Bitachon 203 - Pesach and Bitachon

You're listening to the 203rd edition of the Baken podcast. I'd like to share with you a thought that relates to and it relates to Pes whose foundation as we'll see in of Rabbi Pere my rebi the foundation of Pes is the concept of it's our belief that just as Hashem did miracles for us inas in the Exodus from Egypt so Hashem performed sometimes discreet miracles and sometimes express miracles and all of it. He's behind it all. And that's indeed something that we learn, we're supposed to understand from the he's speaking in the context of the man. And I'd like to share with you a thought from the manana. And then I'll share with you something from which is right before which has to do with how do we perhaps have a little bit of a different approach into getting not the regular run-of-the-mill idea that we've spoken about until now. And we've been speaking a long time but we'll get to that. First and my parent says like this man we have to understand why is it that the child why do we want a child to be the one to motivate us to answer the question and to think about the to think about the exodus from Egypt why is it initiated by a question from a child so lays down as follows and I'm going to read the Hebrew I'm going to translate the foundation of what was What became new? What new information did we get when we look at the story or when we experienced it as the Jewish people left Egypt? Is something which happens again and again which is renewed. It's a concept that happens again and again in each and every generation. Which is interesting because this language of is used also later on in the we speak about the the fact that in every generation they rise up against us to try to destroy us. We'll come back to that thought. But here we're speaking about the fact that Hashem redeems us in every generation. The understanding here the foundation of of the Exodus which we mention every day which we say we remind ourselves about it in shah we remind ourselves about it in kdesh on shabas constantly it's in our it's in the the on our door it's in the that we wear constantly constantly we're reminding ourselves about the exodus why because there's something foundational there and that is Hashem is involved intimately he didn't just create the world and then let it flow. He's involved intimately in human lives. Everything that happens only depends on Hashem's divine providence. not an angel. It may have looked might have looked like an angel. Mosher Rabu might have been the one to to with his staff and with his warnings to power it might have looked like he was doing but it wasn't him. Right? We don't mention Rabenu at all in the Hashem. It was God and there might have been there might have been messengers that he used but it was really him manifesting through them. Every single thing that happens to every single individual, me and you and everyone around us and nations, it's all just a manif manifestation of Hashem's will. Every time we come to the night of Pes which will be coming to soon each and every one of us goes through our own goes through our own exodus which really means the point of telling the story is so that we should understand and recognize that the miracles that happened then who was behind those miracles who intervened in in human events in order to bring about a salvation for Am Israel to take us out to take us out of slavery out of bondage and to give us the Tyra to create a relationship with us. It was Hashem and Hashem is behind the miracles and he's behind every single thing that happens to this. But he says an interesting thing. What's unusual is that we're having a question asked by a child and the the initiation of the entire is with that child. He's asking why is this night different from all of the nights and the answer is as we're going to say we were slaves in Egypt. Hashem took us out with amazing miracles and he's behind all the miracles and he is the foundation of our lives. Every single thing that happens to us, there's no happen stance. There's only miracle. Alter says it very clearly. He says equals n equals tea. Nature itself is miraculous and miracles are also nature. They're part they're not separable. You can't can't really separate them. But why do we have a child initiate this? So pair says that the reason is that often when a person experiences a miracle. When we experience things in our lives that are above nature, we don't even notice it. We're just used to it. We experience things that my heart is beating. I can breathe. I'm healthy. I have kids. There's so many things in our lives that we take for granted and we don't recognize because it's it's it's just the way it is. When a person has a miracle happen, you know, you could be driving on the street, you could have you don't might not even be aware of the fact that an accident was excuse me was prevented. You need someone outside of the picture sometimes to to say, "Hey, I saw what happened. I saw you pass by. There was almost an accident and you just passed on through. We want a child to ask the question. We want, you know, I have a 2-year-old son, and he's starting to ask the man. He's learning to say it. might not know what he's talking about, but for example, I just brought him and my other kids, some of my kids to the to a matzah factory, and you could watch their wonder as they saw the machine matzas and how the and how the dough comes through the machine, it gets flattened, then it goes through the oven, gets cut into squares first, etc. We watched the whole process. We watched them doing the creating the the the hand mas, putting it into the oven. and you watch it and you're in wonder. I could watch it on my ch children's faces. But we need that wonder because we need a children's look. A child looks at things with innocence and with with realness. Sometimes it takes an outsers's view, a childlike view, for us to realize something that we might know already, but we're not thinking about, right? The sham says at the beginning of the savory, he says, "I'm not coming to teach you anything that you don't know. I'm coming to teach you something that you already know, but we don't pay attention to. We need a child to be Why is this night different from all other nights? by him arousing the question. So it awakens us to the things that we became indifferent to. We got used to it and it awakens my own hispilus. Hispilus means my feelings, my my in a feeling of inspiration. I can get inspired. My kid asks a question. He's inspired. He's noticing something different. So it wakes me up to it. And so here we have an understanding which we mentioned before of how it's it seems to be a contradiction. It says that Hashem himself I did it. Hashem says there was no messenger. It was God himself who came and took the Jewish people out of Egypt. Looks like Moshe. It's not Moshe. But there's another puk that Hashem commanded us when when weed we slaughtered the pascal lamb pes. So we took the blood put on the doorposts. Hashem instructed us to do so so that the angel wouldn't come to cause destruction. So, it sounds like there's an angel which causes destruction and it can't really distinguish between Jewish homes and non-Jewish homes. So, it sounds like it's not Hashem doing it. So he explains there certainly was there was a destroyer, an angel of destruction like we we quote the verse later on in the which speaks about the destructive angels who are going to come and cause destruction to the Egyptians. Maybe it's talking about in the future time when we're going to see our gula, our redemption, there's going to be destructive forces that come and destroy our enemies, destroy their nuclear aspirations. But what we're after here, and this is a recognition that it's Hashem and not not an angel. It's not the Iron Dome dome system. It's not the THAAD rockets. It's not the Patriot rockets. It's not the Air Force. It is them. But who is working through them because there's really nothing else besides Rashem. The Malik comes and and and causes destroys the firstborn of our enemies. The Malik comes in the guise of beepers and destroys the firstborn of our enemies etc etc on through history the destruction among Israel's enemies it looks like it happens perhaps in a natural way or in a supernatural way but it's not clear that it's Hashem the point here is and this is the foundation of The this is the foundation of what we're supposed to learn from is that Hashem his hand is hidden behind everything everything that we see every single thing that occurs in the world it's him everything that happens in my life if I'm successful it's him right the danger of I was discussing over this past Shabas with a very person I hated at his shabas table with his family. His name is Arit Tabak. He has a safer about put out a number of years ago, bestseller. We're talking about and he and he described his he had a vision, an idea, a concept, you know, a child is sitting on a tricycle and the child is on that tricycle and moving this way and that way and veering in this direction and that direction. He's okay. Okay, everything's fine. Now, he doesn't realize it, but on the back of his tricycle, there's a a huge pole. That pole has a handle. And with that handle, the the parent, the father is walking along behind the child and holding on to the the handle. Now, the when the child is veering this way and that, he's not touching or he's not changing the course, the trajectory of the child. He's letting the child do as he wishes. But when the child is about to veer off into the street into a place of danger, so the parent gently or perhaps firmly pushes the kid right back to where he belongs. And until that moment, the child doesn't even realize that the the parent is watching. He thinks he's doing his own thing. Feels like if he got somewhere on this tricycle, he got there because of his own efforts cuz he moved that steering wheel and he was turning his feet. But really the parent was watching all along waiting for the child to make a mistake so that the parent could keep that child safe. Does the same thing with us. It seems like our efforts are actually doing it but it's not. He's actually really in in the in the in the end of it all. He's the one who made the tricycle. He's the one who lets us go veer this way and that way. He's the one who sends us back on track when we make mistakes. But he's behind it all. And that's the lesson of of Mr of the Exodus. That's what we're supposed to think about as we come into the sedar. I'd like to share with you one more thought from from the what Rab P says in we say in right before the so we we we uncover the matzah and it's called which means the poor man's bread. But it also means the the bread that we're going to speak a lot about, right? The matzah, it's made out of the same ingredients as bread, but there's no or isa. There's no leavenning. The bread represents the hubris of the human being. His puffing himself up, making himself to be great. Look at what I've accomplished. Look how great I am. Is the bread of affliction. It's flat. There's no there's no hubris. There's no ego. There's no ga. How do we get that? We got it in mit. We got it in Egypt. We got it when we were in servitude. And that's one way of squashing one's ego is being beholden to subject to our enemies. In Egypt, we're subject to our enemies. We're in exile. Sometimes they could be nicer to us. Sometimes they're more mean to us. being subject to people who wish to destroy us. Whether it's Iran, whether it's Germany, whether it's the Christian world for the last 2,000 years, whether it's the Arab world, pugs, crusades, the list is endless. But what is the purpose of all of that? The purpose of all of that is to bring us back to ourselves because we get lost. We steer we get we get off. The more that we have hubris, the fatter we are, the the more leavenvening there is, the more we need to be squished down. We need to be flattened a little bit or a lot the more we get involved in in using our own kus. So that there's a great danger. So there's the but it's interesting because the same exact bread as P points out we also heard this from Rabbi Hab the same bread is the bread of it's the bread of affliction but it's also he refers to it as it's the bread that we eat as we're leaving Egypt. We're leaving Egypt and as we leave Egypt we're redeemed with that bread. Right? There was not time for the bread to rise and as they left they ate the matzah. That's why we eat the matzah. The puss says so in the gula itself in the redemption itself there's there's that flatbread. But you see there's a great danger because as we get out we had something to limit our yahar to limit our egos and really we can't stay in a place of redemption if we don't remain with our ego limited we need to stay in a a place of servitude not to Egypt but now servitude toades receive the Tyra and by the way that place of servitude is really a place of connection and love. It's a place of relationship and it's the same place as that's why I'm talking about this the the sense of the sense of trust comes out of a sense of relationship. The the Mishna says in in it says sorry make Hashem's will your will. Submit yourself surrender yourself to God's will and Hashem will make other people's wills subservient to yours. First in really we've talked a lot about different kinds of we've talked about where I ask Hashem where I can have I'm going to get something that I want specific but there's another level of which we've also spoken about which is where I accept whatever Hashem brings to me and really I need to start with that. I need to accept that whatever happens to me in the world is Hashem's will and then I can go on to perhaps once I have a relationship with him asking for something that I want. But it really starts and by the way it ends up being that I really only want what he wants. I don't need anything in excess. I don't need anything more than that. But that's the but how do we get to the and here's my last point that I'd like to share with you. It starts with this is the bread of affliction that that our forefathers ate in Egypt. So it talks about that the bread reminding us of the the limitation of our ego. But how what happens in the middle here is called suddenly we start saying whoever wants can come and visit us. You want to eat with us please come. Whoever wants to eat the carbon pes with us, please join us. And then we end off by saying this year we're here. Next year we're in the land of Israel. Now we are servants. We're servants of American dreams of wealth and prosperity. We're servants of all kinds of secular ideals. But we want to be free. We want to serve you. We want to serve you and learn your Tyra. But how do we get from the from the bread of affliction to subservance to the nations? How do we get to back to the land of Israel? How do we get to be free? How do we get to be free of all of the ideals and ideas that we've been inculcated in since our youth from the cultures that surround us? And the answer is in the middle the pathways called whoever wants to come and join us please join us. There's something you know we're used to being something has to do with between myself and God. But I want to offer to you that it's possible to get into that space in another way that has to do with offering someone else. Please can I how can I help you? How can I be of service to you? How can I how can I invite you? Please can I invite you to to join my meal to join in my carbon pesa? Can we do this together? It reminds me of something that my Rabb quoted on Shamas on the mitz of we break the middle man. What's the reason for it? So it's brought down in that the reason is I believe it's the kbo he says that in mit as they left Egypt some people their matzah baked properly in the sun and some people it just it it didn't it flopped. It didn't work out. They didn't have The people who had successful matzah, the matzah was baked, they cut their matzah in half and they gave half of it to their neighbors who didn't have. And that's the foundation of mitim. You want to know how you get from the humility of being a slave of being subservient to remaining in that space and being a true free person without the ego coming in. It's by seeing how I can share with somebody else. Seeing what I can do for another person. Putting aside my judgments of someone else. Hey, how why doesn't you get a job? Putting putting that aside and saying how can I share? How can I share? That space of sharing of love for another Jew is the foundation. That's how we got out of Egypt. It wasn't a coincidence that that's what's what happened. And we remind ourselves of that when we do the yakat, we break that middle matzah, reminding ourselves that the gula occurs with sharing with others. And that itself requires I I have enough. If I'm going to share, maybe it means I'm not gonna have enough. I'm gonna have enough. And the action of it is an act of the action of sharing what I have with someone else. When maybe I feel mitsum, I feel constricted. That's another avenue into it's another way through to a sense and a recognition and acting upon that recognition that Hashem is giving me everything that I need. Those are the thoughts I wanted to share and I hope that you'll be inspired by them that we have a beautiful pes. Thank you so much for listening. We'll see you again next time.