Category: Passover

  • Preparing To Be A Free Nation

    The Torah refers to Passover as the holiday of Matzot. The reason is to teach us that leaving Egypt was the first step to becoming a nation. We had to learn what it means to be free.

  • We Need to Be Reminded

    The repeats the holidays over and over again. The question is why. Isn’t once enough? The answer is that we have to remember why God took us out of Egypt and what our mission is.

  • We Celebrate With Friends

    Any thanksgiving offering that we bring is too much for one person to consume. Yet it has to be consumed by the end of the day. This forces us to bring our friends to celebrate. This shows that the Pascal Sacrifice is also a Thanksgiving offering.

  • We Are United by Passover

    The Seder stresses the idea that there will always be those who wish to destroy us. That the defense against these threats is our unity.

  • The Source of Evil

    In the Seder we are admonished to set the teeth of the wicked son on edge. The reason is that the source of his being wicked are the words that he abuses.

  • Experience the Seder

    The real message of the Passover Seder is that it is not an intellectual account of the story but an experiential one. We are meant to experience leaving Egypt.

  • A New Beginning

    The first commandment that the Jewish people received was to declare the 1st of Nisan to be the beginning of the Jewish year. Rosh Hashanah is the day that the 1st man was created. The 1st of Nisan is when the Jewish people became a people.

  • Freedom Comes With a Price

    The portion starts out with the Jews avoiding going directly to the Land of Israel lest they get into a war with the Philistines and run back to Egypt. It ends with the Jews fighting Amalek. They had to learn that there was no going back to Egypt.

  • Getting Egypt Out of the Jews

    More important that getting the Jews out of Egypt was to get Egyptian culture out of the Jews. God wanted the Jews to be a moral and ethical people and to reject the immorality of Egypt.

  • God Wants Action From Us

    The reason for the Pascal Sacrifice before the plague of the killing of the first born was that God wanted to see that the Jews were willing to take action for their freedom.