Growing up in the late 90s near NYC was
hard for young Mets fans like myself. The rival Yankees were in the middle of a
stretch of 4 championships in 5 years while the Mets asked us to believe. So we
did. The unbridled optimism that youth brought shined through, as year after
year we believed that this year the magic was back. I still have that optimism
as this year seemed brighter, when to start this year we swiftly lost 3 in a
row to your Nationals.
At my family seder when I was 10, my
father told me that we wait for Moshiach just as the Jews waited for a savior
from Egypt. Soon it would be us that would be saved. I didn’t understand. What
did it mean to wait every year for something to happen when it hasn’t in so
long? You hope the Mets will win this year right? He responded. Well didn’t you
wish that happened last year. Suddenly I understood. That year when I blew out my birthday candles
I wished that Moshiach would come that year, but that the Mets would win the
World Series first.
John Dewey (20th
century American philosopher) believed in this type of education.
“People are active centers of impulse rather than passive vessels,
learning best when they are actively engaged in experiencing an idea or an
event rather than passive observers to it.”
And thus experiential education flourished.
Similarly Benjamin Franklin once said: “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may
remember, involve me and I learn.”
I currently work
Part time at the Center for the Jewish future at YU where I make programing for
such type of experiential education programs. However, nothing is more
experientialy oriented than the Pesach seder. We try all we can to feel as if
we were there. The dictum Chayav Adam
leerot et atzmo keilo hu yatza mimitzrayim. It is obligatory to feel as if
you are leaving Egypt.
We do this in many ways. Ha Lachma anya, deachalu avotania –this
is the bread of affliction that they ate. How bitter their lives were therefore
we eat maror (and because of the high humidity in Egypt which generally causes
congestion). We put on plays to reenact the exodus and to recreate the Jew’s
excruciating work in Egypt we work hard in cleaning for Pesach. The Rambam
therefore codifies it as Sippur yetziat mitzrayim telling the story of the
exodus, because we have to do more than read it but we have to imagine it, we
have to relive it. He codifies reclining while drinking and eating as vital
because we are doing more than eating, we must feel like we were there and
feeling as if we were freed.
The passage that speaks of this
obligation continues. Elah af otanu gaal imahem (we were freed with them). And
when we say blessings later on we begin Ashar gaalanu vegaal et avoteinu
Blessed He who freed us and freed our forefathers. What does this mean? We are
supposed to feel as if we were there, but what does it mean that we are slaves
and G-d is setting us free?
Rabbi Aaron Soleveitchik (brother of the
Rav) writes in his book “Logic of the Heart, Logic of the Mind”:
The Jewish concept of freedom is quite
different from the secular view of liberty…The common understanding of freedom
translates to the Hebrew term cherut
haguf, freedom of the body. The
torah, however, teaches and demands a higher level of liberty, namely cherut hanefesh, freedom of the soul.
One who has attained cherut haguf, although
no longer subject to the will of others, is still enslaved by passions whims
and desires.”
The freedom that we speak about in the
Seder is exemplified in the cherut haguf of the Jewosh people to be sure. But
it is really about the cherut hanefesh of us as a people. With this in mind we
can understand. We connect to the past to understand the present. We say we are
still enslaved because we are still enslaved. True, we do not take orders from
the Egyptians, but are we not all enslaved to our desires? We do more than try
to experience what G-d did so many years ago. We translate that into what G-d
is doing to us now in helping us become the people we ought to be. We are still
slaves in Egypt and are still getting freed. Our salvation is a never ending
process.
This assertion has ample founding in the
customs of the Haggadah.
In the Talmud in Pesach 60b there is an
argument btw the house of Shamai and the house of Hillel, or as I like to think
of it Gryffindor and Slytherin about saying Hallel on the first night. Shammai
believes this to be problematic because the Jews had not left Egypt until the
next day, how can you say betziet yisrael mimitzrayim (when the Jews left
Egypt), they hadn’t left yet? Beit
Hillel disagrees, and in fact that is what we do, when we say the rest of
Hallel. In our construction, this makes sense. We are not worried that the
Jewish people had not left yet, because we are not only praising G-d for taking
us out of Egypt. We are also thanking him for the times He has taken us out of
our personal Egypts in the here and now, and he will continue to take us out of
Egypt in the future.
This is furthered by Rav Hai Gaon (more
formally known as Rav Hello Gaon) who in his explanation of the Haggadah
explains that this Hallel is not a regular Hallel but a Shira Chadasha, a new
song that we are singing in praise of G-d. We are praising for the cherut
hanefesh that he continues to give us in the here and now.
The Dayenu song seems peculiar. Why do we
continue through the exodus story through the building of the temple? It is
because the Exodus did not stop at the yam suf. It continues until today. He
saved us as a nation from the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the pogroms, and created the state of Israel. Dayenu continues to today and into the future.
The inclusion of Vehigadta lebincha, the
obligation to teach your children on this day seems odd. However, the
stretching of the mesorah from parent to child connects us to the past and to
the future through the present (and not just the presents for the afikomen). The
inclusion of questioning becomes vital to the Seder experience precisely
because it makes the Pesach story one that includes us within it.
As
Martin Buber the Jewish Existentialist writes in “Teaching and the Deed,”
“People learn
and grow through active social interaction, which stimulates ideas, causes us
to think and rethink views, and helps us to re-conceptualize our beliefs and
ideologies. The active dialogue back and forth with others is not simply pedagogically
useful; it is, in a more basic sense, a pivotal factor in shaping our ideas,
beliefs, and behaviors.”
The questioning that happens at the Seder
turns the extrapolating of details from eons ago to a night of
conceptualization and shaping of our identity as Jews. It brings us back to the
past so we can appreciate the present and anticipate the future.
I leave you with a challenge. This year
at the Seder, use the past to understand the now. What is your personal Egypt
and how can you break free and have a true cherut hanefesh? What Egypts do you
hope and pray that we will leave from in the future?
Surprisingly, the 10 year old me had it
right all along. I took a feeling and embodied it in my own baseball
experience. For me winning the world series was my cherut. May we each find our
own Egypts to escape from and may we as a people leave our Egypt and build the
third world series, I mean Beit Hamikdash Amen.
