Parshas Bo / Pesach - How Did We Get Here?

2:30 Very good because it's in the manisch tanah. On all other nights we only dip once, and tonight we dip. What are the two dippings on Pesach? Karpas, and then later on we dip our maror in charoset. So Shaila is What is this idea of dipping? Twice on Pesach. And is there any connection between this dipping and the dipping of the blood from Makas V'Chorus? Okay. In order to understand this, we need to go back to a story. It's a story we all know. Yosef HaTzaddik gets a Ksones Passim from his father. What's a Ksones Passim? Some sort of fancy coat. What was it made of? Anybody know? Was Adam's coat? What was it made of? So Rashi tells us. Rashi tells us Pasim Loshim Klimilas It's a garment of very fine wool. Karpas Utreles It's like Karpas and Treles. What's Karpas? The Gemara in Megillah tells us that kar is like a cushion or padding.

3:58 And pas is like Gemarshan of pasim means fine wool. So what's the connection between karpas by the Pesach Seder and the karpas that the Ksones pasim was made of? So the answer is very obvious, and we see it one pasuk later. Not one pasuk. Very, very quickly later, what happens? Yosef goes to his brothers. And they see Yosef coming. And what do they do? They say, "We're going to kill Yosef." Of course, we know what happens. In the end, they sell him down to the tribe. But what are they going to do with his ksones pasim? Listen to the words of the pasuk. They took this coat of Yosef. And they shechted male goats. Girls, what do we make a carbon pesach out of? Either sheep or goats. The yitbulu as aksone as madam And they dipped the coat in blood. So already we could start to sense that something very interesting is going on over here.

5:10 We dipped by makas b'choros. We shechted the pesach. We dipped with those hisops into the blood, and we put it in a Pesach beisol, and we did it together as a family. Yosef HaTzaddik also had a coat. A karpas coat, and that karpas coat was also dipped in blood. But what happened? This karpas coat that was dipped in blood was a siman to Yaakov Avinu. The seventh of Yaakov Avinu, that his child had been murdered. What's the significance of carpas by the seder? We dip the vegetable in the salt water. What does it do? It reminds us of the tears. There's something fundamental I'd like to share with you tonight. It's a question that any growth-oriented person must ask themselves. It's a very, very important question. The question is, ready for it? How did I get here? A lot of times we find I think I imagine you find the same thing as I do.

6:35 You ever find in life that something is going on, and you are like Everything became so confusing. Everything got so out of control. And like things are falling apart around you. You ever ask the question How did this happen? Where did things start to unravel? The Raptor question. I'll give you an example to make it a little more real. Imagine you have a girl. I think this happens more with girls than with guys. You ever have a girl? Maybe in high school you had this That she was part of a friends group. And a week later she has no friends. You ever see something like that? Ooh, that was intense. Just watching. There were some of you that were "It was a lot of intensity for one minute." I appreciate all of those that just shared. I appreciate your sharing. And you try to make sense of it. You're like, "I didn't. I said something to a girl. I didn't even realize what I was saying. I didn't mean to say it like that." And then she told somebody else, who told somebody else, and before long, completely ostracized from the grade.

7:39 And this girl is sitting there, and in her confusion, she's saying How did I get here? How did we end up like this? Such an important question, because if you know how you got somewhere, then you also know how to get back. Isn't that true? That if you could somehow figure out along the way what went wrong Then you could start to make repairs. You could start to say to yourself, "I see how." A led to B and B led to C and C led to D. So I need to go back to the beginning because I need to fix that one thing. So maybe in that case it's going over to that first girl and saying, I just want to apologize. I think I said something that maybe you took it in a different way than I meant it. But I just want to clarify that I didn't mean it that way. Because when you're trying to be masather things, you have to go back to the root.

8:27 So I'll give you an example. Ma'aser Shalayach happened today. I saw a Rebbe in yeshiva today. And it's a Rebbe in yeshiva. Happens to be that historically we haven't had the best relationship And I saw him today, and I said something to him. Did you ever end up meeting with that boy? So he said no. I said, "Oh okay." And then I realized afterwards. I went back to my office. I said to myself I wonder how he just took that. Did he mean like? Did he take that as me coming to him and saying, 'You were supposed to meet with that boy, and you didn't meet with that boy yet.' And we've had conversations in the past where he's let me know that there are things that I've done that hurt him. So I stopped and I said to myself Wait a second, I might have just been one of those situations where I was not being sensitive enough.

9:18 So I got up, I went outside, and I found this rabbi and I said to him, "I just want to apologize." I don't know if you took what I said as he said, no, I didn't take it that way at all. I said, Baruch Hashem. But because I know what bothered him in the beginning. So you can go back and you can rectify, but if you don't know how you got somewhere Then you don't know how to fix it. And it's a very interesting thing because people in life often have very little idea of how they got there. I heard this once from Jordan Peterson. It was a very good line. He said people come into his office all the time and they say, 'What went wrong?' And he says, "Let's find out when you twisted reality" Because at the moment you twist reality, all of a sudden, it's good. There's going to be a consequence. It's going to come out somewhere. I give you an example.

10:07 I'm sure it's a hard example because everybody in this room never did this. But maybe you were dishonest at some point in your life. Maybe you cheated on a test or you copied from somebody else's paper. You ever do something like that? You don't have to tell me. You don't have to tell me. I'm just looking at because I want to see who's with me on this. Good. Some of you, at least three or four of you just now. I appreciate your honesty. The so even if you get away with it and you get that mark back on the test At some point It comes back to bite you. Not because you didn't get away with it at that moment, because now all of a sudden you're a person who cheated on that test. You're a person who handed in somebody else's paper. And whenever you twist reality, at some point it comes back to bite you.

10:58 We think that karpas is about tasting the yidden's tears when they were in Mitzrayim and Galus But that's not really it. Because how did those yidden get into Galus to begin with? There were tears that were cried well before they got into Galus. Whose tears were they? They were the tears of Yaakov Avinu, and where did those tears come from? Because there was a dipping. Because there was a dipping. Because Yaakov Avinu came, and he's because Yaakov Avinu was brought the Ksainas Pasim dipped into the blood of this goat, and he thought to himself, 'Ave, my son is dead.' And Yosef HaTzaddik was sent down to Mitzrayim And that's how Klal Yisrael went to Mitzrayim, and that's how Klal Yisrael fell into that place to begin with. So when we think about Karpas, we shouldn't be thinking just about how they suffered in Eretz Yisrael. How did they suffer in Eretz Yisrael? Why did they get there? How did we get to this place? Isn't that an important question?

12:02 We're all not to bring this topic up Not because I have any problem bringing the topic up, but just because I'm sure you've heard about it enough already. But in Klal Yisrael this week, there's a lot of talk about this. How did we get here? How did we get to a place where somebody who was in a position of power was able to use his position of power in an abusive way? We're asking ourselves rightly. We're asking ourselves what systems we have in place and how we can protect those that need to be protected. Where did we make our mistakes? It's called making a chesban anefesh. And people are throwing out different solutions. Rav Lapianski wrote an article in Mishpacha magazine, and there was a podcast that Rav Friedowitz went on, and all sorts of people, and Rav Berkowitz spoke, and I'm sure that most of you girls probably heard about Rav Berkowitz's speech.

12:51 Everyone has their theories, and everyone's postulating. I didn't like what he said. There should be this person should say, and this person should say, and everyone. But you know what? No matter what you think Even if you agree or disagree with the solutions, you know what's great? That we're having a global conversation about the mistakes that we've made, and we're trying to trace our steps back and to know how we got here. Because things were swept under the rug for so long, isn't that true? A person who was a victim of abuse could not come out and say it because they wouldn't be believed. And people in positions of power, we now know, and we have to pay attention to this, that a person in a position of power is, by his very definition, in a dangerous position, and the people that are beneath them are in a vulnerable position, and that needs to be protected. That's a good thing that we're having that conversation.

13:39 And even if you don't agree with that analysis I just gave, it doesn't matter because at the very least we're courageous enough now to ask ourselves how did we get here? These tears that were spilled this past week. These tears were shed many, many times before. If we pay attention to the first tears, we can understand where the second tears came from. But we never paid attention to the first tears, and that was the problem. On the Pesach Seder, we say you got to go back to the Karbas The first tears, the tears of the Ksainus Passim, the tears of Yaakov Avinu. That's how we got to where we are. But there's a tikkun. If you know what brought you there, then you also know how to undo it. The first hint is in this bundle of hisaps. The bundle of hisaps. What is a hisap?

14:28 Listen to what David Hamelich says to Hillel. What does that mean? It means purify me with your hisaps, and I'll be whiter than snow. What a hisap was in those times, girls? A type of plant, you know what the hisab was? It was detergent. It's what they used to clean things. So listen to what Klali Yisrael did. It's so unbelievably beautiful. We took the hisab. Hakadosh Baruch Hu said, "If you want to leave Mitzrayim, you can't leave Mitzrayim until you're mitak in the chid of the brothers." You can't leave because there can be no Yitzias Mitzrayim if you don't understand how you got there to begin with. It's like Avram Avinu. It's very well known. Rashi says Avram Avinu. On his way down to Mitzrayim, he stayed in hotels. On his way back from Mitzrayim, which hotels did he stay in? The very same hotels. Why?

15:26 Because it's the easy pshat to thank them. But there's a beautiful pshat. You want to hear a beautiful pshat? Also beautiful. Because if you want to leave Mitzrayim, you have to know how you got there to begin with. You have to retrace your steps. Mitzrayim is from a lashon of mitzray. It's from the constriction in your lives. It's from the depression in your lives, the anxiety in your lives, the things that aren't going well, the things that you don't have to extricate yourself from. You want to leave Mitzrayim. You have to know which hotels you stayed in. How did you get down there to begin with? What were the mistakes that you made? Hakadosh Baruch Hu says you want to leave Mitzrayim. You can't leave until you have a dipping that reverses the dipping from before. So take those hisops. And do it what? How do we do it, girls? As a family As a family. What was the mistake that the brothers made? We're not a family. We're going to kick one of us out. So we get together as a family and we shech the carbon pasach, the very same goat, and we take the hislap, the cleaning agent, and we dip it in the blood, the very same blood that the ksinas pasim was dipped in. And what do we do?

16:30 We put it on the doorposts and lock ourselves inside the house. And what do we do? We stay there together. And then the malachamavus skips over your house. The malachamavus that Yaakov Avinu thought killed Yosef, that very same malachamavus, he skips over our house. That's why the yontif is called Pesach. Because it's the essence of leaving Mitzrayim. The essence of leaving Mitzrayim was not that the malachamavus skipped over our house. It's why did the malachamavus skip over our house? The malachamavus skipped over our house because we realized the mistake that we made and we were willing to rectify it. And I'll tell you something else. You know what's really great about this shot? Those Jews in Mitzrayim never met the Shvatim. It was hundreds of years earlier. They had been in slavery for two hundred and ten years. They didn't meet a Shavat. Why were they being metakin for a chait that the Shvatim did? They weren't there.

17:25 You know what the answer is? Because the stains of generations stay with us. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children. Isn't it true? You see this? Unfortunately, it's so sad. You see this in families all the time. Rahmanul Eslan, you have a grandfather who has a fight with his brother. And he passes it on. And his children see it. You ever see that? The children see the fighting in the family. What do they do? What do the children do? They fight themselves. And what do their children do? They fight themselves. And what do their children do? Until somebody comes along and says I know the cycle of violence in this family, and I'm gonna do it differently. That's why it's such an important thing in psychology to know your family of origin. If you don't know where you came from, you can't fix it.

18:17 We know our parents. How well do we know our parents? Nobody knows our parents better than us. Because we know the things that they preach, and we know what they really do. We know the lifestyle. But our parents came from somewhere, and I bet you right now that if I asked you, because we're psychological girls here in Torah Devora I bet you if I asked you Tell me about your dad, give me your dad's bio. He's like this, and he's like this, and he's like this. It's sort of understandable because his mother was like this, and his father was like this, so he probably gravitated more like this because of her, and more like this because of him. And I don't know this for sure, but I think I heard that my grandfather was like this, and that's how my grandfather became like that. You probably know this already.

19:07 So you know the thing is that right now, everybody in this room You think you're going to be different. We pray. For sure. But everybody does. Everybody thinks to themselves when they're eighteen, nineteen years old, I'm going to be different than my parents. I'm not going to do it the same. I'm going to be a good mom. And you will be Except that in about twenty five years from now, I'm going to be sitting with your daughters and Toma and Devora, and I'll be saying, "So how'd it go?" And be like, "Well, you have to understand, my mother she came from there" Because until you know where you came from, you can't say, "I'm going to do it differently." You can't have Yitzchias Mitzrayim like that And that's why on Pesach we have two dippings. The first is the recognition of where we came from. We came from Karpas.

19:55 But then, what do we do at the end? The second dipping is the moror in the charoset. We dip the bitterness into the sweetness of the charoset. When you own your bitterness, because you know where you came from Then you have the capacity to sweeten it. Then you have the capacity for change. Then you have the capacity for growth to do something different. It's always a An interesting question. At what point in the year do girls start to make important decisions about their future? Pesach is way too late. Though it's a very good answer based on the year, it's way too late. Yeah. You have. I know this is scary to think about. Purim is two and a half months away. Ten weeks. They say in seminary the days are long, but the year is short. And it'll be over before you know it. Seminary is a bubble.

21:15 We're not pretending that it's not. It's a bubble. You have no responsibilities here, and that's an amazing gift that your parents gave you. What's the purpose of being in the bubble? The purpose of being in the bubble is to stop and think. And what should you be thinking about? You should be thinking about where you want to go. Imagine you got in a car and you're Everybody, let's go. We're getting the car. Where are we going? I don't know. Let's just drive. What? To where? Why are we going? These are important questions. Big decisions are up ahead of you, girls, in the next couple of years. Where you go to college, what profession you'll have What type of family you'll choose to raise, what community you'll raise them in What are the core values you want your children to have? It's an amazing thing. It's an amazing thing when I see these guys get married.

22:09 I have seven chasnas starting from January thirtieth. I have seven chasnas that I'm flying to America for talmidim. Beautiful, right? You know what I'm thinking. Oh my God! Somebody's gonna marry these guys. How'd that happen? Because I remember them when they were eighteen and they were barely human, right? They're like It's sort of like protoplasmic slugs just walking around. And they grow up. And you see, they have children, and now you know I've told them I started teaching at Vassar fourteen years ago. It's like, Rabbi, we're between this school and that school. Whoa, that's wild. You have human beings that you're in charge of, and you're deciding where to educate them, right? These are really important questions. It's a really good time to ask those questions. Who do I want to be in this world? How do I want to show up? You don't want to turn around at forty and fifty years old and go "Oops.

23:13 What hit me when I turned forty? No do overs. That's a scary thing to think. At forty years old, I figured most of us die around eighty, ninety years old. My life was half over. That's a crazy thing to think, because in my head I'm still eighteen. But I'm not. And there's no do over. So you have to ask yourself, am I going where I want to go? Is this my best life? Am I actually living the life that I want? So if you want to answer that question, you have to ask yourself another question. How did I get here right now? Ask yourself. Trace your steps. Think about what life was like in elementary school. Think about the person you wanted to be when you were going into high school. Ask yourself what happened to her. What happened to that dream? And then think about what you were thinking last year at this time When you were sitting and deciding which seminary you wanted to go to.

24:07 What was the dream that you had for this year? And then ask yourself how we got to this point. Is that dream a reality? Is it somewhere in the atmosphere? It's amazing to see what life brings. This is a great opportunity to have your yitzias mitzrayim. Real change begins with asking ourselves How did we fall into the mud to begin with? Remembering that there are those beautiful moments where you could rectify everything. You have the detergent in your life. That second dipping. We all need a pesach. We all need a yitzias mitzrayim. And if we want to have a Yitzchias Mitzrayim, then we have to be yotzei the mitzvah of Magid. We have to tell our story. And telling our story means starting from the beginning. That's why the Hagada says, 'What's the beginning of the Hagada?' Mitzhi'la. We were Avodah Zara. That's like such a Jewish thing, no? In order for me to explain this to you, I need to go back to the very beginning, even before Avram Avinu. We were idolaters. Just answer the question. It's like the most Jewish thing in the world, no? I want to answer this question. Let's journey back several thousand years. But that's the truth. To begin to answer the questions of Manisch Tana How did we change? What went wrong? We have to answer the question of where we came from. Girls have a good Shabbos.