A Haggadah of Love, Part II

Translated from Rabbi Arush’s feature article in the weekly Chut shel Chessed newsletter. The articles focus on his main message: “Loving others as yourself” and emuna. 

Organizing Seminars– You Can Do It Too 

Nowadays people organize seminars on everything: parenting, education, investments in securities, investments in real estate, health and nutrition, against the draft, against those who are against the draft, improving one’s memory, self-actualization, and seminars that all those who attend will learn to be super-therapists, successful salesmen etc. etc. 

The common denominator of all these seminars is that in all of them you will hear beautiful and moving stories, and impressive – though partial – information, presented very convincingly so that you will want to hear more.  

I don’t think that the organizers of these seminars think that it is to include only stories. Believe me, they did not rent a hall and microphones and advertise all over just to tell you stories. 

So what did they do it for? The goal of all the stories and the exciting programs with the light refreshments have one purpose: to cause you, by the end of the evening, to open your wallet and sign up for some course or other. It pays to organize seminars! 

So let’s organize a seminar for ourselves! In this seminar we will tell beautiful stories, and it will have a very worthwhile goal: fine children who are truly connected to the Holy One, Blessed Be He. 

This seminar is called Leil HaSeder (Seder night). On this night, we gather our family together and tell them stories, and not just any stories, but stories that have a goal, as we wrote last week. The goal is to instill in our children emunah and its basic tenet, which is the faith that Hashem loves us in every situation, with a personal and special love. 

Loving Plagues 

This is the goal and the message of every plague that struck the Egyptians. Last week we began to prepare ourselves for the transmission of this message, and we mentioned the first four plagues, showing how this message is expressed in these plagues. 

In the plague of dever, the fifth plague, the message becomes stronger: a fierce plague lands on Egypt and kills all the Egyptian domestic animals. But the behavior of the germs here is very mysterious – they don’t affect the animals belonging to Jews!

Pharaoh refuses to believe this and sends the agents of the Egyptian Central Bureau of Statistics to see if maybe, perhaps by mistake, there was one animal that did die, even if it died not of the plague but of old age, but they return with unequivocal data: “Not one among the Jews’ livestock had died.”¹ Not even one! 

And as we have said already, it is not only the story, and it is not only the wonder; it is not only the miracle, and it is not only that Hashem can do this. Rather, it is Hashem’s love that is revealed here, the love of Hashem Who supervises and protects the Jewish People against all laws of nature and does only good for them, as the children’s song says: “And for Yisrael it was very good, very good.”² 

In the same way, you can explain to the children how, during the plague of boils, the soot knew to land only on Egyptians and not on Jews. In the plague of hail, the hail and the fire struck everywhere, except in the land of Goshen. And so it is, too, in the plague of locusts and the plague of darkness. And, of course, the climax, is the plague that struck the firstborn sons, in which Hashem skipped over all the homes of Jews and struck in every Egyptian abode. The Jewish firstborns are not only saved, but they are also consecrated by this act. In every plague we see the special love and the special protection. 

You Have Friends in Your World 

In the Splitting of the Sea, this love revealed itself in full force! 

Not only did the sea split in front of the Jewish People, but the Egyptians drowned to the point of “not one of them remained”³! There was precise discrimination between all Jews and all Egyptians. And not only did the Jews walk on dry land while the Egyptians drowned in mud, but every Egyptian suffered to the degree that he made Jews suffer⁴. 

Why? Because Hashem loves us. Whoever causes distress to those whom Hashem loves is punished exactly to the degree that he caused distress to the beloved children of Hashem. 

I saw a commentary in some leaflet on what is written in Tehillim: “In Your might, You tore the sea to shreds”⁵. Not only did Hashem split the sea – He tore it to shreds, meaning He ripped it into thousands and thousands of pieces. And, based on that, the writer says that the sea split into separate paths – one for every Jew, a personal path for each one. Why? What could be the goal of that? 

The goal was to show every Jew who left Egypt: Do not think that Hashem split the sea only for tzaddikim and you benefited from it just “by happenstance”. No – Hashem yitbarach split the sea personally for each and every Jew because He loved them personally. 

In this we see that we were not merely experiencing a miracle, but also experiencing a revelation of love, as we say in our prayers: “and friends crossed a sea”⁶. Whose friends? The friends of the Holy One, Blessed be He. When Hashem got us through the sea and took us out of Egypt, we discovered the deep friendship, the connection, and the love between us and the Creator. 

And that is the goal of all the miracles. Therefore, when Nakdimon ben Gurion requested a miracle from Hashem, included in his prayer was: “Let [people] know that You have loving ones in Your world.”⁷ 

Pesach is Love 

Indeed, one of the interpretations of the word “Pesach” is ‘love and mercy and compassion’.  The Targum translates the pasuk “It is the Passover sacrifice to Hashem who passed over the houses of Bnei Yisrael in Egypt”⁸, as: “Hashem had mercy on us, a mercy of love.” 

The word “Pesach” can be read also as peh-sach – what is the mouth saying? The mouth is speaking words of emunah (faith). The mouth is speaking and telling of how much Hashem loves us and how much He is merciful in every situation, in spite of the fact that at the time we were in bad shape: “When I passed by you, I saw you floundering in your own blood…”⁹, because this is the main point of the story.

In the merit of these words of emunah, we also merit a peh-sach, that speaks to Hashem in tefillah  (prayer),  because, as we have explained repeatedly – the main key to prayer is the knowledge that Hashem loves me. Only someone who knows that Hashem loves him in every situation, unaffected by his spiritual state – only he can stand and pray for hours upon hours, day after day, until he gets his salvation. 

The peh-sach that tells people how much Hashem loves them brings one to the peh-sach that can speak to Hashem endlessly. And this is what we want to instill in our children: they should know how much Hashem loves them, so that they will be baalei tefillah (people who know how to pray) and will know how to succeed and bring about anything with the power of tefillah. 

That is why we must remember the Exodus from Egypt every single day, because there is nothing as hidden in the world as the knowledge that Hashem loves us! And there is nothing that we must tell ourselves repeatedly and remind ourselves every moment like the knowledge that Hashem loves us.  

When you know that Hashem loves you – your emunah is alive and sharp, and your prayers are fiery and effective. 

The climax of this significant night, Leil Haseder, should be unequivocal: instilling in ourselves and in our children the knowledge that Hashem loves us. 

Teshuvah Out of Love 

That is also the deep answer to the yetzer hara (evil inclination) and to the wickedness within human beings. 

The pasuk “It is the Passover sacrifice to Hashem” appears [in the Haggadah] immediately after the question of the wicked son, who asks: “And when your children will say to you, ‘What does this work mean to you?’’ 

We must note two points:  

First of all, the pasuk doesn’t say, “You will say to your son” in the singular form (ve’amarta); rather it uses the plural form (ve’amartem). In other words, first tell yourself that Hashem loves you, and when there is love, nothing feels like labor, rather, it is a joyful thing and a great merit. And when your son sees that that is the way you feel – that is what will turn him into a tzaddik. 

Secondly, ve’amarta is a gentle term! Even when speaking to the wicked son, before you blunt his teeth and scold him, begin gently and tell him how much Hashem loves him! And so says the Kli Yakar: “The way of the Torah is to first try with the wicked one, perhaps it is possible to pull him towards the service of Hashem by speaking gently, and that is the answer … and if he stiffens his neck and doesn’t listen…”¹⁰ 

If that doesn’t help, then there really isn’t anything you can do with him, and you should blunt his teeth and reply: “If you would have been there, you would not have been redeemed!” and from this we  understand that all those who died during the plague of darkness, their problem was that they didn’t know and didn’t believe that Hashem loved them, and therefore there was no way to help them and redeem them from Egyptian slavery. 

We find that speaking in a language of love not only teaches our children the true emunah, which is our purpose in life, but also saves them from all wickedness and all the temptations of this generation, and it is our bitachon (trust, confidence)  – for protection and yeshuah (salvation) and geulah (redemption), as well as our sense of bitachon that our children will continue to be connected to Hashem and His service. 

Wishing you a chag Pesach kasher vesame’ach – a happy and kosher Passover. 

Editor’s Notes: 

¹ Shemot (Exodus) 9:7 

2 Words from the popular Hebrew song “אלו אלו עשר המכות” (“The Ten Plagues Song”), written by Haim Kirsh. The song is widely taught in Israeli kindergartens and schools to help children memorize the ten plagues in preparation for the Seder. 

³ Shemot (Exodus) 14:28    

⁴ Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael, Tractate Shirata, Parsha 6 (commenting on Exodus 15:5).  

⁵ Tehillim (Psalms) 74:13 

⁶ Found in the Emet Veyatziv blessing that is recited daily during Shacharit, immediately following the Shema  and before Shemoneh Esrei. 

⁷ Taanit 19b-20a 

⁸ Exodus 12:27 and Targum Onkelos on that verse 

⁹ Yechezkel (Ezekiel) 16:6 

¹⁰ Kli Yakar on Shemot 12:26