Torah

Imagine a teenager lying on a grassy field, gazing into the night sky. As he stares up at the stars, he thinks to himself, “Look at how enormous the universe is. The sky just expands endlessly... It must go on forever.” After sitting with that thought for a few moments, he becomes uncomfortable. “How can anything go on forever? Everything must stop eventually.” But after a few moments of relaxation, his thoughts intrude again. “But how can the universe stop? What exists on the other side when the universe ends? It must go on forever...” And this inner dialogue continues as he struggles to contemplate the infinite within his finite mind. This struggle is not a childish one; it is a challenge that confronts any finite being who tries to connect to the infinite.

We all want to share deep and thoughtful ideas at the Seder in order to enhance the experience. I hope this collection of divrei Torah will aid you on your journey towards a meaningful, transformative Seder night.

In our previous article, we began exploring the deeper nature of the sin of the M’raglim (Spies). To review, we explained that the sin of the M’raglim lay in the way they perceived Eretz Yisrael. The M’raglim’s physical sight was intact; what they lacked was spiritual sight. They physically saw giants burying their dead, but they interpreted this to mean that the “land consumes its inhabitants” (BaMidbar 13:32). In reality, as the Gemara explains, this was a miracle that Hashem performed to aid the M’raglim in their mission. Hashem killed off the leaders of the giants in each city so that the dwellers would be distracted with their funerals, ensuring that the M’raglim could travel through Eretz Yisrael undetected (Sotah 35a). The death of the giants was the external reality; the sin of the M’raglim lay in projecting faulty meaning onto it.

 “I did not know what learning just a half hour of Mishnah Berurah could do to my life! At the beginning of the machzor a friend of mine told me that a chaburah was forming in our shul and asked if I could join. After a bit of cajoling, I agreed. What can I say? Now, from the time I wake up in the morning until the time I go to sleep, every action is done through the prism of the halachos that I have learned in Daf HaYomi B’Halacha! I started with the halachos of waking up in the morning and then I learned so much about tzitzis and tefillin, kriyas shema – halachos that I had never known.”

It was a stormy night, and a battleship was on exercise at sea. The captain stood on the bridge, peering into the foggy night ahead. Suddenly, he heard the lookout shout from the observation post. “There’s a light on the starboard side!”

Time is a prominent theme of Pesach, but it expresses itself in a unique and somewhat puzzling manner. On Pesach, we are commanded to eat matzah (unleavened bread); eating chametz (leavened bread) is absolutely forbidden (Sh’mos 12:15). This is an incredibly strict prohibition; the punishment for eating chametz is kareis (spiritual excision). This seems extreme, as the difference between matzah and chametz can come down to a matter of seconds. This means that a single second can decide a person’s spiritual reality, determining whether one performed a mitzvah or violated the most severe of prohibitions. Why is time so central to Pesach, and how can a single second of time have such significant implications?