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Things always happen for a reason. This is a song. I think it was a journey song. It was the "I Got the Here Comes Pesach Blues." Do you know that song? Do you like it? Do you know what that means? Do you know that song? I should have known. It's a one. It's a wonderful song. Journeys. Joni's is a thing again because they put out a new album. So my wife hates that song. So, the question is, how do we get the song to be played on the radio? In a very beautiful way, my wife grew up in a home where somehow my mother-in-law has some siyata d'shmeiya that she does not dislike Pesach, and she raised the family of not just women but people in general.
Who Baruch Hashem love Pesach. Pesach is a trigger word though for so many of us. It's not an easy yontif. I happen to very strongly dislike Pesach programs. Baruch Hashem, I grew up in a home where we never went on Pesach programs. Pesach was home. My mother is a tzaddikess. My entire family is not observant, and so Pesach was the yomtiv where everybody came to us. They would come an hour before yomtiv. They would park themselves. They would drive home afterwards. They'd come back for a second seder. And even though my mother had a full time job, she put on Pesach. She did it with a smile.
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My father was a wonderful leader of the seder, so I grew up in a home where Pesach was a beautiful thing, and we never went away to Pesach programs. And if you would have asked us, would we have even wanted to go? We had a great time at home. And today people are running to these programs and chaval, chaval for so many to have a Pesach seder in a dining room. It's not the same as having it in person, but I understand. I think it's more about the tone of voice and the emotion that comes with it. Some people say, Rabbi, you don't understand how difficult it is for my wife to make Pesach with everything that's going on, and we're both holding down full time jobs, and we're trying to raise the children, and the amount of stress that's in the house before Pesach. It's so hard. And I hear that. I hear that. And I hear it. And how many women.
Show up to the Pesach Seder a shmatah, and just you know it's like I had a chaver Friday night. His father worked very hard during the week, and we would place bets Friday night how far into the meal his father would make it. I always took the under. I always said he's not going to make it past the soup, and my friend was like the eternal optimist who would say, "I'm telling you this time my father's going to be awake into the middle of the meal." And I was like, "There's no way he never makes it." And I made a lot of money from that. But how many times did you get to do that? But how many women show up, and it's just like, can we get to shochan aruch? And of course, we all want nachas from our children. We all want to. But it's like, okay, you said the manashtana, and chaval to have such a seder. I knew a man when I was growing up who was in the catering business, a wonderful, wonderful Jew.
And you know that game. I don't know. I don't know if you know this, but you know that boys play a game the day after a seder when they go to shul. How late did your seder go? Do girls play this game? But when do you play it? You must play it like afterwards. Whatever you see each other in the afternoon, but like yom tiff morning. That's the game that you play in shul. How late did your seder go? So kids always exaggerate. Mine went till four o'clock in the morning. Like we're diving vasican. Like I've been diving for five hours already. It's all shaker, but. This one person he would show up to shul, and I would ask his, I was young, I would ask his son, what time did your seder go until? So his father always had the same line every single year. He would say, our seder is like the matzah, eighteen minutes or less, because he was so exhausted from weeks and weeks of sixteen, seventeen, eighteen hour days of cooking, and by the time he got to the seder, he was pusher to shmatah, and they used to daven up. That's what he called it. We used to daven up the haggadah.
And if the Hagadah is actually not that long, there's a sense of I'm just too tired to do it. The Hachana for Pesach could be so pressing. It's more than that. The Hachana for Pesach could be so weighty, pushing us to a place where we have nothing left.
The Rav of my shul said this Shabbos that his wife was talking to her grandmother, a woman who's in her nineties, and she was talking about the cleaning that they were doing for Pesach, and the grandmother said that she knew the Chafetz Chaim's daughter. The Rav was very clear. He said, "I'm not pasquining anything la halacha. I don't want anyone to walk out of this with questions. But if you have any other questions or need further clarification, feel free to ask."But the daughter of the Chafetz Chaim said to this grandmother. In my house, Pesach cleaning meant we straightened up a bit. That's what we did. There was no like heavy lifting. And the Rebbitzin said to her grandmother, she said, "Grandma, I moved the aron and I found tons of chametz under there." But the grandmother had to wait until the next day to get the results. "But the grandmother was insistent. Who says you have to move the aron? So I'm not posking anything la halacha, and I don't know exactly how much the Chafetz Chaim had in his house, and I can't imagine that the Chafetz Chaim's house looked anything like the homes that we have. Baruch Hashem, we get to live here in Eretz Yisrael.
And baruch Hashem, we live with a beautiful level of appropriate materialism. I think I once heard that the Chafetz Chaim had to sweep his house, because there was dirt on the floors. So I was like, okay, but say they're what? I can't imagine they had very much chametz and very many arrow note that they needed to move. I can't imagine that they had the heavy beds that we have, where you have to lift up the bed and take everything out in order to move the bed. So it could very well be that the Chafetz Chaim's hachanah for Pesach is much easier. But I think the message, the overall message that the Chavetz Chaim was trying to bring, was an appropriate message. It was an appropriate message for all of us that Pesach should not be a debilitating yantif. Chas v'shalom. Pesach should not be a debilitating yantif. And again, as I've heard so many times over the years, this is especially true for women. I think it's true for the guys also, but it's certainly true for the women.
When I was a kid, when I was in seminary, when I had my Hagada, I saw in one of the seminaries where I spoke, the girls bought. They have that Chidusha Torah thing. We used to just buy notebooks, but now they have like a fancy leather-bound thing that says Chidusha Torah. Baruch Hashem, Jews have learned how to monetize everything. These girls had a special Chidusha Torah Hagada edition. Somebody got very wise, and they said if we put Hagada on the front of it, we could. We could charge even more than the regular notebook, because it says Agada on it. And these girls were sitting; they had these pages and pages of notes from all the shiurim that they heard. One imagines that the Pesach seder that they come to is one that's filled with a different level of enthusiasm and excitement, given the achana for Pesach. The guy leaves yeshiva; he gets a job. How much time does he have today? What we ask women to do is impossible. It's not. It's not a normal thing that we're asking.
People to hold down a full-time job and raise their families and keep a home to some extent, it's not it's not a normal thing. It's a Herculean task, and it's understandable why a woman would show up to Pesach, aside from the fact that the Hachana for Pesach might have felt crippling, and somehow nobody can ever get the help that they need despite whoever's around. It just somehow doesn't work. With all of these things and not necessarily being able to prepare. Even if you bought the Rav Meilch Biderman Hagada, and you've decided, not saying that one in specific, but it seems that everyone is buying that one this year. You see on WhatsApp status, as all the boys taking pictures with their Rav Meilch Hagada, with the same Rav Meilch pose as Rav Meilch. I'm gonna, I'm, I'm writing Hagada Bez Hashem will be out next year, but I'm gonna make a pose like that so go viral on social media. But even if you buy a new Hagada, who has time to go through Hagada?
Was time for these things. Rather, my wife this year she asked me last night, and Baruch Hashem, I was able to get a hold of it. There's a book called The Last Slave. You've read this book. I've not read this book. My mother-in-law told my wife about it. It's some sort of novel about. I'm not exactly sure what it's about, but it's something about the story of Yitzhak Mitzrayim, and. Even that, just at night, to read a couple of pages before you fall asleep from the exhaustion of the day, to do something to invigorate Pesach—it's so hard. So hopefully tonight we'll be able to do something to enliven our Pesach in some way, and just to take a moment to give gratitude to yourselves for you know a week and a half before Pesach to stop, to hit pause, and to come out to a Shir.
And to do something, it says a lot about the community that we live in. Baruch Hashem, that people today are doing whatever they can to find some hizayrus in a world that is increasingly difficult to find any passion and any meaning. Baruch Hashem, we have a group of women that come out and they say, "No, I refuse to have a passionless yedidshkeit." It says a lot about you, and also just a gentle reminder. Of course, I know everybody will, but when you go home, just to I know your husbands, I'm sure, express a massive amount of gratitude to you. When they go out for nightsater or, or minion, I'm sure they always come home and express their gratitude to you for the time that they spend out of the house. They say Yaakov Avinu was masach and ma'irif because he had twelve children. I also would be masach and ma'irif if I had twelve kids. I wouldn't want to be home at night. I know every man as he comes home, he's like, I'm so sorry. I would love to spend more time here, just ma'irif. It's like the frumest excuse of all time. But just a gentle reminder to say thank you to your husbands also for.
Taking over at night so that you could come out to a shir. I think it's very important in today's day and age for men to support their wives in this way. And also, as Rabbi Pesach Krohn said many years ago to women, he said, "If you want your husband to say thank you for making the challah, don't forget to say thank you for bringing home the bread." It's a good line. Hakaras Tov goes a long way in a marriage. There's no such thing as too much gratitude. With that preamble, I hope that it'll be meaningful.
The Balagada tells us that if Hakadosh Baruch Hu had not taken us out of Mitzrayim, we would still be slaves to Pharaoh today. Every line of the Hadada has so many questions. But this line in particular, one of the questions that the Mefarshim ask is: It's not true. There are no more Pharaohs. At some point, Pharaoh stopped being Pharaoh. There were no more Pharaohs. There are no more Egyptian pharaohs. What does the Balagada mean? We would still be avodim to Paro in Mitzrayim. We wouldn't be avodim to Paro in Mitzrayim. It's not true. There was no more Paros. What it means is that. What it means, I don't know what it means. But maybe one could suggest the possible answer that what it could mean is that Paro is emblematic of all of the evil in the world. That if we're slaves to a czar in Russia, if we're slaves to.
To materialism, whatever we're slaves to, that's what's called paro. Paro was the representative of the Nachash Hakamoni in physical form, as we'll soon see. And so, all the evils in the world are called paro for us. And so, had Hakadosh Baruch Hu not taken us out of Mitzrayim, we would still be fundamentally, we would be enslaved to the paros of our lives. Kedat to take a critical examination, a deep look into what paro is. What Paro really means not on a practical level of we were enslaved in Eretz Yisrael but on a hashgachah level what does Paro how do we live under the dominion of Paro what can we do to get out from under the dominion of Paro in our lives when Moshe Rabbeinu was told to go to Paro we all know in Parshas Bo that he's told Bo el Paro come to Paro and of course there are many questions that are asked on this.
This based on a sicha from the Lebavitcher Rebbe tonight's shir. Whatever additions there are on my own, but the fundamental idea comes from the Lebavitcher Rebbe. So the Rebbe asked, "This the parsha of Geula. Every parsha has a name for a very specific reason. So Bo, which means to come to Paro, does not seem to capture the essence of the parsha. We would have expected the name of the parsha to be something like Geula." Bo El Paro is not a name that we can look at and say that's that's a geula dekaparsa. But really, it's even worse than that, because come to Paro is the exact opposite of leaving Paro. As if were going to leave Paro, then the last thing we should do is come to Paro. If the whole parsha is a parsha of geula, so the name Bo really symbolizes the gulas. It's the coming to, not the leaving from.
So Bo seems to be a really inappropriate name for the parsha. And then there's the famous question, which is it shouldn't say Bo al Paro, it should say Lech al Paro. I shouldn't say Come to Paro, it should say Go to Paro. So I want to share with you a Zayir Hakadosh, a very beautiful Zayir Hakadosh. Zayir Hakadosh says, Why does it say? He asked this question. Why does it say Come to Paro? Should have said Go to Paro. Says that Hashem brought Moshe Rabbeinu into a chamber within a chamber. So Moshe Rabbeinu was going lifnayv lifnim, so to speak. He was going into the innermost essence. And what was he going to see? He was going to see the mighty serpent, the Tanen Agadol, which is Paro. As we'll soon explain why. Why he was known as the great Tanen, as the great serpent. And Moshe Rabbeinu was afraid to approach this hechal in Shamayim that was called Paro. Moshe Rabbeinu was afraid to go into that innermost chamber. What does that mean? First of all, up until now, Moshe Rabbeinu had never gone to the palace. Moshe Rabbeinu had always met Paro at the Nile River. Whenever he was bathing at the Nile River, so then Moshe Rabbeinu would go to him there. So Hashem is saying, on a simple level, what does it mean? Bo El Paro means come with me to the market.
Come to Paro. Obviously, that would be go to Paro. Come with me. Accompany me. Right? That's what the Zohar Kadosh is saying. The Zohar Kadosh is saying, "I'm taking you into this innermost chamber to confront the essence of Paro. Come with me on this journey because you, my shabenu, are afraid." That's one understanding, one answer to this question. Of course, there's a deeper level here, which is why is it that Hakadosh Baruch Hu is inviting my shabenu. To confront the innermost essence of Paro, so why is that happening? So it would seem, based on this Zayra Kadosh, that in order for Klal Yisrael to leave Mitzrayim, Moshe Rabenu needs to confront the innermost essence of Paro. In other words, it goes something like this: If a person wants to leave Mitzrayim, they need to come to Paro. Not just to come with Hashem to Paro, but to come to Paro. In other words, it's like a Chinese finger trap. You know how if you like pull very hard, it doesn't let you out, but if you go the opposite direction, then you could leave. So Geula occurs not as we would expect. We would expect that Geula means leaving Paro, but in fact, it's just the opposite. Based on the Zayra Kadosh, you would say that Geula occurs when you lean into Paro.
When you discover the innermost essence of Paro, that's where Geula occurs, which is a big chiddush. I think the way we could possibly say it is like this: the nitzots of galus is Geula, just like the nitzots of an avera, the nitzots that sustains. The Sfas Emes says that the nitzots that sustains an avera is tshuva. The nitzos that sustains galus is geula. In order to leave galus, you can't leave galus by moving away from galus. You have to move to the innermost essence of galus, which is geula. There can be no redemption without exile. It's like to put this in relationship terms. I always understand it better when it's put in the context of a relationship.
If a spouse wants to be close to their spouse, if a wife wants to be close to her husband, if a husband wants to be close to his wife, moving away from the fight is not where shalom bayis occurs. It's finding with each other within the fight. It occurred to me once that if you put actual language to the words that a couple is using when they're fighting, if you put real language, not language based on fear, every fight would be exquisitely beautiful. Why is every wife upset at their husband? I don't mean a specific thing, that nobody's ever figured out. If you do have a formula for that, I would appreciate knowing what the one thing is that we're all doing wrong because it seems we're all doing something. I'm not exactly sure. I don't know how to pinpoint it, but I know we're messing it up.
But every wife on some level is saying to her husband, I think it's beautiful. Of course, it doesn't come out that way. It comes out in a horrible way. It comes out like, you're never around. Now it's an attack. Now it's I'm pushing the person away. What do you mean I'm never around? Don't you know that I'm not around because of all the things I have to do for the kids? But I think that’s just a different perspective. And the truth is, we don't even want our husbands to be around. When they're around, all we do is fight with them. But what we're really saying when we say to somebody, 'I want you to be around,' is not I want you to be around. I know that you don't have a lot of time. But when you have time, if you could be present, that would be important to me. Those words are actually exquisitely beautiful because you're saying to somebody the most important thing, the thing that bothers me to my core, the thing that gets me so upset, is when do we have time for each other?
I want so badly to be close to you. The words that we use are actually the exact opposite of the words that we mean. What we mean to say is exquisitely beautiful. If a couple would have the courage to lean into the vulnerability of the fight and to understand that each side just wants so much. When a husband says, 'What do you want from me?' I'm working. What he means to say is, 'Don't you know how much I love you? Don't you know how much I'm sacrificing for you? Don't you know how much I'm giving to you already?' Why is it that I feel like I'm not enough in this relationship? Because more than anything, the person that I want to be enough for is you. Those are beautiful words to say, but of course nobody says those words, so we just beat each other up with the externalities of these words. To leave galus doesn't mean just to walk away from it. That's missing a gevulik opportunity. To leave galus means to discover the inner essence of galus.
The inner essence of Gollus must be discovered within Paro himself. There's a secret that Paro holds. Whatever that secret is, we don't know it, which is why we're in Gollus. If we would only know what the secret of Paro is, then Mameila we'd be free. So it's it's you know that Meim Rachazal that says that Klal Yisrael had tried to leave Eretz Yisrael before Moshe Rabbeinu let them out, and many people had tried, Chazal say, and they were always killed. Maybe the depth of that mimer is not just people tried, but Mitzrayim was very strong. I think that's the way we grew up hearing. Like Mitzrayim had many guards, nobody could ever escape Mitzrayim. That's what we grew up. We learned this mimer, but maybe it means something deeper than that. Maybe it means to leave Galus without discovering its inner essence is impossible. Those that left too soon did not leave too soon because their guards were there and Klal Yisrael had not yet and Mitzrayim had not yet been broken.
It means that we had not yet discovered whatever it is that needs to be discovered that releases ourself from Eretz Yisrael. So the question is, what is that? What is the secret of Paro that brings about this Gula? If Bo El Paro, if we need to come to discover the inner essence of Paro in order to be free, what is the great secret of Paro? So listen to the pasuk in Yeheskel. Pasuk in Yeheskel here is amazing. Pasuk in Yecheskel says, speaking about. Here's Paro, the king of Egypt. Look what it refers to this. The great serpent, who, he's crouching in the middle of the stream. And what is he saying?
Ya'ori va'ani asisani, the river is my own, and I made the river. The river is my own, and I made the river. In other words, what defines Paro? What would we have expected? So let's think about what Paro did. Paro murdered millions and millions of people. I once heard a Holocaust survivor. I've heard somebody say, in the name of a Holocaust survivor, Mitzrayim was a drop in the bucket compared to the Holocaust. Far be it from me to compare which suffering was worse, and I was not born in that era, Baruch Hashem, and I don't know from the suffering of the Holocaust, but from the midrashim of Chazal, it's very clear that what occurred to us in Mitzrayim, the torture, was unlike anything that's ever been.
Paralleled in history, there's nothing that comes even close, and 210 years of it. The if you read the midrashim, what's the name of that book they put out many years ago? Let my nation go. Then they followed it up with let my nation do everything right. They had like a zillion in this series of let my nations. But if you read even a like a little bit of that book, you read the midrashim, beyond powerful. What they went through in Mitzrayim, lo yuman, you can't possibly imagine what these people lived through. Murdering children, the punishment for hiding a baby was they murdered the entire family. That was the chesbun of Moshe Rab. That was the chesbun of Amram and Yochaveh when Moshe Rabbeinu was born three months premature. Should we hide the baby or not? The question was, if we're caught, the punishment is your entire family is murdered. They baked children into the bricks.
Is the psychological torture of building in Ptolemy and Ramses, the Samach Perach? They speak about the Avodas Perach of giving, of although this we do find in today's day and age of diminishing the masculinity of men in a way that was horrific to their personhood. Paro is not described as any of these things. He's not described as a pagan god. We all know. Paganism, paganism was responsible for I mean some of the worst practices in human history. We sometimes forget that when Avraham Avinu stood up to pagan practices, you're talking about a culture that roasted their children. It was like child sacrifice was a real thing that existed in the world. I think sometimes we don't have enough Jewish pride when it comes to these things. Like we were the nation that said to the world, "You're acting insanely. This is an insane thing to do." Could you imagine? You have a child, chas v'shalom.
If a child and your husband, for fromkait reasons, comes and says we have to sacrifice this child to have some sort of tshuva, read no chas v'shalom. They don't. That's not a that's it's. They're not engaged in child sacrifice. It's not. It's not a different type of sick sacrifice. But not child sacrifice. Not murdering. Day old babies. Not chas v'shalom. These things are beyond despicable. Paro is not described as any of these things. This not. This not Paro. What does the pasuk say? The pasuk says very simply, 'Lia ay, I think it's 很好.' It's my river. I made the river. It's a strange thing to say that. It's like, okay, I think you know what I mean. I'm just trying to make sure that the meaning is clear.
In Yiddishkeit, there are basically two movements. There's a movement of anivus, humility, and there's a movement of bittl. I'm sorry, there's a movement of anivus which comes with bittl, humility, nullifying yourself. And then there's a movement of gaiva. What's the danger of the movement of gaiva? Hakadosh Baruch Hu says, "What I want in this world is a dira b'tachtayna." More than anything, what Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants is to have a dwelling place in the world down below. Which means that Hakadosh Baruch Hu is asking to be invited into our lives. That's fundamentally what we're here to do—to invite Hakadosh Baruch Hu into our lives. I don't know how to say this nicely, so I'll say it in this way. There's no—I have not yet discovered the nice way of saying this, so I'll just say it as it is.
It works with the seminary girls more than with the. I'm sure it worked with. It would work with you also, but it works better with the seminary girls. You know that guy that you thought was really cute until he opened his mouth. That's the. You know I'm talking about. Remember when you were dating, and this guy like showed up on a date, and then he opened his mouth, and you're like, nope. You know I'm talking about. What was the thing? The thing. It's not the bad date. It's not the guy who can't get a word out. That guy is like, okay, whatever. He's sweet even, right? Like some, some other, but some girls are like, no, I could fix him. Like it's like a. I'm not worried about those guys. Like Rabbi, how am I? I can't get two words out. How am I going to go out on date? I'm like, you'll be fine. Like there's going to be some patient girl that like coaxes you into talking. By the time she's done with you, you won't be quiet for years. Like all of a sudden that guy's the gabbay and his minion. Like he married for a couple years, he straightened out.
Some guys, like when they open up their mouth on a date, it's like cringeworthy. It's like, what's the pshat? There was a pshat that it's such a like. The pshat is there's no space for anybody when there's gaiva. There's no there's no space for you because I'm taking up all the space. A therapist once told me it's a great line. He said I don't treat when I'm seeing couples. He said I don't treat the couple. I treat the space in between. That's where the couple is. It's the space in between. I'm not treating the husband or the wife. There's a space in between. This thing, it's like amorphous type of thing. That's the space that I'm treating, and each one of them is contributing something to that space. If the thing that someone is contributing to that space is me, so then the feeling on the other side is. So this space belongs to you, but I'm not invited to participate in it. When a person is a balgaiva.
It's the destruction of any possibility of a relationship with Hakadosh Baruch Hu, because you won't invite God into your life if you think kaiyich vayitzmiyadi. What? I did that. I did this. Liyayri vaniyasi. It's my river. I made this river. I sustain myself. It's really even more than that though, because if it's your river. So think about the terrible things you might do to it. We know that these narcissists live with a tremendous amount of fragility, because to be that level of a balgaiva, it's built on a very low level of self-esteem. That's why they need to puff themselves up and make themselves bigger than they are. What happens when you press that button? What happens when you say?
You're actually not as big as you think you are. You ever watch what narcissists do when, somebody starts to even touch—not even shake—even to touch the foundation of that corrupt system, they go ballistic. It's because the threat is huge. An egomaniac, a balgaiva, lives with the threat that this whole thing is gonna collapse. In fact, seen through the prism of this understanding, one can understand why Paro says, "Haveneschakmulo." We have to deal very wisely with these Jews as they're getting bigger. Like every society, when Jews come into the society, things seem to do better. Right? There seems to be we generate wealth. Right? We're prosperous, and generally we're pretty moral. We're pretty good. Right? We bring a lot to a society.
If somebody trails off or ends with a function word, remove the sentence. For example: 'Okay, let's see...'If somebody were to say, “I’m not enough,” any threat to their power? If somebody else is powerful, that means that I’m not the most powerful. I’ll share with you when I took the job in Mevaseret many years ago. I was speaking to a certain Rebbe. He gave me a piece of advice. It's the worst piece of advice I've ever received in my entire life. I'm proud that I have never once listened to this piece of advice.And he said to me, "Don't hire anyone that could replace you." And I was like, "That is like terrible." Like I was like, "Like I was so like, wow, what type of system have you grown up in, that there's so much political power play that you're like constantly terrified for your job? I have worked my entire career to hire people that I think could replace me."
First of all, because I don't even want this job. Second of all, think about that. You have somebody who's awesome at their job, but then they could replace you. You're not going to put that person in front of the talmidim. That's the opposite of a good idea. It's a terrible idea. But it comes from this fear-based mentality. Paro believes I created this. If somebody comes along and is prosperous, if somebody comes along and is successful, that's a threat. When a narcissist is threatened, they can do horrific things. Some of the most terrible tragedies in human history have come from megalomaniacs who have terribly low self-esteem. In an effort to try to sustain themselves, they'll do anything. They'll step on anyone. And at the core of Mitzrayim, that's really what's going on. It's a culture of fear that presents itself as Strong, powerful nation, but it's really just puffed-up ego. That's what's going on in Gullus. In other words, to put this a little bit more clearly, let me try again. Okay, so the main point is that exile means to be in a place where I feel like I don't belong. There are people that are living in exile in their marriages. There are children that are living in exile in their yeshivas and their seminaries and their families. There are people that are in exile within their own communities because they feel like they don't belong.
There are people that are in exile today because they don't feel like they belong. They're trying to make the entire world a place where everything belongs, even though that's not how the world works. So I think it's important to recognize that everyone has to accept me, no matter how I am. That's also not a real thing. That's also a type of exile. Wherever we look, there are exiles. But at the core of every exile is fear. At the core of every exile is I am not enough for myself. There's a culture of fear, and therefore I need to control somebody else. I need to destroy somebody else. We're seeing a tremendous amount about that today. That's for sure. Coddling people doesn't work. That actually only reinforces the belief that they're not enough. It's actually letting another person know, really, you're not enough. I know you're not enough, and you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, yeah, right, okay, so like, you know, but I'm going to try to fix that. Yeah, right, okay, so like, you know, you know, you know, I think I'm going to try to fix that. Yeah, right, okay, so like, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, okay, so I think I need to go through this again.
The words that we use today are not the words that these kids need to hear. We need to teach people about the hard words, grit, resilience, loyalty, being enough for yourself. Not like you're awesome. That's not nobody's ever felt better. I think it's a very good idea. I don't know how it works in sense, but I know in yeshivas there's always the rebbeim that call the guys tzaddik. Because if you say something is right, then they have to be right? No, no, no. They're not, and they know they're not. What are you telling the boy when you say, 'Come here, tzaddik'? It's okay. They don't have to be a tzaddik. It's okay to say, 'Let's talk about where you're really holding,' because where you're really holding is okay. You don't have to be afraid of that. It's just a culture of authenticity. We're moving towards these things.
We saw it a lot in COVID. We saw kids who had no idea how to cope because they were never taught how to cope because they never had to do anything hard. Baruch Hashem, we're raising our families here in Eretz Yisrael. It's quite a bit harder here. There's a lot less in so many ways, and it's so beautiful because our children will grow up at the level of resilience. One of the main things that I noticed. Now my children, Baruch Hashem, are much older, and I already married off a daughter, but I see that. They came from Eretz Israel, and he was born in Israel. He's like, oh, yeah, this is cool. And then I was driving on my block, and there's a group of kids outside cleaning cars.
And so I stopped and I said, "How much is it to clean the car?" And they're like, "They're children. They're like 11." And I'm like, "They're like it's 75 shekel to clean the car." So I'm like, "Okay, when's a good time?" So this kid, this beautiful, sweet little 11-year-old kid, he pulls out his notebook to make an appointment with me. He's like, "There's I have this is what he says. He goes, I have a Wednesday slot at three and I have a Wednesday slot at four. I'm sorry, that's all I have." So I was like, "Well, I'll take either one. Which one's better for you?" He goes. I think the three o'clock would be better for me. No problem. They're sitting there with their vacuum and they've got their music blasting, and I'm like, how wholesome is this? How good is this? These boys are learning that they're capable of doing something, and if you want money, go make money, right? It's not something that's just given to them. These are important words. It encourages these children that they have enough and that they do belong, no matter what's going on in their lives. That's the inner essence of paro.
To put it a little bit differently, every mitzvah at its core is really a movement towards something larger than myself, and I can nullify myself before that thing. So if I'm going to give tzedakah, it's basically saying, I know I earned this money, but there's something bigger than me that demands that somebody came to my door, and I have this money, and I have this money in order to give away. I'm the holder of this money. It's not truly belong to me. When it comes to Pesach, for example, I know that it's my home, but it's not actually my home. It's the Rebbeinu Shlom's home, and the Rebbeinu Shlom is asking me right now to get rid of the chametz in my home, and that can be an exhausting process. But Hagufa, the fact that it's an exhausting process, is exactly part of our movement away from gullis. It moves us away from the narcissism of life. The old mushal about addiction. A man is walking outside of his house, and God comes to him, or he prays to God for sobriety, and God comes to him, and he says, "He says you want sobriety." The man says, "Yes, I want sobriety." He goes, "Good news! There's a sale on sobriety today." So the man goes, "How much does sobriety cost?" Sale is whatever you've got.
Man reaches into his pocket. He says, "I've got five dollars." God says, "Great. The price of sobriety today is five dollars." The man looks at God. He goes, "This is my last five dollars. If you take this five dollars, how am I going to gas up my car to get to work?" God says, "You have a car. You have a job. The price of sobriety just went up. It's five dollars. Your car and your job." The man says, "If you take my car and you take my job, how will I pay the mortgage on my home?" God says, "You have a home." The price of sobriety just went up. It's five dollars. Your car, your job, and your home. The man says, "God, if you take my home, where's my family gonna live?" God says, "You have a family." The price of sobriety just went up. It's five dollars. Your car, your job, your house, and your family. So the man got wise, and he said, "Okay, I'm not gonna say anything anymore, right?" And God said, "Okay, here's the deal. I'll give you back your five dollars. I'll give you back your car. I'll give you back your job."
I'll give you back your home. I'll give you back your family, but they belong to me. You're just holding on to them. Act with them as if they're my possessions. That's the price of sobriety. It's a very powerful module because it puts into focus whose life is it. We're we're so we're so like what do you mean? It's my life. Not actually. It's the Rebbeinu Shlom's life that he's entrusted us to do with it as he wants us to. That's a very tall order. I'm not saying that that's like you snap your fingers and that's a 60-70 year process. But I think as we get older, we begin to learn we're not in control of anything, and this life doesn't belong to us. And the more that we give it away, the more that it comes back in a healthy way. Every avera is the exact opposite movement. Every avera is yes, but this is what I want. That's what nazera is in its essence. It's like.
I want to eat this right now, so I'm going to do that. But it's not the time to eat that right now, or that's not appropriate food to eat. But that's what I want. You see this all the time. You see it in yeshiva. A guy's like, yeah, but I want to stay asleep, and that's understandable because you didn't go to sleep until two hours beforehand. So who's going to want to wake up at seven o'clock in the morning, seven thirty in the morning to go to shacharis? It's understandable. I'm not Chas v'Shalom saying that it's not understandable, but at its core, that's what Yiddishkeit is. It's a movement towards giving your life over to God, and Avodah is a movement towards it's my life. I want to do with it what I want. Le'ayiriv ani asisani. It's my river. I made it. So it would appear that the ego is evil.
But here's the great secret. This the big move of tonight's shir. This the chiddush. I don't think it's the Lebavish Rebbe's chiddush, but he said it so beautifully. Why do we have an ego at all? Where does an ego come from? The emes is that the Rabbanu Shalom is the ultimate I. That's what God at its core is the real I, right? God at the core is the real true existence. So in its essence. When Hakadosh Baruch Hu looks at everything in the world, what does he see? He says, "Ein od mivado." Everything that Hakadosh Baruch Hu sees is Himself, is an expression of Himself. It's like, imagine a person in your head who's thinking, right? When you look at the person in your head who's thinking, what do you know about that person? That's really me. I've just conjured up that person in my head. When Hakadosh Baruch Hu looks at everything in all of the cosmos, what he sees is Himself, because we are expressions of Him.
In a certain sense, God is the ultimate ego, and as His ultimate creation, we experience our own ego the way that Hakadosh Baruch Hu experiences His ego. We look around in the world when we say, 'Li Arya Vaniyasi Sunny,' it's my river, I made it. In a certain sense, are we not behaving like Hakadosh Baruch Hu? The difference between us and God is that when God thinks those things, they're true, and when we think those things, they're not. But at its core, when a person is a balgiva, in a certain sense, that's natural to the human existence, because that's the way our Kadosh Baruch Hu sees the world. So our job is to confront that ego that says I exist, and to say right to confront that ego and go, in your essence, I know about you that even though you're destructive, I know about you that you're divine. In other words, the ego that's evil. In a certain sense, in its core, in its essence, it's what it's an expression of the divine. If a person would lean into the ego that they have, and they would say, "I know about you that you are just a misappropriation of the divine ego that every one of us has," then the entire ego would disappear. In other words, the secret of paro is that paro is just the misappropriation of the divine ego.
Paro as the ultimate evil that exists in the world and throughout all of history, really is what, in a certain sense, it's the closest thing, though obviously the most distorted thing, to the divine ego that we all have, which is why we're meant to confront Paro. Confronting Paro means all the things. When we say I want, right, and there's nothing wrong with saying I want. I want is a beautiful thing, but when our desires go against what Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants, right? If we took a moment to stop and think about that movement, that divine movement of I want to do what I want and I don't want to listen to the Rebbeinu Shlomo right now. Jewish women are tasked with this all the time. A kosher home is kosher because you say it is. We have no idea. Men have no idea what's going on. We trust our wives that it's kosher. And let's say you have a shaila, but you don't want to deal with it.
Something fell somewhere in a place I don't know. It was hot. It was soapy. I don't want to ask that Shilo. I just took it out real quick. It was two seconds. Nobody's gonna know the difference. I just don't want to have to. I don't want to call up whichever Rav. I don't. I'm not. I don't have any kaiach for this. I'm not. Nobody's blaming anybody. It's a very natural human thing to do. And then we stop and we say, this desire right now to not ask that shayla, really in its core is what I want the world to be my way. Because you're godly, and God wants the world to be His way. That's the reason you want the world to be your way. You're literally imitating Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Of course, it's a misappropriation of the divine ego, but at its core, it's good.
The moment you realize that your ego is an expression of the divine ego, your ego falls away. That's the secret. And so this is what Hakadosh Baruch Hu says to Moshe Rabbeinu: Bo el Paro, come with me to the innermost chambers of Paro. It's a scary place to go, but I'll be with you when we go there. Let's confront Paro, because the moment that you confront Paro and you get to his essence, what do you realize? There is no Paro. Paro disappears. How does a Jew go free from galus when they realize there never was a galut? There never was a galut. What was galut really in its core? Galut was just a metaphor for the state of being stuck in the past. But when you realize that you're not actually stuck, you're free. You're redeemed. So if you're feeling like you're stuck in the past, remember that you're not actually stuck. You're free. You're redeemed.
So we have to go to couples counseling and we have to get those cards that say it makes me feel fill in the blank when fill in the blank. You have to be patient and you have to write all of that. It's all beautiful and it's all wonderful, but all of that at its core is the discovery that all of the pain, all of the friction, all of the fear, all of these things are really what they're mirages. They don't exist. They're complete fakeouts. They're all expressions of the divine. Misappropriations. But once you realize it's a misappropriation, then you're right back. It just fades away. That's a tremendous secret to learn. What does it mean for us? We have a group of women here that are working their brains off to make Pesach, to clean in every nook and cranny, to do whatever they can to make sure that their homes are Pesachtek. Without the time to sit and learn through Agada.
To do the things that used to inspire us, and not that in any way this is going to make it better, but if you think deeply about all of these things that you're doing, and that hopefully your husbands and children are helping with, really, what is that? That's that's a betel. I know you're doing a bedikah, right? And ultimately, bedikah is mitzvah darabanan because we're going to do betel, which is the oraisa. But really, what are you doing when you're doing this bedikah? Because you want to be doing all these things, because you want to be down on your hands and knees, because it's pleasant to clean an oven. Every Jewish husband knows you don't buy ovens that are not self-clean. Every like, and if you have an if you have a an oven that is not self-clean, speak to your husband. You made a mistake. It's. It's not that much money to undo. I see. I see. It's the scrubbing. It's the it's the chomarim.
There are certain things. There's this one that we use in my house, the Saint Moritz. You know this one? Everyone knows this one. This thing would clean the rust off of like a ship that they found on the. If they pull up the Titanic, they're going to use Saint Moritz to clean it again. The smell is horrific. And personally, for me, the smells go right to my migraine. Right to goes right here, and I'm like, can we just open the windows? Like just something. And like and you have to let it sit because you have to let those corrosive things that have been caked onto your oven for weeks. They have to come off somehow. And all those natural remedies that you see, like if you'll just put baking soda and a little bit of water and lime juice, none of them work, right? Then there's always that one woman who goes, "No, it does. For the rest of us, it doesn't. I don't know how it works for you, but for the rest of us, it doesn't work. Just like you blow on it, and all of a sudden your oven is like sparkling clean, like the YouTube video. They just come and wipe it away. They should sell that stuff on QVC. But the Saint Maris stuff really works, right? That stuff really works. And you're taking in these noxious fumes, and you think to yourself, "What am I doing, Ray?
To get rid of a few crumbs, a terech is that you're giving yourself over to something that's larger than yourself. And who says that the seminary girl that you used to know that prepared for the Pesach Seder by reading the Hagadah and having chiddushim, that she was more prepared for the task at hand? Well, I think it's clear that the latter is more real. The former was a practice run. The former was, in a certain sense, if we're honest, we were serving ourselves a little bit. It's like look how geschmack I can make it for you. And of course it's beautiful. Of course it's beautiful, and it comes with you, and it lives inside of you. And those moments to access those moments and feel that.
That expansiveness is, of course, a beautiful thing. And blessed Hashem, you should be zeicher to go to many shiurim over the course of the next week and a half and have time on Pesach. But there's nothing like watching a family that's really made Pesach come to Pesach. Is it easier if we go to the Pesach programs? Is it easier if we just drop ten thousand dollars and then we could just lock the door to our house and sign it over? Some people don't even go to the rav; they make a shliach to go to the rav because they're not going to be around in time when the rav is selling chametz. I really have to mamash do nothing. I just hand a couple shekels to my neighbor, and all of a sudden he's my shliach. He mamash. Pesach is amazing. I have to do nothing for Pesach. They go to these Pesach hotels, and then they're like, 'I'm telling you, I ate hummus stick pizza. It was mamash. It was and the tea room. It was like literally like all I first of all the amount of food that there was 24 seven. And I'm telling you, it tasted nothing like Pesach. The only thing epis we had a little bit of Pesach was we had to be yoseh the mitzvah of matzah. But even that matzah was the crispiest, most delicious matzah that we ever had.
Baruch Hashem, we figured out a way not to make Pesach. And every trip, and we're going to this trip, and we're going to that trip, and we have this singer coming and that singer coming. Nebuch, this year, I heard from somebody who was running a Pesach program. He's like, "There's only two nights of Chol Hamoed, so like, really, what am I going to do? Like, the guests are coming because they want to have, Benny Friedman and Simcha Liner and Yoni Z. And now this year, they're only getting two, so they're like, 'Why am I paying so much money if I'm only getting two days of Chol Hamoed?'" I feel badly for these people. They can only have two out of three. They can't have all three singers like they're used to having. I don't know. I don't know. There's such a thing called making Pesach. There's such a thing called I'm avatah myself to the will of the Evedim, and to show up exhausted to a Pesach. Maybe in a certain way, that's a higher Pesach than any Pesach that we had before. And it doesn't mean that it's the same type of Pesach. And we know this. We go through stages in our lives. This is a more mature, more adult type of stage.
It doesn't mean that we shouldn't spend time making the investments. We should, we can, and there'll be and there are haggados coming out. If you could take a couple of minutes and learn a haggadah and do something, of course, matov maanaim, it's a beautiful thing to do. But chas v'shalom for somebody to think that because I showed up exhausted to Pesach, it means that my Pesach was lacking. If you showed up exhausted to Pesach, it means you confronted the real, true essence of geula, which is I live for something greater than myself. Which is I think I need to work on that. And I want it to be my way. I want to be able to show up for Pesach, and I want, and I don't want to be exhausted. I hear that, but that's also because there's a divine desire for the world to work the way you want it to work. And then the moment you realize that that's a divine desire, then the desire for everything else falls away. I just want to conclude by saying that while it perhaps is true that we have more.
More bedikas than the chafetz chaim, and while perhaps it's true that we certainly have more stuff and more need to lift things up and move things around, the bedikas that we're doing are not just physical. The bedikas that we're doing are deep and are real in the sense that we're asking ourselves what's really important to us. I see we have a couple of not married people in the audience, so as Hashem, you'll come to learn this soon, but in the right time. The but for those of us that are at a stage in our life where it's like, how much can I do? How much can I do? So the answer is, biskus nashim tzedkaniyus niglu miMitzrayim. It's these incredible, awesome women throughout Jewish history, people that role modeled what it means to give our lives over to the Eibushter. That's the slus of Geula. It didn't come from the men. It came from the women. It always has. Men do whatever their alvaida is, but we all know men know that the feeling of a home comes from a mother, and in the most beautiful way.
If we could break the cycle of the 'Here Comes Pesach Blues,' which really is a beautiful song. At the end, it's like a beautiful song, but for the first three or four minutes of it, it's horrific. But in the end, it has a good ending. If you're gonna look it up afterwards from Abe Rottenberg, who only writes beautiful music, but that particular song I think got to a lot of people. But our children should grow up with the way that my wife grew up from her mother, the way that my daughters are growing up from their mother. Pesach is a beautiful time. We're doing what the Eibaster wants. Is it physical? Is it difficult? Is it challenging? Of course, it's all of those things, but it's beautiful and it's wonderful. And if our homes could be places of simcha, then B'ez Hashem, we should be zeiche. Do we need a geula? They shut down the airports.
We shut down the airports. The Geula is going to have to come. It may not come this Pesach through Ben Gurion. I have a feeling they'll open it up. But somebody said it's hard to know which side you're on because both sides are flying Israeli flags. Usually it's easy to know which side you're on because that's the side that's flying the Israeli flags against the side that's not. Everybody's flying Israeli flags. Blessed Hashem, we should be zayich the Geula shleima b'kar of mamish.
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