do at this point in the Seder and I'm sure you want to say that Ceyda a new this is again the same extension of this idea of gratitude and miracles and I want to say just a quick word about about miracles there was once a young man a winter rabbi and said rabbi if you can show me a miracle I will become religious so rabbi had these great powers he was able to summon Elijah the prophet they went back and got first row seats to Moses splitting to see after the sheepishly said wow that's amazing I'm gonna go out and buy tefillin a couple weeks later he comes back to rabba and says you know my my I'm just not feeling it not feeling it anymore can do another miracle sure enough back to the Red Sea Moses does the trick again that's amazing I'm gonna go to yeshiva now I'm gonna be spiritual and connect to the gut forever furious later he said he comes back and two of them in Hackett can you show me another miracle so he brings him back to them to the Red Sea Moses puts up his staff see parts and he says wait a minute every time Moses does that the sea parts that's not a miracle that's us we've gotten so used to the miraculous that we don't even realize all the miracles in our lives and the greatest miracle of all is us the fact that we're here but I said before this cat with 99 lives is the biggest biggest incredible miracle of all you only think that between nature and miracle is the frequency of what had happened the Hado teaches us the littlest miracle that God does for us you would see it as a miracle the giving of some life would be enough for us to have gratitude to the end of this world and we prompt me to want to give my life to serve our Creator even with one that's they know but they ain't opposed to the list of those things to just impress upon us in details I said before every time we appreciate and we see then we have more of an ability to appreciate further and further as we go okay three very very quick we're going to do this very quickly Pesach matzah and Mama and please I suggest you look this up so you can get this because this is very important the three mitzvahs rub and Gumble ill this is the clothes it's pretty mitzvahs so the past the lamb is about check teen getting rid of our illusions the Paschal Lamb was the god of the egyptians so when we sacrifice that guy we said we are all in for the real God you have no power and sometimes that takes sacrifice that's why it's called the sacrifice and we are getting rid of our illusions that power is something that we get to this very day by doing that myth so we don't do it today the basket lamb because we have no temple but we eat the afikomen instead but that's what it symbolizes getting rid of the illusion in life the biggest motif of Passover is getting rid of comets and eating matzah hummus represents what I call the bakery window the bakery window of life is a is a window that beckons us everything's great it tastes good it's beautiful I desire it and we bring it home when we eat it and it doesn't give us the bang for the buck matzah on the other hand is all bread real bread just flour and more none of the rise none of the sugar none of the flavor none of the fake-out Passover is about freeing ourselves from the illusions and the desires that we have in the physical world and we detox from this world of comets for a world of matzah it also symbolizes humility it's poor man's bread whereas the hummus is arrogant it's puffed up those are the two things that enslave us desire and ego and those are the things we we clamped down upon and Mara the last one I mention is that the morrow er we have to sometimes look at it in hindsight it says peso matzah and Maura the Passover offering matzah and Mara really cheaper the reverse Mara came first the bitterness came before the matzah and the Paschal Lamb yet it's that the Mara's last why because we can only understand the bitterness of the Mara in context of the salvation and they used to eat this at the temple it was like a shawarma it was a soft matzah lamb and spicy relish spicy relish was mammarra the Mara's what gave it its flavor the Mara which gave it its spice the Mara is what gave it its sweetness and the last bit of this theatre er the final piece is hollow and hollow is thanking God for this incredible incredible gift of being a Jew being a Jew is to have a gift the more we know of that the more we understand the gift it's a gift that keeps on giving freedom is the vehicle freedom is the vehicle to not be enslaved to other gods and be able to commit yourself to truth which is God which is our God so that's our freedom and belief and worship come together I wish everybody a hot car service MAF an amazing amazing holiday download at at project inspired comm backslash Passover this Passover guide and also the cartoon about the that funny cartoon about the reform conservative role in one and again wishing your wonderful Passover and everybody everybody should have a tremendous experience and could be the best Passover LS thanks so much