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What do we do? We sit and learn Torah. This is what we do. We use these moments as opportunities to grow, as opportunities to look within. Beisr Hashem, in the s'chus of the Torah that we're learning, those that need a refuah shleima should be zayecha to a refuah shleima bekarof mamish. I just want to share with you. I'm sitting here now. It's already tonight in Eretz Yisrael. I just want to share with you tonight. An idea from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, one that resonated with me very deeply, and I hope it'll be meaningful to you as well. Everybody knows that when you want to look at a yontif, the first thing you look at is the mitzvahs of the yontif. Specifically, what are the ikur mitzvahs of the yontif? The ikur mitzvah of Pesach is obviously the matzah.
The Torah itself refers to it as chag hamatzos, so the main mitzvah of the night is the matzah, and if a person wants to understand the depth of the Pesach seder, the depth of the yomtov of Pesach, one needs to understand the essence of what the matzah is all about. We have two questions tonight on the matzah. The first question the Rebbe asks is: Why do we have three matzahs and not four? Everything about Pesach revolves around four. We have four sons. We have four questions. We have four cups of wine. We have the Daled Lashonos of Geula. The only exception is the three matzahs. Why is it that we only have three matzahs and not four? Of course, from a halachic perspective, the reason why we have three matzahs.
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It's because one matzah is the lechem oni, and that's the matzah that we break. The larger half becomes the afikoman. The smaller half is what we say the haggadah on. And since we want to have lechem mishna, that's the other two matzahs. That's al pi halacha, but al pisoid. What's the depth? Obviously, there's an inner reason for the halacha. What's the yisod advarim? What's the depth of the fact that we only have three matzahs? And we have four cups of wine. We have four sons. Why would four with everything else, and only three when it comes to matzah? Question number two. When it comes to the matzah, there's a very interesting halacha. On the one hand, the matzah can be eaten, even if you don't taste it. Let's say a person took their matzah, and they ground it up into powder, and they made the matzah very fine, and then they swallowed it in one bite.
And they didn't taste any matzah whatsoever. Would they be yotzei achilas matzah? And the answer is that indeed they would be yotzei, eating the matzah on Pesach, even if they didn't taste it, even if they swallowed it whole. On the other hand, there's another halacha. The matzah has a very specific taste. If you want to be yotzei at the seder with the matzah, you can't have any artificial flavoring. It's just the flour and water. That's what the matzah is supposed to taste like. So there's an interesting duality when it comes to the matzah. On the one hand, the matzah itself, the cheftza of the matzah, the object of the matzah, it needs to have a taste. But me, the gavra eating it, I don't need to taste the matzah. So why is there such a chiyuv for the matzah to taste like something?
If I don't have to taste it in order to be yotze, these are the two questions that we're going to answer. In order to understand this, we need to understand that the matzah itself has a dual nature. Matzah itself represents what appears to be two divergent themes, two totally separate motifs. On the one hand, the matzah represents lechem oni. The impoverished state that we were in Mitzrayim, we mamish had nothing, not on a physical level and not on a spiritual level. In fact, we know that Chazal say that when we were leaving Mitzrayim, the Malachim said, "Halalu of the avodah zara, halalu of the avodah zara." We worshipped idols, and so did the Egyptians. We were in such an impoverished state.
And of course, we all know it says in the Hadassah that if Hakadosh Baruch Hu wouldn't have taken us out in that moment, we would have been stuck there forever. Our children and our children's children would have continued to serve Paro in Mitzrayim. So on the one hand, we have the impoverished state that we were in, and the matzah represents that impoverished state. And on the other hand, there's another motif when it comes to the matzah. And that's the motif of leaving bchippazim, leaving in a hurry. We had to get out of Mitzrayim because at any moment, if we would have reached that fiftieth level of tuma, we would have been trapped there forever. So on the one hand, the matzah represents the impoverished physical and spiritual state that we were in, and on the other hand, it represents our need to leave in a hurry.
That these two motifs are related to one another, though they appear to be two separate motifs, they're obviously tied into one another, because we were in such an impoverished spiritual state, we had to leave in a hurry. If we were on a little bit of a higher madriga, we would have been able to leave Mitzrayim in a normal and an orderly fashion, but because we were in such a low spiritual state, we were not able to leave Mitzrayim in an orderly fashion. We had to mamish just run out. So now, we have to understand what happened as a result of these two themes coming together, because we were in such an impoverished spiritual state, and therefore because we had to leave in such a hurry. Because if we stayed there even one more minute, we would have been trapped.
We never had the opportunity to develop an appropriate emotional response to Yitzias Mitzrayim. In other words, when Klal Yisrael finally left Mitzrayim, there was nothing about it that we were able to integrate into our being. The entire thing happened so fast and in such haste that there was no room for us to change. As a result of the Yitzias Mitzrayim experience, the only thing that existed was the emuna that we had. That was our saving grace. That we were able to be taken out of Mitzrayim because of that emuna. Let's take a second to explain this idea. Emuna does not mean simple faith. Emuna is a talent of the soul. It's the talent of the soul to know a truth.
That is not able to be expressed in words. It's beyond logic. It's before logic. It's higher than logic. Klal Yisrael could reach a state in Mitzrayim where we were on the forty ninth level of Tumah. In our actions, we mamish betrayed the nature of our souls, but the soul itself continued to retain the emuna that is its natural property, and in the schuz of that emuna that we had, we were able to be taken out. So again, tachaser over. On the one end, the matzah represents the impoverished state, the lechem oni, the impoverished spiritual state that we were in. As a result of that impoverished spiritual state that we were in, we had to be taken out of Mitzrayim b'chipazon. We had to be taken out of Mitzrayim and Aharim.
Because we had to be taken out of Mitzrayim in a hurry, because we were taken out in such a disorderly fashion, we didn't have time to emotionally accept the reality that we were now living in. It didn't become integrated into our being. All that we had was the emuna, the natural talent of the soul, which was not capable of being extinguished in Mitzrayim, and that's what took us out. But in reality, we never developed ourselves into people that were leaving Mitzrayim. As they say, you can take the Jew out of Mitzrayim, but you can't take Mitzrayim out of the Jew. Leaving Mitzrayim was not enough to create a fundamental change in our being. The fact that we left was great, but we remained the same individuals that we were.
In order to accept the Torah, something else needed to change. It wasn't enough that we needed to leave Mitzrayim; we needed to get the Mitzrayim out of ourselves. And the truth of the matter is that one could argue that we never did get the Mitzrayim out of ourselves. Even after Kabbalahs at Torah, you see that constantly in the Midbar they kept saying we should go back to Mitzrayim. Why? It's like Stockholm syndrome. A person gets used to the place that they are. We had lived in Mitzrayim in a state of enslavement for two hundred and ten years. It became a part of our being, but in order to be Makavel the Torah, we had to get the Mitzrayim out of us, and that's why there's forty nine days in between Yitzys Mitzrayim and Shavuos. What are those forty nine days all about? We know that each one of the forty nine days represents another one of the Spheros.
And our job throughout Svirah Sh'omer is to be working on ourselves, to refine every aspect of our midos, to calibrate our midos, our neshama with Hakadosh Baruch Hu, to rid ourselves of Mitzrayim, so that we should be zayichet to Kabbalas HaTorah. Because as long as a Jew remains in Mitzrayim, it's not possible to connect to Hakadosh Baruch Hu and to receive the Torah. It's possible for a Jew to leave their ways, Yitzias Mitzrayim, but that's the Sore Merah, the Ase Tov of the Kabbalah Satora. It requires a refinement. It requires a connection to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, and that cannot happen as long as a person continues to live in the reality of Mitzrayim. It's like we had post-traumatic stress disorder.
Just because we were no longer in Mitzrayim doesn't mean that Mitzrayim wasn't continuing to be a part of ourselves. This is the paradox of emuna. On the one hand, emuna, because of its transcendent nature, had the capacity to take us out of Mitzrayim. Just because we continued to be connected to the Rebbeinu Shlom, we were able to go out of Mitzrayim. But because emuna is transcendent, because it's beyond the realm of logic, it does not necessarily impact our day-to-day lives. That requires work. That requires real avodas hamidos of taking that emuna and bringing it into our world, making ourselves into people that mamish left Mitzrayim. That's what we needed in order to have Kabbalah Satora.
With this in mind, we can understand that the Geula Shleima did not occur by Yitz Mitzrayim, but the reality of the Geula only became manifest in its complete form by Kabbalah Satora, forty-nine days after Yitz Mitzrayim. Vehotzeitzi vhitzalti vegaalti. The first three lishonos of the Geula, they became true by Yitz Mitzrayim. But vila kachti, but for a person to be taken in by the Rebbe Nisholam, that only happened after forty-nine days of working on ourselves and accepting the Torah, and so, when we look at the entirety of the picture, what we've seen so far is as follows: On the one hand, the matzah represents the lechem oni, the impoverished state that we were in.
By Yitzias Mitzrayim, on the other hand, it represents the Chippazon, the speedy nature of our leaving Mitzrayim because of our impoverished state. We left in such a hurried fashion, it was disorderly. We never had time to develop ourselves into people that left Mitzrayim. Transcendent Emuna took us out of Mitzrayim, but it was not able to connect us by itself to Kabbalah Satora. For that, we needed forty nine days of taking that transcendent demuna and bringing it into our worldly experience. To take that which is lamala from logic, beyond logic, and make it a part of the logic of our world. These two motifs are represented by matza and by yain. Matza, as we said, could be eaten even if it's tasteless.
Even if we can't taste anything, we took the matzah, we ground it up, and we swallowed it. The matzah by itself can remain tasteless, and a person could still be yotze. What does that mean? The idea is as follows, and it's a very powerful idea. Emuna is beyond logic. It's not something that a person tastes. It's something that a person has. To taste it requires work. To taste it requires refinement, but the natural emuna that we have is not readily available to the senses. It's lamala from every experience that we have. It's transcendent. It's bigger than our experience. This is the natural state of a Jew, where maminim b'ne maminim, a Jew does not believe in God because of logical proofs, though there may be many logical proofs.
But a Jew has a natural belief in God because of the emuna that's instilled inside of them. It's not a rich experience. It's just the reality of who we are. It doesn't taste like anything, but it's real. This is why so often throughout history, so many Jews that have been so far from observant Judaism, given the opportunity to die al Kiddush Hashem, chose to be mekada Hashem Shamayim and to die. Rather than to violate the laws of Hakadosh Baruch Hu, the Balatanya points out, how could it be that a Jew that doesn't live for God is willing to die for God? And the answer is because this is what a Jew is. It's not for any logical reason. It's not to advance the movement. There are people that are willing to die al Kiddush Hashem because they want to advance the movement. Sometimes the death of a person can create great change in the world.
A Jew dies al kiddush Hashem not because he's trying to create any change, but because that's who he is. And even if we haven't lived for Hakadosh Baruch Hu, we're willing to die for Hakadosh Baruch Hu. In the extreme circumstance, the truth of who a Jew comes, who a Jew is, comes out. It doesn't necessarily taste like anything. It doesn't have a tam. It's not sweet, but it's there. It's present. And on the other hand, we have the yain, the wine that's rich. It's a real experience when a person drinks wine. It mamish is an experience for the senses. Couple years ago, my wife and I went up north, and we decided to go to the Carmel Wine Factory. Now my wife and I were not drinkers. The only time any alcohol passes my lips is on Purim.
I don't drink any wine whatsoever. The rest of the year, I make kiddush on grape juice. Even by Pesach, I do it on grape juice. I mamish don't like the taste of wine. But we decided to go for a wine tasting. We had never been to a wine tasting before, so we had nothing to do. We went to the Carmel Wine Factory. We decided to go for a wine tasting. Nobody told us what it was like, so we didn't eat anything beforehand. I remember the guy who was giving us the tour. This guy was not drinking wine the way that I drink wine on Purim. I drink wine on Purim to beotze the mitzvah, the hamay vinyavin. This guy was having a totally different experience. He put the wine in the glass and he told us never touch the glass, only hold it by the stem, because even if you touch the glass, the heat from your hands will transfer to the wine and it'll diminish a little bit of the taste. The wine has to be chilled to exactly the right temperature.
And you swirl it around in your glass, and then before you sip it, you allow the air to come into your mouth, and then you swirl it around in your tongue, and then you drink. And I did this, and I have to tell you because I had nothing to eat that day, and because we kept tasting wines, it was a couple of hours before we could drive home. I didn't realize what the impact would be. Wine is not the same experience as matzah. Wine is rich. Wine is bold. Wine has so many different tastes to it. If you're just chugging wine on Purim, you're not going to taste it. You're not going to get the geshmack of wine. But a true connoisseur of wine understands the taste of wine. Wine, we drink four cups on Pesach. Why do we drink four? Because wine allows us to experience not only the vahotseitsi, vhitzalti, vegaalti.
Not only does it allow us to live Yitzias Mitzrayim, it allows us to live the Vilakhti. It's an experience of the senses. It's logical. It becomes our reality. We take that which was transcendent, and with the wine, we bring it into who we are. So that by the time we got to Har Sinai, we were fundamentally different people, having undergone a complete transformation of the self. All of the midos that we have in our soul were calibrated to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. We had left Mitzrayim, and therefore we were now shyach to the world, not only of the Oseiti, the Hitalti, the Gaalti, but even to the Lakachti. So now we can understand why it is that Matza only has three, and Yayin has four, because Matza by itself.
Only gets you to Yitzias Mitzrayim, but it's the Yain that gets you to Har Sinai. But if that's the case, we must now understand. So why is it indeed called Chag Amatzos? Why is it called Chagayayin? After all, it's the Yain that allows us to experience Har Sinai, the real Geula, coming of receiving the Torah, finally leaving Mitzrayim in Toto. Why do we remain? With the chagam matzos, with the three matzos, and the answer is as follows: because we can't look at the matza in a vacuum, we have to look at the matza together with the yain. It's not only the three matzos, but it's the three matzos with the four cups of wine, and together these two motifs really complete the story of Yitzchias Mitzrayim. And what that means is as follows.
If a person lives only with the three matzos, what they have is a connection to the essence of who they are, the emuna that took us out of Mitzrayim, which by itself is incredible and amazing, but it's also not enough, and the yain by itself is also not enough because the yain develops the senses, the yain develops the emotions. The yin develops the logic, but if a person lives with logic and emotion, something is fundamentally missing. A person needs both. We need the interplay of our faith, of our emuna, of the connection to our soul, and we need the humanity of our logic and our emotions.
We need the emuna, the natural emuna that comes from our godly soul, and we need to bring that into the reality of our humanity, of our nefesh abahamis, with its seichel, with its midos, with its emotions, and only when a Jew has both are they complete. The truth of the matter is that on Pesach, our eating of our matzah cannot simply be a tasteless experience. Because the matzah itself has a taste. Are you yotzei if you just swallow it whole? Of course you are. Of course you're yotzei. Why are you yotzei? You're yotzei because the matzah at Pesach, the matzah et yis mitzrayim, it also had no taste. It had no taste because we weren't on a spiritual level to receive the taste of the matzahs.
Because it happened in such a disorderly fashion, we were never able to taste those matzahs. Only afterwards, by harcinai, when we drank that wine, so to speak, did it become logical to us. Did it become real to us? But now a Jew must journey backwards in time. It's not enough just to have a tasteless matzah. Of course, you're yotzei, but who wants a tasteless matzah? Who wants a moor that's just natural, that's transcendent, but it's not real? It exists deep within us, but it doesn't get felt in our lives. Who wants such an emuna? We want emuna that permeates every aspect of our being, and so we need both the matzah itself, the cheftza of the matzah. It needs to have a taste. It can't be a gourmet taste. It can't have all these foreign flavors. It needs to be that impoverished lechem only that tastes a simple flour and water.
But it's no longer something we swallow whole. We savor every bite of the matzah, and that's why we don't eat matzah. Shloishim b'yom we don't eat matzah all the way up until this man of the seder, and then when we finally bite into that crisp matzah, we taste the deliciousness of our emuna. Our emuna is not just something that's inside of ourselves. It's something that exists in our lives. Our emuna is not just in our hearts. Our emuna is not just in our heads. Our emuna is in our hands. Our emuna is in our mouths. Our emuna is everywhere we go. The title of this year is Bread of Faith. As much as ever before, I was listening to a lot of people talk about the current magaifa that we're in, and people are saying there's never been anything like this in the history of the world. It's not true.
People have suffered tremendously before, and they've suffered under far worse conditions. Is it difficult for us to be quarantined? It's exceptionally difficult. Was it difficult not to go to shul on Shabbos? And I hope that you all did not go to shul on Shabbos. Was it difficult to not go to shul on Shabbos? It was terribly difficult not to go to shul on Shabbos. Is it difficult that the bet midrash are closed? Our hearts are breaking because the bet midrash are closed, but we are not living. In barns, we have food. We're not hiding from the Nazis. We have today, Baruch Hashem, so much, and yet it's such a difficult circumstance, knowing that so much is beyond our control. So it's not the pshat that we need emuna now more than ever. We need to tap into the emuna that our bubby's and our zaydis had.
We need to tap into the amunah that Klal Yisrael has always had. It's the hallmark of what it means to be a Jew. We're not living in the worst times ever. We're certainly living in historical times. Are we living in these final moments before Mashiach comes? Without a doubt, we're living in those final moments. Is Corona going to bring Mashiach? Mashiach is coming no matter what. Who knows if this will be the Makkabe Patish? We are not Neviim. We don't make prophecies. We don't make predictions, like the Rambam says. Nevertheless, it's our responsibility in these critical moments not to turn to politicians. Not to turn to scientists and doctors who, of course, have a responsibility, and of course, we should be giving unbelievable hakarasatov to the nurses, to the doctors, to all of those essential workers that continue to put themselves out there in order that other people should be saved. Of course, it goes without saying, but that's not where aramuna lies. Hakarasatov, absolutely, grabbing opportunities to do chesed for sure. Pick up the phone and call someone who you know who has corona, or maybe someone whose father has corona. Pick up the call, give them a good word, a sweet word. That's our opportunity here. But our emuna needs to be something that's real now. It needs to be something that's actionable. It's not just something in our heads. It's not just something in our hearts.
It has to permeate every aspect of our being. The yarin and the matzah need to flow together. It's not enough today to have the simple emuna that's tasteless. We have to have a full, rich taste of the emuna that's in the matzah. It's not an accident that this is happening in the zman of geula. We know that there is the zman of geula. If there's two others, Purim gets put in other bays so that we could be soymech geula legeula. Adar is also a zman of geula, and of course Nissan is the zman of geula. And in the zman of geula, just like in Yisseyat Mitzrayim, it's our opportunity to look inside of ourselves and to cultivate the talent of our natural connection to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Emuna also comes from a Russian of imun means.
It takes practice. You have to work at emuna. Emuna is something natural, but just because something is natural doesn't mean that we're capable of bringing it into our lives. The Jews in Yitzias Mitzrayim had natural emuna, but they didn't have a developed emuna. They didn't have a mature emuna. They didn't have the capacity to make emuna real. That took time. That took effort. That took work. Our responsibility, as we get closer and closer to the coming of Mashiach, is to grab onto these moments and to be mature. Rabbi said, "We've been around for nearly six thousand years; it's happening now." Those who hold on to the natural, godly soul, those who cultivate the talent of emuna, we will be the ones who will be ready to greet Mashiach Tzidkenu. Rabbi said, "We don't just daven that people should get better."
We daven that there should be an end to all illness. We daven that we should come to a state like Matan Torah. We know that Chazal say at Matan Torah, Pasuk Zeh Moson Chal Nachash, the poison of the Nachash Kanoni from that original sin of Adam Harishon, it was finished, and there was no Misa left. And Olam Habah, there will be no Misa. And Olam Habah, there will be no concept of death, because death is a state where the body and the soul go in two divergent directions. We seek to live in one harmonious direction, where the body and the soul operate together with each other, where the godliness of the body has become the reality, and the godly soul has illuminated the body to make that the reality. That's the goal, and in such a state, there can be no such thing as misa. We will live in a rectified world. It only happens.
When the emuna—that's the natural talent of our soul—becomes our reality, I want to finish off with a story. It's a well-known story about Rvmenel Futerfas. Rvmenel was a great Chabad Chassid who was exiled to Siberia because he continued to teach Torah in Russia, and when he was there in Siberia with the other inmates. They were all crying about everything that they had lost, being exiled to Siberia. This one had left behind a tremendous family, and this one had left behind tremendous wealth. This one was a great politician. This one was a great businessman. Everybody had something that they were crying about. The only one that wasn't crying was Rymendel Futefas. He was totally nonchalant, totally serene, totally cool. So the inmates turned to him and they said, 'You must have had nothing to live for.'
And since you had nothing to live for, Mali, if I live over there, and Mali, if I live in Siberia, who cares either way? Mendel Futerfas said you're wrong. I had a beautiful family. I also had a business. I also had wealth. I also had cover. I left behind a lot, but those were not my icker things in my life. The icker thing that I had in my life, the icker avoda was serving Hashem, and I can serve Hashem here and I can serve Hashem there. It makes no difference where I am. We serve Hakadosh Baruch Hu wherever we are. We serve Hakadosh Baruch Hu when we are sitting in the Batei Medrash and learning. We serve Hakadosh Baruch Hu when we go to Minyan, and now we serve Hakadosh Baruch Hu in a totally different way. Now we serve Hakadosh Baruch Hu in our homes, davening by ahdus, learning by ourselves, here in Shirim on Zoom and not Shirim in person, which is a totally different experience, and one should not confuse the two.
There's no doubt that this is wonderful. It's great to use modern technology this way, but let's not make the mistake of thinking that this is the same thing as going to a shir because it's not. It's not for you to tell me that, and it's certainly not for me. The maggid shir not being able to see your faces is a tremendously painful experience, but we serve Hakadosh Baruch Hu wherever He wants to be served. That's what it means, emuna. Emuna is that connection with Hakadosh Baruch Hu wherever we go, and it has to be cultivated. This simple emuna of every single one of us will make us zochet to Yisias Mitzrayim, but we're not satisfied with a simple Yisias Mitzrayim. We want the Geula Shleima. We want Kabbalas Torah. We want a Mishkan. We want Mashiach. We want Olam Habah, and because of that, it's our responsibility to take this time to cultivate our emuna, to be as connected to Hakadosh Baruch Hu now as we ever were before. May we be zayechet bekar of mamish. The Gula Shleima and all of those who need her for Shleima will have her for Shleima because in Eilam Haba there's no such thing as sickness.
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