Pesach - The Birth of a Nation

1:51 That was the best seder, the second best seder that I ever had. This one I'm not nearly as proud of. I decided to do the story of Yitzhak Smetzriam from the perspective of Paro. So I dressed up as Paro, telling the story from the Egyptian perspective. Which is very cool until you realize, but if you tell the story of Yitzhak Smetzriam from the perspective of Paro, you end up sounding a lot like Trump. So it starts off and you're like, we're gonna build pyramids, we're gonna build the best pyramids. We're not gonna pay for them. The Jews are gonna build them. We have to be very careful. There's some bad hombres coming across from the land of Canaan. We've got to be very careful with these immigrants. Everyone's saying we have frogs. We have the best frogs. We have the biggest frogs. Everyone's saying that I'm gonna let Kali Yashar go. Fake news. I'm not letting them go.

2:43 It happens that you end up sounding a lot like Trump. So that was my second to best seder ever, only because as I'm going through every single one of the makos, I'm like, "Oh my God, this is really what it sounds like." Let's say that's not a political commentary. That was just my two favorite shtaram. Without any further ado, let's get started. This week we read a special parsha called Parsha Hachodesh. There is something called Daled Parshios, the four parshios. I'm sure you've heard of this before. There's Shkalim, Zachor, Parah, and Hachodesh. Each one of these special readings corresponds to the time that we are reading these parshiyos in. For example, Shkalim Which was collected at that time commemorates the half shekel, the ma'asas shekel donation that Klal Yisrael made at that time. We read the parsha of Shkalim when Klal Yisrael gave the ma'asas shekel. Zachar, of course, prepares us for Purim by reminding us to wipe out Amalek. Haman was of course Amalek.

3:47 Parah, which is what we read last week, is a parsha we always read before Pesach comes up, because we read the parsha of Parah, which reminds us that we need to be tahor. The Parah Aduma makes us tahor from Tumas Masech; it purifies us from Tumas Masech. We always read that in advance of Pesach, because if you're Tameh Masech, you're not allowed to participate in Pesach. And this week before Rosh Chodesh Nissan, what do we read? Parshat Chodesh. The Parsha of the Chodesh. But there is an obvious question, girls. Nissan is not the only month that has a Kiddush Chodesh. Every single month we're Mekadesh the Chodesh. So it's strange that we read Parsha Chodesh now. Because unlike all the others, it doesn't specifically have to do with this time period. We could have read Parsha Chodesh in theory before. Any chodesh. So clearly, the question is: Why do we read Parshas Achodesh specifically before Nissan? What's the connection between Nissan, which is of course the month where we have Pesach The month where Klal Yisrael goes out of Mitzrayim? What's the connection between the chodesh being mechadesh lechodesh?

5:09 Sanctifying the new moon? Which brings in the Chodesh and Pesach. That's the question we're going to ask for today, and I want to share a beautiful answer with you—an answer that I heard from Rav Lapiansky. I don't know if you girls have heard of Rav Lapiansky, but if you haven't, he's definitely somebody you need to hear of in your life. Rav Lapiansky is one of the tremendous, tremendous Talmidei Chachamim. Perhaps even one of the Gedolim of today's generation. He's a brilliant thinker. He's an exceptional person. Happens to be, I live right next door to his daughter. So I'm zocher to see the Rosh Yeshiva a couple times a year when he comes to see his daughter. More than once, I've been embarrassed as I walk out of my house if I'm going to play basketball and I'm walking out in shorts and a t-shirt. More than once, the Rosh Yeshiva has been as well on his way up the stairs as I'm walking down the stairs. But Baruch Hashem, he is a very kind person who doesn't make me feel awkward on any level. This is a Torah that I heard from Rav Lapiansky.

6:04 And he said as follows: We're used to thinking of Yitzias Mitzrayim as Paro subjugated Klal Yisroel. We were avodim, we were slaves in Egypt. And Hakadosh Baruch Hu's might was greater than Paro's, and so Paro was overpowered, and Klal Yisroel was taken out of Mitzrayim. The way we generally think about the story of Mitzrayim. Just raise your hand if that's the way you grew up thinking about it. Certainly, the way I grew up thinking about it. Klal Yisroel were slaves. Hashem came and He took us out of slavery. I think that's the way we all grew up. Rav Lapiansky shares with us a much deeper, frankly, more adult, more profound way of seeing the story of Yitzias Mitzrayim, and he says as follows: The real problem of Yitzias Mitzrayim wasn't Parol. The real problem of Yitzys Mitzrayim is there was no nation called Klal Yisrael. There was no one to take out of Mitzrayim. We're used to thinking of ourselves like we were a nation, and Hakadosh Baruch Hu took us as a nation out of Mitzrayim.

7:19 Says Zerf Lapianski, it's not true, and I'll show you where he gets this from. It's not true that we were a nation. There was no nation. To be taken out of Mitzrayim. The pasuk says, 'La kachas lo goi, mikerev goi.' That our Kadosh Baruch Hu took us out as a nation from within a nation. What does it mean, a nation from within a nation? What do those words mean? So listen what the maral says. I'm going to read it to you in Hebrew. It's a short line, but it's worthwhile to hear every word here because every word of the maral here is beautiful. I'll translate it into English in a moment. Listen what the maral says. Kolmar. What was Klal Yisrael considered in Mitzrayim? We were like absorbed in Mitzrayim in the way that a fetus is part of the mother's womb. A hundred percent. Klomar. We were in the way that a fetus is in a mother's stomach.

8:24 That's how Klal Yisrael was in Mitzrayim. We'll explain what that means in a second. Only when the fetus is fully developed does it ultimately emerge from the womb as its own person. But until the time that we had been taken out of Mitzrayim. We were like a fetus in the womb of its mother. So this gives us a fundamentally different perspective on the state of Klal Yisrael until the time that Hakadosh Baruch Hu took us out. We were not a fully formed nation, and to take us out early from Mitzrayim, if we were to leave early, would be we could even though the Maral doesn't say this, I think it follows logically. That we want our children to come to term, right? We don't want to have what they call it? A preemie baby, right? Because if a child is born premature, what's the problem of being born premature? The child does not develop. Today, Baruch Hashem, we have amazing medical technology that allows us to keep an underdeveloped fetus alive and healthy. But it used to be that if a child was born prematurely, that was a death sentence for the child.

9:47 A child's lungs are not strong enough to breathe. Sometimes the brain is not developed enough to tell the lungs to breathe. So today we have special machines that can keep a child alive even when they're born prematurely. The point is that an uber bemeimo That a fetus in the womb of its mother is not its own being. It's something that's connected to the mother. It doesn't have its own independent identity. How do we relate to that child? It's the uber meaning. It's a fetus. It's not a baby yet. A baby is what happens when it's born. That's when it becomes a child. At this point, it's a fetus. Its identity is as part of the mother. This is a very important perspective when thinking about what it means to be a slave in Mitzrayim. If you think about it, we were a family. Then we came down to Mitzrayim. Our family grew and it grew. But what environment did it grow up in?

10:51 It grew up in a pre-existence type of state. In other words, when does Klal Yisrael really come into its own existence? When do we become a nation? Only by Matan Torah did we actually become a nation. But what was our status, so to speak, before that? What does it mean? To be a slave in Egypt means we were so identified with Egypt that you could not point to us and say that's its own independent nation. We arrived in Mitzrayim as a family. We weren't yet fully conscious of a national identity. We didn't have something you could point to and say that's what it means to be a part of the nation of Israel. Which means that Yitzchitz Mitzrayim is an act of creation. This is very, very different than the way we just said it a moment ago. A moment ago, when we were all talking about how we grew up. How did we grow up? Klal Yisrael was a nation Except that we were weaker than Paro. Then Paro comes, he goes to battle, so to speak, with Moshe Rabbeinu, with Hashem. Who's the winner of that battle? Hakadosh Baruch Hu is the winner. That's not the correct way of looking at it. It's not that there's not truth to that. But that's not really the story. What's the real story? The real story is a very simple one.

12:14 This is the birth of Klal Yisrael. The birth of Klal Yisrael means that up until that point we did not exist. And Yitzias Mitzrayim, what Hakadosh Baruch Hu did for us, it's not only that Hakadosh Baruch Hu took us out of Mitzrayim, but it's much more profound than that. This becomes an act of creation. That's a very big thing to think about. What does it mean to birth a nation? What does it mean that a nation wasn't And then we were, right? That's like maybe one way of thinking about it is as follows. I was once working with a young man. Who he he went through a pretty traumatic family upbringing, And he told me that he was basically not naive. The word he used was completely unaware of what was happening in his life until eighth grade, when his parents got divorced and a bunch of other crazy things happened.

13:14 And in basically ninth grade, he said, "He's the way he said it. He's like I woke up." In other words, before that, he was just sort of this kid on autopilot. I imagine many of us can identify with that. Like you're a sixth grader, you're going through life. How much are you really aware? How much are you really paying attention? This kid describes himself as almost purposefully not conscious to what was happening around him. And in ninth grade, he had to make big choices in his life about who he wanted to be, and it set him on a certain trajectory. That's a way of looking at this. What does it mean to come into being? What does that mean for us? Because if we're thinking about the story of Yisias Mitzrayim, then one way of thinking about it is when we come to the night of the Seder, in a certain way, it's almost like we're being— I don't mean to say this in the Christian sense—but it's almost like we're being reborn.

14:08 As if somehow the entire year there was this lack of consciousness, a lack of national identity, and there's a rebirth that occurs every single year on the night of the Seder. There's a rebirth that now we come once again into being. Girls, got this idea? Imagine every year by the seder what does Chazal obligate us to do? We're obligated to see ourselves as if we're leaving Mitzrayim again. Which means that every single year we're obligated to be reborn. Now what does this mean for us? So what it means for us is as follows. This is where I got very excited. This is why I wanted to share this idea with you. We all know this idea. I don't think this is an idea that's new, but I'm hopefully going to say it in a new way. What does the word Chodesh mean? Month. What's the shorash of the word chodesh? Chodesh.

15:01 Very good. So month has to do with new. Month has to do with new. So there's an unbelievable idea here. There's a process that the moon goes through every year. I appreciate your sensitivity. There's a process. See, I'm misgiving sure over there because then I was able to just do the bang. The there's a Process that the moon goes through every year. I'm sorry, every month. And we think of this process as the moon waxes and wanes, right? So every year on the 15th of the month, what do we see? Huge, big, beautiful moon. What do we see at the beginning of the month? We see barely a sliver. But what the Gemara tells us, and what we know is true scientifically, is the moon wanes until it completely disappears. Obviously, the moon doesn't disappear. We know how the light of the moon happens. It's reflected off of the sun. But for a 24-hour period, there is what appears to be no moon. And then slowly the moon is reborn every single month.

16:12 And the moon comes into being in a certain sense. The moon every single month expresses its own rebirth, and then obviously its own demise. Every single month there's an awakening of the moon. Then there's ultimately a dying out until you don't see the moon anymore. What's the significance of this? So the significance is as follows: in nature In nature, in the world Time moves forward. Listen carefully, and because time moves forward It appears to us that change is impossible. It appears to us that true change is impossible; that I don't have a power of renewal, because today Once it's done Is done forever. Tomorrow, I can never get back today. In other words, are we the masters over time, or are we slaves to time? In the natural world

17:21 We are slaves to time. I remember when I turned forty. I had a mini life crisis. I had a mini—I don't want to say midlife crisis. Hopefully, 40 is not the middle of my life. Hopefully, I'll have a midlife crisis at 60. I didn't go out and buy a main. I didn't. And you should be zochet to a shirach. I know how to get your attention. That's how I keep girls off the cell phones. I just randomly say that, and girls in the middle of texting go,"Amen." I don't want to miss my amen for that bracha. The even now it only works for about two people, but we're still with it. When I turned forty It occurred to me Because I don't know why it didn't occur to me until I was forty. Maybe I'm a little bit slow in the uptake sometimes. But thank you for that. I realized I'll never get it back.

18:14 You can't go back. It's a crazy thing to think about that you can't go back. In your twenties, you're still in your head like a teenager. In your thirties, your kids are still young. But I'm already a grandfather twice. Thank you. I appreciate that, guys. Super old. When I turned 40 I realized time is marching on. And I started thinking to myself This was my thought process at 40. What have I really accomplished? What have I really done? I started doing an inventory of my life and started saying, okay, some things I've done well, some things I've done okay, some things I'd like to be much better at than I am. I can't believe I'm still dealing with certain things at 40. Time marches on. And at some point we start to realize the moments that have passed can never be undone. How we show up as parents. How we show up as spouses, how we show up as members of our community, the work that we put in every single day, whether it's in our jobs or in our personal growth.

19:35 Every single day when it's over It's over and it's never coming back. And I'll share with you a story about never coming back. This is not a great story, one of my least proud moments. But I've forgiven myself because I was only five years old at the time of this story. My grandfather, Olave Shalom, passed away when I was five. Happens to be that there was a character on Sesame Street whose name was Mr. Hooper. Mr. Hooper had died on Sesame Street shortly before my grandfather passed away. So on Sesame Street, they taught me. You girls know what Sesame Street is? Oscar the Grouch, Big Bird. He's not called Cookie Monster anymore. I think he's Vegetable Monster. I don't know. I'm just making that up. I know that he now has a song called "Cookies Are a Sometimes Treat." When I was growing up, it was like "See, Our For Cookies."

20:25 That's why I am the way I am. It's because of Cookie Monster. I should do Sesame Street. That would be an amazing lawsuit. Absolutely absurd. This moment of entertainment has now passed. So. Thank you. Brought to you by my ADHD and this man. Because Mr. Hooper died, and because I watched Sesame Street, they taught us all about death on Sesame Street. And then my grandfather died, and so I was of course an expert at death because Mr. Hooper had died. I did not go to my grandfather's funeral. That would have been inappropriate at five years old. My grandmother came back to her apartment to sit shiva, and my little cousin Yoni. He was like maybe three and a half, four years old at the time. He said to his mother or to my grandmother something like, "Don't worry, Papa Harry will be back tomorrow." I, being the older, much more experienced, and clearly much wiser cousin Decided that was an appropriate time to start screaming at him in front of my grandmother, who just buried her husband. He's not. Papa Harry's not coming back. He's dead. Dead means you're never coming back.

21:36 He's never ever coming back. And so this story is famous in my family. My father ran through the room, scooped me up and carried me out of the room. My grandmother and my mother are bawling. He's never coming back. He's never ever coming back. That's what time does. When time marches on, this salute to my grandfather, Olshan. The Say it. Don't. Now go with you. I dedicate this class to all of my loved ones that have passed on. But that's what time does. Time means it's over. It's never coming back. That's the opposite of what a Jew believes. To be a Jew means that there's always a renewal that's constantly occurring. Even death for us is not the end. Death is a station where a soul leaves a body. It ascends to Shamayim to a place called Olam HaNeshamos, where it then awaits. Then it awaits for a process called Tchias HaMeason. There's a process of rebirth that for us comes after death.

22:56 For us, one second. Time can always be renewed. We revisit the same time period every single year. That's why the Jewish calendar is a circle. It's like I'm going to lose to a moth on the last day of Sheir. It's going to be the perfect way to end Tzoman. You come back to Pesach. You go for a year, and then what do you come back to? Pesach. You do it again every year. You keep coming back to the same calendar moments. The reason the Jewish calendar is like this is because we're constantly in a state of renewal. The second that something is over, what happens? It begins to become reborn. And this idea is critical if you want to understand the birth of Klal Yisrael. It appeared in Mitzrayim that we were in a state like that 24-hour period where the moon cannot be seen. Does that mean the moon doesn't exist? No. The moon exists. It's just that in its state, it's not illuminated. You girls know that famous parable, the famous Moshe, of two fetuses in a mother's womb, saying, 'Do you think there's life after birth?'

24:04 It's like that. When you're stuck in that period, you can't see beyond yourself. In Mitzrayim, what does it mean to be a slave? A slave is not in control of his own destiny. A slave lives every day, time marches on, and a slave has no power over time. What does it mean to be free? Now we tend to think of freedom, especially as Americans, as freedom of movement. I can go wherever I want. What's a lack of freedom? I went to jail. A lack of freedom is I'm enslaved. I can't go where I want to go. In Judaism, that's not what freedom is. Freedom is not about mobility. Of course, that's an aspect of freedom. Freedom is something for us that's internal. It's the freedom to constantly be the master over time. Not only do I get to control what I do with my time, but the person that I was yesterday has no bearing on what I become today. If yesterday it looked like there was nothing, today I might become something because yesterday I was nothing.

25:09 In other words, yesterday it looked like I was dead. Today I've been reborn. To be a Jew To be a Jew, I'll answer any questions afterwards. To be a Jew is to be in a constant state of renewal. To be a Jew means. Yesterday I was in a terrible place. I know that that's just the birthing stone of going to be something much greater. That's why. What's the word for when a person falls apart in Hebrew? It's called having a mashbir, right? It's like when you're falling apart. But what is the word for a birthing stone in Israel? It's also mashbir, right? It's that for us falling apart, that darkness of the moon is the beginning of the process where we enter into that fifteenth of the month, which is where we're at our peak and we can totally be seen. Memale, we understand something very powerful.

25:57 We were goy mikerev goy. Hakadosh Baruch Hu took us out as a nation from amongst the nation. What does it mean that we were a nation amongst another nation? We had no identity. What does it mean to have no identity? Were we the moon in that 24-hour period where you can't see us? If you asked an Egyptian, aren't you enslaving the nation of Jews? What would they tell you? There are no nation of Jews. There's a family that we had to watch, that we had to be careful of because they were getting powerful. That family we've taken care of, but there is no nation. What did the Egyptians not know? Maybe what we didn't even know about ourselves is being in Mitzrayim and not having an identity was the beginning of having an identity. Were we called Ivri? That's true. But Ivri was a derogatory term.

26:47 Ivri meant you're from the other side of the river, right? Ivri means you don't belong. It's not a positive term. It's a more powerful word. Ivory means it was a derogatory term, right? Right. So that's I'm not sure we do in Loshon Hakodesh. We don't call it Ivrit like that. But we were perhaps called Yehudim. Maybe that came about later. But that's a separate conversation. But the idea that we did not have a distinct identity, that there was no national purpose, there was nothing for us to aspire to as a nation. That's what we were in Mitzrayim. But what does it mean that Hashem took us out of Mitzrayim? It means not just that He took us out and made us a nation. It's more profound than that. That He revealed to us that the entire time that we were in Mitzrayim All the shibud, all the hardship, everything that we went through, all the pain Was in order to do what? It was in order for us to form an identity.

27:42 It's an amazing thing that our Kadosh Baruch Hu did. He didn't just take us out and make us a nation. He revealed to us that everything we went through was the process of giving birth to a nation. Which reframes all of the pain that we had in Mitzrayim. For example, if you went to a hospital and you heard someone screaming in pain Good thing or bad thing? It depends on what floor you're on. If you're in the emergency room and you hear someone screaming in pain, you think, "Oh my gosh, somebody really hurt themselves." But if you're in the maternity ward, you think somebody's giving birth to a child, and your response emotionally is very different. On the one hand, if you're in the emergency room, you might find yourself going, "Ooh, I'm so sorry for that person." If you're in the maternity ward, you say, "Ooh, I want to say Tehillim. I hope that she gives birth to a healthy baby."

28:34 There's a totally different emotional response. What did our Kadosh Baruch Hu give us? What was the gift that He gave us when He took us out of Eretz Yisrael? He didn't just make us a nation. He reframed the previous 210 years. We were no longer just slaves in Egypt. We were in the process of becoming a nation. This is fundamental for all of us. Every single year, what do we go through? Every one of us, on a personal level, for sure. Over the last year and a half, we can say on a national level also. But every year, on a personal level, how many of us go through some really difficult hardships? All of us, on some level, are going through things. Whether it's socially, psychologically, everyone is going through something that's really, really difficult. And we think of that as suffering. What is suffering? Suffering is pain minus reason.

29:28 Nobody goes to the gym and says I'm suffering. What do you say? And what do you say after you have a good workout in the gym? You say I'm sore, I'm in pain, but nobody suffers in the gym. Why? Because you know why you're in the gym, right? We all go through things that we're suffering from because we don't know the reason. What do we discover on Yom Tzivis Matzriyim, on the night of the Seder? We discover not only that this is who I am, but everything that I went through for the entire year—I went through it in order to become this person. I imagine that if you girls stop just for a moment and ask yourself right now, look at the hardest things that you've gone through over the last 18 years of your life. Even look at the hardest things that you went through just this year. Ask yourself, would I be that person had I not gone through these things?

30:15 The answer, I imagine, for every one of us is, I wouldn't be that person unless I had gone through it. When you're going through it, it's terrible. When you're on the other end, what do you know? It was a birthing stone. Could we make the Parshas Achodesh any month? No. There's one unique aspect of our calendar that's specifically about Kiddush Achodesh, specifically about the power of renewal. And that's the month of Nissan, because this is the time where we discover about ourselves, our own renewal. Yesterday I was dead; today I'm alive. What happened? Yesterday I was in the process of giving birth. Today Today is a new day. On the one hand, it reframes everything that I went through. This is what Klal Yisrael, on a national level, is yearning for. What's going to be one of the many exciting features of when Mashiach comes?

31:06 One of the many exciting features of when Mashiach comes is we're all going to be able to do an about face and go That's why That's what every single thing meant, from the Holocaust to the Crusades to pogroms to all the things that went through to October 7th. What are we going to do? We're going to look back and understand that's why we went through everything that went through. All of those things were us being birthing this thing called Yemosha Mashiach. That's why R' Zadok Hakohen says very beautifully, what do we do by Lichadoi every Friday night? We say Bowi Kala. What do we do? We turn around towards the doors. We bow, and then we turn back around towards the Aron Kodesh and we bow again. Says R' Zadok, why? A Jew doesn't only look forward. Before he looks forward, what does he have to do? He has to look back on his week and invite his week into Shabbos. Shabbos is the zman of Mashiach. That's the seventh day. The zman of Mashiach. What do we do in the zman of Mashiach? At the very end, we look back and we say, 'Oh, that's how we got here.' And then we understand that we are constantly in a state of being renewed. There is no such thing as giving up hope.

32:16 There is no such thing as giving up hope because giving up hope midstream in the process of making something, inevitably you're going to break things. There's no such thing as failure. There's only experience. When do we fail? We only fail when we stop trying. There's no such thing as failure. Think about it. You were doing something and you failed. Did you fail? No. It's just that thing didn't work. So as soon as that thing now I learned that didn't work. You go on to the next thing, and that thing doesn't work. You go on to the next thing. There's no such thing as failure. There's only experience. When does failure set in? When you stop trying. Imagine if Klal Yisrael in the middle of Mitzrayim would have just gone, "We're done. We're slaves." Then we wouldn't. It's great. None of us would be here. The point ultimately is that we're constantly in a state of renewal. That which was yesterday in our state of death is just part of the process towards being reborn. Be'ez Hashem, this Shabbos, the Kiddush HaChodesh, Parshas HaChodesh, we have the opportunity to tap into this power of renewal that exists in every year in Pesach. But this process begins already from Parshas HaChodesh this week. If I don't see you before the Passover holidays, I want to wish you all a chag kosher same'ach. A meaningful Yom Tov. And as Hashem, we should be ze'ikat tegul shleimer.