BITTUL CHUMETZ: THE AWAKENING OF THE SOUL

 

            

The rain 
washed down the windshield in torrents undeterred by the wipers. The
driver wiped his bleary eyes and the world swam. Only a few more miles, he
thought and I will be able to deliver the medicine from the pharmacy and go
home.  He glanced at the directions
scribbled on a wrinkled paper.  Here’s
the turn.  There’s the house.  He wearily unlatched the car door, hitched
his jacket over his head and moved quickly through the Spring storm to the
front door.  As the door bell rang , he
heard   the sound of small feet running
in his direction.

The door opened and he blinked to adjust his eyes
to the dim light inside.  He looked and
nearly giggled, “It’s nighttime, he thought, “do you know where your children
are?”  If you don’t , they are probably
here tiptoeing one behind the other in a long uneven line, following a man
carrying a candle near to the ground, squinting as he stoops down and peers
into the back of a sofa cushion.   No one
paid attention to the stranger at the door, except for one small boy who seemed
to be

 

              
                                         

motioning him to join in. The young delivery man stood there awkwardly
staring at this odd sight, early memories stirring deep within him.

What could he be thinking – this stranger? What
could he understand of this Jewish law and time honored custom of (bedikas
chumetz) – the searching for any grain product, such as bread and cake, that
has risen.  Now, we know what it is all
about, we are used to it, we understand it – or do we?

 It is  Erev Pesach.  
We have just spent weeks cleaning our homes from top to bottom, making
certain that not one crumb of chumetz remains anywhere in our realm.  We have scoured  every crevice, turned each pocket inside out
and emptied our children’s secret treasure troves of cookies and pretzels.  And just 
as we have begun to feel that unique once- a -year feeling, that sense
that we really have managed to rid ourselves of every crumb — at that  moment – we assign someone to secretly hide
(the custom being ten) pieces of chumetz throughout our homes and possessions.
Then specifically in the darkness of  the
night we make a candle light “search”– and as we find each piece, we carefully
sweep it triumphantly away with the help of a feather and a wooden spoon into a
guarded place.

Why are we doing this?  Is it merely symbolic?  What is going on?



What would this soggy stranger think, if we told him that we were
regaining our freedom with those ten pieces of bread?

Yet, it is actually true.  The night of bedikas chumetz,  like every other meaningful event in life has
three components, the person, that is ourselves,  place and time.  The Creator is referred to as HaMakom , the

   Place,  because there is no place devoid of His
Presence.  However Hashem has made room
for us and allows us and our possessions to exist in His world. When we do
bedikas chumetz, we are proclaiming that 
it is His world and we are his invited guests.  When we accept this upon ourselves and fulfill
the commandment that requires us to 
relinquish a kosher, ordinarily innocuous possession , that is when we
begin to taste freedom.  This is because
it  is difficult to pull away from the
lures of this world which can enslave us, and addict us and  remove our freedom of choice. But when Hashem
directs us to do so, and we comply, He provides us with the ability to let
go.   



The third component of this event is time
which  plays the major role in our Pesach
preparations.  It is only time that
separates chumetz from matzah, for they both start with the same ingredients,
flour and water.  Chumetz, leaven, is
created through a process of fermentation that causes pockets of air to form in
the flour and water mixture, expanding the dough and making it grow large.  Like dough, egos can also be inflated.  The leavening agents can be  money, power, vanity or fame, together with
the flattery that catalyzes them into a bubbling brew that pumps up our sense
of self importance. One extra moment can mark the difference between leavened
and unleavened –one moment can be enough to transform  the mixture of flour and water from
permissible matzah into forbidden chumetz. And it only takes but a moment of
time for us to feel achieved and

congratulate ourselves for our accomplishments thus improperly taking personal
credit for that which Hashem has given to us.



So as we make our bedikas
chumetz or any other mitzvah, we should try to do so with the un-self conscious
innocence, inspiration and joy of a child.

          Now with a better understanding of the need
for the bedika, let us ask but why search in the darkness of night? We might
think that it is not such a good idea as evening symbolizes the powers of the
dark side- the sitra achra.  However, on
this special night, we are given the assignment and ability to enter its realm
on a “search and destroy mission”.  In
those moments, that ner/candle is a holy spiritual beam that is able to
penetrate deeply to expose any sign of ego inflation. In the esoteric tradition
the Ner represents a vessel for the – shefa – the holy influence that channels
the Divine Radiance thereby illuminating any dark or hidden places, allowing us
find, identify and remove any impurities. Through the removal of any “excess
baggage” we are then prepared  to
receive  the special (kiddusha) holiness
that permeates  the night of Passover.

                  One final thought on the multifaceted
value of the bedikas chumetz. The ideal way to perform this minhag is to allow
some member of the house or close friend to hide some small portions of bread
or mezzonos. Many have the custom of 
placing ten pieces for esoteric reasons and also to insure the finding
of some chumetz in an already thoroughly clean home.  But this practical reason is not necessarily
the only explanation.

  This
hunt for chumetz is a joint mitzvah that gets everyone involved in an effort to
accomplish this task.       So in the years when my children were
young, we would use this night to send a not-so-subtle message to them.  Chumetz  would be put in places where old battles were
fought.  So, for the child who would
leave his shoes in the middle of the room for others to trip over, chumetz would
be put in that shoe.  For another

child, a messy closet
was the battle ground and she would find a piece of chumetz there.  We would all end our bedikas chumetz laughing
over things that frustrated us during the year. Pesach is a time of unity and
what better way to nurture this idealistic state than making a bedika  from within and without.  

   This
captivating ritual of bedikas chumetz,  one of the many heart warming mitzvot of
Pesach, transforms a mundane cleaning process  into a sacred and mystical rite. This creates
the atmosphere in which Pesach is renewed each year – And as Pesach is renewed
– so are we. As for the young delivery man who was standing at the entranceway,
may that glimpse into the Pesach experience be just the right “prescription”
for his transformation.

           La Shana Haba bi-Jerusalem    La
Shana Haba bi-Jerusalem

All articles appearing on this blog are copyrighted by Rabbi Yehoshua Binyamin Falk. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to share/download/copy this information as long as it is accompanied by the copyright. Separately authored/copyrighted materia

THE TIME FOR FREEDOM

     

                                          

 

     In a few  verses (pesukim) in the beginning of the
Book of Exodus (Sefer Shemos) , the Torah sets in motion the political
and emotional forces that were to keep the children of Israel in bondage for
the next two hundred and ten years. 
These same forces which were aimed at keeping this nascent people
enslaved to  materialistic pursuits,
goals and values have operated as a snare throughout history and are present
today, only the stage setting has changed and the fact of the bondage has been well
concealed.

The mindset that led to the
subjugation of the Children of Israel in Egypt was their yearning to be like
everyone else – to assimilate into the Egyptian culture.  In their eagerness to be a part of that culture,
many mistakenly replaced their service of the Creator (Hashem) with loyal
service to the governing regime in a manner far beyond and above that which is
required by the ordinary dictates of good citizenship.                     

            Pharaoh, who personifies the Jewish
nemesis, the yetzer hara, understood that as long as the Jewish people
were living in accordance with high standards of spiritual development,” he
would not be able to subjugate them. 
They were the beneficiaries of Hashem’s promise to Avraham our
forefather  – a promise which was to be
eternally evidenced by the bris mila, covenant of circumcision.  However, after Joseph died, some of the Jews
stopped circumcising their sons because they wanted to emulate the
Egyptians.  (Midrash Rabba
I:8).  In order to prevent their assimilation,
Hashem transformed the appreciation the Egyptians previously had into a feeling
that the Bnei Israel had become a threat to them.

The yetzer hara, in the
guise of Pharaoh, then changed its form, face and presentation in order to
subjugate the Israelites and turn them into servants of the state. 

To induce the Israelites to participate in their building
program, the Egyptians hung a brick kiln around Pharaoh’s neck, inviting the
Jews to join him in brick making.  Each Israelite
man went to work making as many bricks as possible, which thereafter became the
expected quota. The Jews thus became willing accomplices in their own
enslavement, wooed and won over by this appeal to “love of country.” This
technique, oft repeated in Jewish history, trapping them into assimilation and
distancing them from their connection to the teachings (Torah) of the
Creator. 

              Modern society today poses a
different but equally challenging test, by placing the modern equivalent of the
brick kiln around the necks of those who act as role models teaching that true  value can be measured only in terms of money
and or  fame.

 

                                         Addicted
to Bondage

By the time the Israelites began
to see the futility and hypocrisy of their alliance with Pharaoh, it was too
late. The bondage had become an addiction.   The Bnei Yisrael were given the task
of building arei miskenos, cities, whose names were Pisom and Ra’amseis.
The word miskenos has the same root as the word miskein which
means misfortune or poverty.    Pisom
means sudden or immediate.  It also can
refer to the mouth of the abyss, pi tehom (Midrash Rabba
I:10).  Ra’am means loud, like a
thunderclap.

            In our hectic lives, where sudden and
immediate claims upon our time are an all too frequent occurrence, if we are
not discerning, we may find that we are building Pisom.  We may also necessarily be building Ra’amses,
since these calls to duty are usually loud and very difficult to ignore. One of
the ploys of the yetzer hara is to persuade us that we must accomplish everything
we have set out to do which can lead to feel overwhelmed. Pharaoh well
understood that working without respite on purposeless tasks that could never
be completed would weaken the physical, mental, emotional and most importantly
spiritual health of the Nation.

         Acting too
quickly and assuming excessive obligations without enough considered thought as
to their value and purpose can make a person feel like a slave. The connection between
such a distressing state of affairs and the bondage in Egypt is apparent. We
can now readily see how these words of our eternal Torah apply to anyone at any
time:  “They embittered their lives with avoda
kasha
, hard work, bechomer, with mortar and with leveinim,
bricks, and with every labor of the field; all the labors that they performed
with them were with crushing harshness” (Shemos 1:14).   The work was kasha, hard.  This word is related to the word for straw, kash,
to hint to us that work is hard when it is like straw to us, that is, when it
is commonplace and purposeless.   Mortar,
chomer, which in Hebrew also means material, represents that which is stripped
of spiritual content and inspiration. 
Even without purpose and without inspiration we can still produce leveinim,
bricks, but when one works under those circumstances they are reduced to field
laborers (avoda basadeh) deprived of higher motivation, dignity and joy.

           

                                                            Salvation

But take heart; there is a way out.  There is an answer that may surprise us.  Moshe Rabbeinu told Pharaoh to release us
because we are being called upon to serve Hashem.   Service of the Creator is not always easy,
but it has all of the components that make it humane and perfect.  It provides meaningful obligations that have
an eternal reward.  It provides periodic
rest periods on Shabbos and Holy Days dedicated to  joy and rest for our weary souls. 

           When we
stop and take stock of our options and our strengths, the time we have, the
things we must do in order to fulfill our obligations as Jews as opposed to
those things that we may be doing to serve some other cultural demand, we may
be pleasantly surprised by the result. 
We may be able to simplify our lives and our goals and live in greater
harmony then we ever thought possible.

 The job of the Egyptian taskmasters was to
maximize the burdens upon the Israelites which ultimately shortened their
servitude and enhanced their purification in the caldron that was Egypt.  It is precisely when the “task masters of
time” bear down upon us that we have the opportunity to cull the necessary from
the unnecessary and focus upon those matters that are essential to our spiritual
work.  This level of discernment can be  achieved by sincerely asking for Hashem’s
help in the process. 

This will actualize Pharaoh’s
fear that we will  “go up [be raised up]
from the land.”  “The land” which
represents our physical and mental attachment to this world will no longer have
a hold on us.  When we cleave to Hashem
through His Torah, we will be elevated to a higher level of consciousness
referred to as “the children of (Bnei) Israel.”

The Torah teaches us that the
more the Jewish nation was afflicted the more they increased and spread out.
This means that even during this period when we, as a nation, were far from
reaching the perfect service of Hashem, His Divine Radiance was still with
us.  In the dark and immoral environment
of Egypt,
Israelite slaves, who were deprived of all the benefits that culture and civilization
are thought to bestow, were being forged into a holy nation.  The very harshness of the bondage actually
strengthened the potential in each Israelite, so that when the time was ripe,
Hashem would redeem us. The teaching here is very profound as it is a lesson to
us that suffering and affliction can have very beneficial results. We do not
ask for tests, but if they come, they can inspire our best performances. From
this spiritual plateau we will not only be free from Pharaoh and Mitzrayim but
we will be able to fulfill the will of the Creator in the holy land of Eretz Israel.

               May we
merit this soon in our days.  

All articles appearing on this blog are copyrighted by Rabbi Yehoshua Binyamin Falk. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to share/download/copy this information as long as it is accompanied by the copyright. Separately authored/copyrighted materia

SECRETS OF THE AFIKOMAN

B.S.D.                                                                                                                               

                                   

                                                                                                                                   

  It’s the night of the first seder and your grandfatheris sitting at the head of the table. He breaks the middle matza, wraps it upand hides it behind his  pillow. This isthe afikoman which is destined to become the highlight of the seder.

  You are still very young and don’t yet appreciate its value. Your grandfather gets upfor a moment and when your uncle points to the pillow saying, “Get it now,quickly, while he’s not looking,” you hesitate, feeling quite shy.

Itisn’t just this unfamiliar prompting, but it’s everything –the house looks sodifferent. The table is much longer than usual– it’s white and beautiful withlots of shiny glasses, sparkling silver and guests. All the table tops andcounter tops are covered with colorful plastic and the sink has some kind ofmetal tub inside it. Nonetheless, you finally get up and  with a burst of courage you move closer to yourgrandfather’s chair, hesitating, until some one prompts you, “Quick, grab itand run.”

Fora second, you feel afraid, but as soon as it is in your hand, your brothertells you to quickly run and hide it. You run to do what he says and you startto feel excited and happy.  The sedermoves ahead. Everyone has eaten. Just when  you are starting to feel very sleepy, yourgrandfather asks you for the afikomen. You go to get it, and your big brother tells you to wait, and explainsthat you must ask for a really big present and get a promise  before you give it back. This scene isrepeated in tens of thousands of Jewish households across the world on Passovernight.

Doesn’tit seem a bit odd?  Here we are seeminglyallowing our small children to take something that doesn’t belong to them and ontop of that extort a prize for their efforts. All this takes place on one ofthe holiest nights of the year.  How canwe possibly understand this conduct?

  Usually the evil inclination tries to lure aperson into improper behavior using thrills and excitement. Even though we wantto avoid such conduct, the problem we face is that we simply cannot discard theevil inclination.  As in the well known Medrash,when the Sages prayed to remove the yetzer hara and Hashem answered their prayers,even the chickens stopped laying eggs. The evil inclination is necessary but needsto be controlled. The challenge to us is to sur mei ra, avoid evil, yetpreserve our enthusiasm and direct it to our good deeds.  But how do we do this? 

     We are, perhaps, doing precisely this whenwe encourage our children to take the afikomen. We are allowing our young and pure children to experience the excitementthat is motivated by the evil inclination when engaged in risky, dangerous andthrill seeking conduct.  We do this bygiving them a controlled dose of the “taste of desire.” As the child grows up,that spiritual inoculation that was administered in the name of Heaven and withlove continues to act as an antidote against the infectious powers of the evilinclination.  Indeed, that small dose, onPassover Night, affords the child the ability to rekindle those exuberant feelings directing them in a positive mode while learning Torah, performing mitzvos and good deeds.

How can the same small “taste of desire” act as a vaccine shielding the child from harm, while at the same time inspiring the child with enthusiasm for all things that are Holy? It is because of the setting in which this taste is given.  The seder night is called, lay’l shemurim,the night of watching – the perfect night for this process to take place. It isa time when the forces of evil are subdued. 

    You may be wondering, how can this spiritualinoculation continue to protect us into our adult years?   Possiblythe answer is we use booster shots!  Oh,we are not suggesting that this Pesach you grab the afikoman, however we shouldwatch the child who is taking it and allow that small child inside of us torelive and rekindle those feelings of joy, exuberance and enthusiasm. Thatalone will allow us to tap into our wellspring of positive emotions.

Maywe all merit to bring the korbon Pesach,Passover sacrifice, to the Holy Temple inJerusalem soon in our days.

All articles appearing on this blog are copyrighted by Rabbi Yehoshua Binyamin Falk. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to share/download/copy this information as long as it is accompanied by the copyright. Separately authored/copyrighted materia

ORIGIN OF A NAME

                                                 

 

Children will often ask, when
they’ve gotten old enough, “Who am I named after?  If a grand parent is within earshot, they
will answer, perhaps with a lump in their throats, “You’re named after your great grandfather or great grandmother. Sometimes you will see a grandmother or grandfather at a bris
weeping openly, thanking Hashem that their beloved parent finally has a name.
Then there are Jews whose parents and even grand parents, had through no fault
of their own, drifted so far from their Jewish roots that they don’t realize
any significance in giving their children Jewish names.  This is the true story of one such child and how the facts of his Jewish name unfolded after he grew up.

             
Jerry even as a very young child always knew he was Jewish but he didn’t
know what it meant or how to relate to it. His memories were mixed with him
eagerly awaiting to hearing the shofar on Rosh Hashanah, Pesach he excitingly
recalls crawling under the table to try to be the first to swap the matzah and
Chanukah he happily remembers lighting the candles, playing dradle and
receiving many gifts. However, all the other days of the year were without any
remnant of Jewish heritage or consciousness. Throughout his teenage years, he felt
restless somehow realizing that there was much more to life than just material
goals, therefore in the late sixties Jerry put on his backpack filled with
empty “containers of hope” and started to search for a way of life that would
be more meaningful and purposeful. After almost a full year of wandering and
exploration in cultures foreign to the West, Jerry fortunately, in a “last” ditch
effort to explore his Jewish ness flew to Eretz Israel and, B.H. began learning
in a yeshiva for ba’alei teshuvah. 

         
One day the Rav of the Yeshiva asked Jerry what his Jewish name was, to
which he shyly replied that he, among most of his peers in his temple, was only
given English name, whereupon the Rav compassionately and sensitively suggested
to him that he would be greatly spiritually enhanced if he would choose a
Jewish name.



             
After thoughtful deliberation, Jerry chose the combined names of Yosef
Dovid and at the very next reading of the Sefer Torah he was proudly called up,
at the age of twenty-fours years old, for his first aliya and the official
giving of his Jewish name.

           Twenty years later Yosef Dovid’s brother became
interested in   genealogy and decided to trace the family’s
roots.  This brother is a research scientist
and approached this task with all of the same energy and discipline of detail
that he has poured into his other projects. 
He began by researching their mother’s side of the family-tree being
able to only go back three generations. One day he called Yosef Dovid to inform
him of his progress, telling over the names a number of relatives that he had
discovered. Upon hearing the name Dovid in the list, Josef Dovid asked him
again which relative he was? His brother answered that he was their mother’s
grandfather. Yosef Dovid realized that if he had been given a Jewish name at
birth, he could not have been named after his grandfathers since they were both
alive at the time and his parents would have had naturally looked to one of the
great grandfathers for a name. This was an exciting revelation and helped Yosef
Dovid feel even more connected, because of one of the names he had chosen, to
the unbroken chain of his Jewish lineage.

              A few months later Yosef Dovid’s  brother, still in pursuit of genealogical information,
called  to share his latest discovery
which was the name of the small town near Strasburg, Germany named Dimerringen,
that had been home to their  father’s side
of the family for a number of generations. Located on the French boarder,
Dimmerengen’s cemetery and historical records including statistical lineage
were somehow amazingly preserved through two world wars and territorial
disputes between Germany and France over the last few hundred years.



          
On a subsequent trip from Eretz Israel to America, Yosef Dovid arranged
for a one day stop over in Strasburg. Immediately upon landing, he took a taxi
from the airport to the train station in Strasbourg. As he entered the huge
station with its vaulting ceilings, pre-conscious memories stirred. Then like
in a dream he was momentarily transported in time, watching wraithlike,
tattered remnants of a once proud nation filling the crowded platforms trying
to make an exodus to safety on trains bound for a very different destination.
He shook his head and the vision dissolved. The present day noise and bustle of
this busy station took its place. As he bought a ticket for the last train for
Dimerringen, the ticket agent told him to hurry because the train would be leaving
in just a few minutes.

           With heavy suitcases in hand, Yosef Dovid
moved briskly up a flight of stairs and as he approached the platform, the
train waiting there blew its whistle and started to pull ever so slowly out of
the terminal.  Realizing that this might
be his only opportunity in the near future to visit his ancestral home, he
began running toward the departing train that was still creeping along the
tracks. As he got closer and closer to the last car, he began to sweat and
could barely catch his breath.  His legs
wobbled and his knees nearly buckled under the heavy weight of his suitcases.
Just inches from the steps of the last car, with a last desperate surge of energy,
he reached out to grab the hand rail and haul himself aboard.  But, just at that moment, the train picked up
speed and moved out of his reach, leaving a sad and exhausted Yosef Dovid
standing helplessly at the edge of the platform.



 He sat down on a nearby bench to catch his
breath, rest his weary body and quiet his emotions. After a few difficult moments,
he tried to resolve to not feel disappointed, coming to the realization of
everything that happens is decreed from on High and therefore even if not
understood is good  and even beneficial.

              
As Yosef Dovid was in the middle of reframing his disappointment to submissive
acceptance of Divine will, another train pulled up on the same track. The loud
speaker announced in German some message which included the name Dimerringen.
He found an employee who spoke some English and this employee informed him that
this was the right train and added that the other train was going in a
completely different direction. Yosef Dovid then whispered a prayer of thanks
to the Creator as he happily and now unhurriedly boarded the train.

             
The entire ride was spent in praise of The Creator for allowing him to
miss the first train –what a switch of consciousness! Once in Dimerringen, he
took a taxi to the outskirts of the city where the Jewish cemetery was located.
As he brother had been told the entire Jewish cemetery had miraculously
remained intact. As he walked about looking for the family plot, his eyes fell
upon an entire section of about eighty monuments all bearing his family name. Based
upon some of the dates on the inscriptions, it was clear that the time line traveled
up the family tree for many generations.



                
He quickly jotted down the names and their dates of birth and death.
Time was short as he had to catch the last train back to Strasbourg before his
flight.  Just as he was about to leave,
he spotted a small monument in the corner of the plot that was almost
completely covered with vines. He quickly walked towards it, bent down and
cleared the greenery away from the stone. This stone was clearly the oldest of
them all, dating back over two hundred years. When Yosef Dovid managed to
decipher the worn and faded engraving that spelled out the Hebrew name, he
stood speechless and in awe in front of it. The name on the monument was Yosef!

 Later Yosef Dovid joyfully discovered  through his brother’s research that he was a
direct lineal eighth generation descendent of the Yosef whose resting place he
had found.

                
Those two great grandfathers, Yosef from his father’s side and Dovid
from his mother side waited patiently under the Heavenly throne and only when
this sensitive soul many generations later, who would eventually return to his
Jewish heritage, was born that the Heavenly realm decreed their names be
rekindled and eventually revealed through this soul.

 The soul
always knows who we are and why we are here, hopefully someday that knowledge
is also shared with us.  

          
The ways of Hashem are wondrous!

All articles appearing on this blog are copyrighted by Rabbi Yehoshua Binyamin Falk. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to share/download/copy this information as long as it is accompanied by the copyright. Separately authored/copyrighted materia