Recap for 20 Adar I 5773

This Shabbos we discussed how a handful of Jews went to Egypt and after 10 generations, there were millions of Jews with 600,000 of these being men over 20 years old.  We discussed why Hashem would send us to Egypt or allow us to be taken there in the first place.  The answer is that having suffered ourselves in Egypt, and having been able to recover from this suffering, we are better able to understand the plight of others and help make the world a better place.  Elli mentioned that organizations such as AA take advantage of this idea, using those who have recovered from a form of enslavement to help others who find themselves in the same situation.

We discussed how Egyptian society was very much wrapped up in the physical world, whereas the Jews embraced spirituality.  For the Jews, this spirituality began with Abraham.   The Jews were uniquely qualified to be the chosen people for carrying Hashem’s message and Torah to the world.  Having said this, the Jews still did take advantage of the physical world in Egypt.  They not only left during the Exodus with large amounts of wealth, they learned how to use the physical world as a platform for practicing their spirituality.  We discussed how spirituality can not exist in a vacuum.  Hashem created the physical world as a platform, so we could “elevate the sparks of kiddusha”, as one of my friends puts it.

We discussed 2 major themes of Pesach, Hashem revealing himself and the Jews being the chosen people.  Matzo symbolizes Hashem revealing himself, and the “passing over” of the Jews symbolizes our being the chosen people.  As discussed above, the Jews were chosen because they had a tradition of embracing spirituality dating back to the time of Abraham.   We discussed how Judaism was the religion that brought monotheism to the world.  The idea of monotheism was a revolutionary idea.  The Eastern religions all worship multiple entities and are polytheistic.

We discussed how Hashem loves us, but must sometimes use fear of punishment as a motivator.  The times when Jews have found themselves in trouble, it is often because we lacked motivation and expected Hashem to do everything.  Sometimes we are motivated by having “skin in the game” but other times we lack the maturity to be motivated in more sophisticated ways.  One of the examples we discussed is how the tablets that came from Hashem were scattered, but the tablets coming from Moses were not.  

We started our discussion of the halakah of Passover and how it is not difficult to transfer ownership of that which is in our possession.  We started to discuss how we do not want to be so tired from our preparations, that we barely have energy for the Seder.  We also discussed how we not only remember the story of the Exodus to understand the Jews as a nation, we remember the story because we may experience our own forms of enslavement of various types in our personal life.  The story of the Exodus can give us inspiration our own personal lives, and just like our enslavement from Egypt we never want to forget our own stories.

This is a summary of what we discussed this Shabbos.  No Halachic rulings are intended or should be inferred.