HaRav Shimshon Pincus zt"l was killed, along with
his wife and daughter, in a tragic car accident on the 12th
of Nisan, 5761. In addition to being the rov of the
kehilla of Ofakim, Israel, HaRav Pincus lectured and
participated in seminars throughout the world. The following
article is taken from a taped lecture "Leil HaSeder" that he
delivered in the U.S. before Pesach 5760.
Introduction and Summary
The Leil HaSeder is a very special night. There is a
saying by tzaddikim that the Leil HaSeder gives
you a seder -- an organizing principle -- for the
entire year. If we experience the Leil HaSeder
properly, it is a wonderful experience and it can make a
revolution within us and in our attachment to Hashem.
The first part of the talk was printed in our Pesach
edition, 5762. HaRav Pincus explained that Pesach was and is
the birth of the Jewish people, every year. There are three
partners in all people: the father who gives the "white"
(bones) parts of the body, the mother who gives the "red"
(flesh and blood), and Hakodosh Boruch Hu Who gives
the soul. On Pesach the matzoh, which gives basic
emunoh, is the white part. The arba cosos of
red wine give the excitement about Hashem, and the sippur
yetzias Mitzrayim is the soul added by Hashem. On Pesach,
Hashem also opens for us a supernatural way to understand
concepts above our heads, like the chipozone in
Egypt.
The second part of the lecture was published in our
edition of Pesach 5763, last year. It covered two components
of the Seder: carpas and morror. Carpas refers
to katnus, the simple perception and grasp of the
basic fact of Hashem as the Designer behind the world. This
is in contrast to the gadlus perception, which refers
to the fact that we are utterly dependent on Hashem and there
is nothing else besides Him. Pesach is constructed
bechipozone, hastily and out of order, so that we
start with the more mature excitement of the first
cose and only then eat the carpas, ingesting
the basic ideas of Hashem.
HaRav Pincus also explained morror which represents
death and pain, both parts of the world necessary to push us
to have a connection to Hashem. On Pesach we dip the
morror into charroses which has life in it, so
that it is only a remembrance of the day of death and that it
will itself be chaim!
Part III
Before we go back to the beginning and fill in the remaining
steps of the Seder, let me put in a few words about before
the beginning. Since we are building a building over here
that we call humanity, the crux of which is our connection to
Hashem, we require a certain preparation.
Just as when you are going to build a physical building in
our world, the first thing is that you have to clean the
building lot, because when there is a vacant lot the
neighbors come around and make it a dump and it may be full
of garbage. So there has to be a preparation of
cleanliness.
For our "building," we have the wonderful days before Pesach.
Before Pesach we are busy with being meva'eir the
chometz, because we cannot really build a connection
to HaKodosh Boruch Hu if our personalities are full of
garbage. Whether it's problems in our personalities like
loshon hora or ka'as, or the kind of garbage
that comes into our homes through our walls - - through the
telephone wire, through the Internet, through the radio, or a
newspaper -- whatever it is, our lives are full of
garbage.
Erev Pesach, when we are preparing for this connection, this
birth, we have to make it our business to see that we are
going to do bi'ur chometz. You cannot sit at the Seder
table when all the chometz is still around. When there
is bread all around, it just doesn't make sense to hold a
Seder.
So the radio may be closed, the Internet closed, the
newspapers closed, and you are sitting at a table with a
perfectly white tablecloth -- but it is not enough.
Chometz is bal yeiro'eh, ubal yeimotzei (Shemos
12:19 and 13:7) which means that it is not enough if it is
not on the table. It means that it must be burned [destroyed
through fire,] and that is extremely important.
Also there is a very wonderful siyata deShmaya in the
days before Pesach to clean the house. This means not only
cleaning the physical house our bodies live in, but also to
cleaning every corner of our personalities, of our life, in
preparation for this wonderful night. The moment you really
do this cleaning, the beauty of the Leil HaSeder that
we all strive for will come to us as an explosion from
Hashem.
Kadeish
Let us start off the rest of our explanation of the Seder
with the Kiddush, which will explain the kind of relationship
we are trying to build with Hashem.
There are two kinds of connections that people can have
between themselves. One connection is a connection of
friendship, which can be for commercial reasons, for social
reasons, with my neighbor across the street, with friends, a
chavrusa or whatever. The second kind of connection is
the connection of family, the epitome of which is
marriage.
One way to describe the difference is with numbers. A person
would give a hundred dollars to his best friend as a present,
and maybe even a thousand dollars. But a person gives his
family hundreds of thousands of dollars.
A rich man will give a present to his best friend of a
thousand dollars, but when he makes a chasunah for his
daughter, the flowers alone will cost ten thousand dollars.
I'm not trying to say that's the way to do things, but I am
reporting what is done.
The difference between the connection of the rest of humanity
to Hashem and the connection of us to Hashem is this: The
connection of the rest of humanity is like that between
friends, like what we would a priori understand the
connection between a Creator and his creations to be.
The connection of Am Yisroel to Hashem is described in
Shir haShirim (which we read this night) in terms of
family: "Imi, achosi, bitti, and finally
ra'ayosi." This connection between Hashem and the
Jewish people of love, of intimacy and of a marital
relationship is gadlus, something that is way above
the capacity of our seichel.
For example: A person and a microbe both live in the same
world but there is no shidduch and if the microbe has
a headache you're not going to have a sleepless night. The
difference between us and Hashem is unimaginable. It is as if
we are trillions of worlds apart. And yet Hashem loves us and
is connected to us. If we stand in front of Hashem as a
creature, we're nothing. But if we stand in front of Hashem
with love, we're equal partners with everything.
It's very much like a marriage, and a marriage that is bland
is no marriage. If there's no excitement, if there's no
liveliness, it's not a marriage. That is why the first words
of the Seder, even before we eat the carpas, are,
". . . asher bochar bonu mikol om" and "veromemonu
mikol loshon, vekideshonu bemitzvosov." Because
HaKodosh Boruch Hu took us out of Mitzrayim not just
so that we would recognize him, but He took us out for
Matan Torah, for a marriage. Even though at the
Leil HaSeder we still have to count seven weeks up to
that marriage, tonight is the beginning.
So we take the first cose and we go crazy! We pick it
up and we start singing. We are not singing because there is
a Creator of the world -- we'll talk about that later. And we
are not singing because of the knowledge of Hashem's
greatness. We are rejoicing because the Creator is close to
us (bochar bonu) and loves us and took us out of
Mitzrayim (veromemonu mikol loshon).
We finish by saying mekadeish Yisroel -- alluding to
kiddushin, marriage -- vehazmanim indicating
that now is the special time, whether we feel we're worthy of
it or not.
Then we make the brochoh of Shehecheyonu,
saying that Hashem kept us alive with love and brought us to
the Seder for this wonderful day, to be reborn in this
marriage.
Carpas
Then carpas, as if to say: "Wait a second! We went
crazy already, but let's review the basics." This is implied
by what it says about the reason for carpas:
"sheyish'alu hatinokos." Then the tinokos can
come out and start asking the questions, because when we
really have to understand something it is only through
questions that we can succeed in doing so. If you are afraid
to ask, you'll never get there.
Maggid
Then we talk about yetzias Mitzrayim. We talk about
both issues, the katnus and the gadlus,
understanding everything that's happening and also
understanding the reality of Hashem and the reality of our
relationship to Hashem.
Motzi, Matzoh, Morror
After we finish yetzias Mitzrayim then we are ready to
instill the emunah. This is the real connection of
gadlus, of trusting Hashem, and it is when we really
build ourselves as a structure. This is the matzoh.
Then, to guarantee that this emunah will always
prevail and that it will not be just a fleeting moment of
ecstasy, there's the morror. This is to remind us that
we are here on a very fragile basis, and one day we're going
to go back.
Shulchan Oreich
Just like the matzoh and the arba cosos are a
pair, the first two cosos are also a pair. The first
cose is like the matzoh -- it builds the
reality, the emunah. The second cose is the
excitement: "go'eil Yisroel," "asher ge'olonu vego'al es
avoseinu miMitzrayim . . . vehigi'onu halayloh hazeh le'echol
bo matzoh umorror." And then you are ready to eat the
seuda.
The second half of the Seder does not have the heights of the
first half, because the first part is where we built
everything. The second half of the Seder is called
da'as. When you ate the matzos, drank the cosos,
ate the morror, and ate the seuda, you
became full of reality and full of good ideas. Many times a
person has knowledge that just remains in his mind but it
does not become integrated into everyday life. The second
half of the Seder takes the results of the first half of the
Seder and integrates them into everyday life. This is done
primarily through two steps: bircas hamozone and
Hallel.
Boreich
At first glance, bircas hamozone should not be part of
the special Seder at all. We just happened to have eaten
matzoh and so there is bircas hamozone. But obviously
it does become part of the Seder because we see that there
are arba cosos and one of them is the cup of bircas
hamozone.
The explanation is that bircas hamozone is really part
of the Geuloh. This insight I heard from a cassette
from HaRav Uziel Milevsky zt"l who says something very
beautiful:
In the practical world, the most exaggerated slavery that we
have nowadays is parnossoh. Everyone is a slave to
making a living. "I'd love to stay in shul more; I'd love to
learn more; I'd love to do this -- but I have to work." The
food of our lives, the food that we eat, enslaves us to this
world.
The appreciation of the truth that parnossoh comes
from Hashem, is really a most important ingredient of the
issue of cheirus. If you don't know how to say that
HaKodosh Boruch Hu is hazon es ho'olom, that it
is He Who brings prosperity to the world -- "kulo, betuvo,
bechein, bechessed, uverachamim. Hu nosain lechem lechol
bosor" -- then you really never left Mitzrayim and you
are still a slave.
Since the idea of the third and fourth cose is to take
what we have learned and to integrate it into our everyday
life, we start with bircas hamozone. We pick up the
third cose and we sing to Hashem and we say: You took
us out of Mitzrayim, which is an expression of meitzar,
of narrowness and oppression, and you brought us to a
beautiful wide world, a world of freedom. The real freedom is
that we know that this whole world is really run by Hashem
and that every penny that we make and every piece of bread
that we have comes from Hashem. And if we can pick up this
cose and sing this song, then we are really a free
people.
Hallel
After you finish the bircas hamozone, comes the
Hallel, which is also this same idea. When you praise Hashem
and you sing and you are happy, then it means that it is real
for you.
We generally have a lot of reasons to be happy in our lives,
but we're not happy. So why aren't we happy? Because we don't
live the reality of those ideas that we have learned. If we
can say Hallel and we can sing to Hashem, then we really are
free people, because then all the things that look negative
in our eyes, all the depressions and all the trials of this
world, don't bog us down. By singing to Hashem and looking at
the beautiful world, we come to realize that the world is not
a dark world and not a world of pain.
If life means you are here to be comfortable, then if you
don't have the right marriage and you don't have the right
family that you wanted, and you don't have the right
parnossoh that you wanted -- to some people it even
means that they don't have the right car that they wanted --
then the world is dark.
If life means attachment to Hashem, then nothing and nobody
can stop us from attaching to Hashem. Then life is a song,
life is beauty, and we can say, "Hodu LaHashem ki tov, ki
le'olom Chasdo" -- Hashem is tov, because his
kindness never stops. He is always there with us. There may
be clouds, but clouds bring rain and thus they are only an
expression of more and more tov, and more and more
brochoh. Everything is an expression of brochoh
in this world, if you know how to look at it from the
right perspective.
Nirtzoh, Shir Hashirim
Then at the end of the Seder, we say Shir HaShirim.
Saying Shir HaShirim, to my knowledge, is not brought
down in Chazal but is a minhag that the Jewish people
took upon themselves.
Since the central idea of Odom that we built in the
Seder is attachment to Hashem, and we have just finished the
Seder which concludes with zemiros such as Chad
Gadyo and Vayehi Bachatzi Halayloh that embrace
the history of the whole world and what will be in the
future, out of excitement we jump up and give Hashem a kiss
by saying, "Shir haShirim asher liShlomo. Yishokeini
mineshikos Pihu. (1:2)
And this siyata deShmaya carries us throughout the
first day of Pesach. Tonight we say Hallel and tomorrow we
are going to say Hallel again, and the whole day of Pesach is
a day of siyata deShmaya. To waste the day, with small
talk or whatever, is a big waste. It is a wonderful day: the
Heavens are open!
*
Many of us, as time goes on, feel that Pesach did not do any
of this -- and that is a big mistake.
Pesach is a change. If you did the Seder -- whether with less
excitement or with more excitement, whether with less
understanding or more understanding -- you made a change. But
the more you understand it, and the more you look to feel the
change, the more and more to'eles there will be in it
for you.
We have to try to continue the cleanliness and the
preparations we made for Pesach, the biyur chometz,
for the whole year.
We live in a world where everyone is looking for fun, for
entertainment, for experiences, for games. Everything is one
idea: enjoyment of life.
But this, even without aveiros, is the exact opposite
of the whole central idea of Torah. The whole idea of Torah
is that there is a Hashem, there is a Creator, and that we
are married to Him, that we find beauty by Him, that we sing
to Him, and that we find enjoyment by Him. That is why the
epitome of the Seder is Shir HaShirim: "Chiko mamtakim
vechulo machmadim, zeh dodi vezeh rei'i." (5:16) That is
the important idea, the one from which everything else
starts.
HaKodosh Boruch Hu should help us to be zocheh
to really absorb from the Seder everything that there is
to absorb.
