A Spiritually Transformational Seder
A Spiritually Transformational Seder
By Rebbetzin Tamar Taback
Exploring the inner mystical depth and meaning behind the Seder’s 15 steps.
The traditional 15-step structure of the Seder is pregnant with inner meaning and significance. The rhythm and progression behind the Seder are an eternal template for the deepest transformation of the Jewish soul. On Seder night we are able to receive a spiritual influx from above which jump-starts a whole new cycle of growth for the coming year.
Every process of spiritual awakening contains three stages: “Hachna’ah” – submission, “Havdala” – separation, and “Hamtaka” – sweetening[1]. This triple-beat shows up here too and turns the Seder into a powerful process that brings deep healing to your own beautiful soul.
First, submission – this takes place BEFORE Passover
In Judaism, the journey is an essential part of the destination. This is a paradigm shift for our western minds that fixate on the achievement of our goals. It is how we travel our course that allows God to palpably enter our lives.
In this vein, the transformational power of the Seder actually begins before Passover arrives. In the weeks of cleaning and scrubbing, shopping and cooking, we are getting ready to live life without chametz, leavened products. Not only are we eradicating the actual substance that represents the puffed-up ego, but the act of adhering to the will of God itself dissolves our egos [2]. Whatever false self we clutched onto now slowly melts away as we eagerly wipe and scrub our homes to remove all its chametz. Submission is the first step of the path of transformation, as we rise above our limited identities and find ourselves comfortably part of God’s world and in His value system. This submission enables us to tap into something greater than ourselves. The stage is set for redemption.
Second, Havdalah, separation – and the Seder Begins.
1. KADESH – SANTIFICATION
With the recital of Kiddush as the first of the 15-step journey, we sanctify everything to follow. In Jewish etymology, the concept of holiness suggests separating ourselves from all that is profane [3]. Therefore, with Kiddush, we set out on a journey with our intent to transform ourselves.
2. URCHATZ – WASHING THE HANDS
The first thing that needs to happen is the removal of alien forces that hover around us during the regular course of life, that impede our growth. These dark forces represent the aspects of evil that have managed to masquerade themselves as good to our own eyes and have actually taken on some of our affections. With the simple act of washing our hands, we are able to see these negative forces for what they are, (be they thoughts, emotions, behaviors or affiliations) and make the separation between what is truly good and what is not, what is holy and what is impure. [4]
It is a powerful movement up the ladder of Jewish transformation, when we are prepared to take this honest look at ourselves and allow what is non-essential to be washed away. [5]
3. KARPAS – VEGETABLE DIPPED IN SALT WATER
There is no authentic spiritual path without tears, dubbed the sweat of the soul. There is no joy of transformation without some degree of pain. Living a brave and authentic life takes courage and grit! While in the previous step we isolated our essence from all the non-essential layers of our beings and washed those away, in Karpas, we sow the seed of that new-found essence into soil and water it with the salt-water of our tears. As the psalmist says, “Those who plant with tears will harvest in great joy” [6]. These are the best tears we will ever cry as we are expanding our taste-buds/capacity for spirituality and are headed for nothing less than our greatness.
4. YACHATZ- BREAKING THE MATZA
The next step is the dissolving of that seed in the earth, the part of the process that appears the most devastating. Yachatz means brokenness, hinting that things might seem worse before they get better. We are finally letting go of whatever last vestige of ego remains as we confront the very vulnerable truth of what it means to be human. Staring directly at our vulnerability expands the little seed of perfect spiritual essence inside us, as we come into the coherent field of the simple truth that God is One and all that really is, and His love for us knows no bounds. Therefore, we can endure this breaking of the matza, since we know that the broken piece will become the crowning jewel at the end of the Seder, when it will reappear as the coveted Afikoman at the stage of Tzafun.
Third: Hamtaka, sweetening.
5. MAGGID – TELLING THE STORY
With Maggid, the real healing starts to happen. We tap into the characteristic energy of the month of Nissan, which according to the earliest mystical work Sefer Hayetzira is the energy of “holy speech”.
The gift of speech is the crowning feature of our humanity. With words, we are able to transcend even the most difficult of circumstances by expressing our desire for something different. The first stirrings of redemption came in Egypt when the Jewish people, persecuted, allowed themselves to groan. God heard their primal cries and knew they were ready for the first sprouting of their redemption [7] .
When we start to add words to that guttural expression, we are able to delineate the details of our story in the sequence in which they occurred. Maggid is a form of narrative therapy by which we begin to stitch all the details into one continuum within our hearts. This is the essence of the Kabbalistic idea called “sweetening”, as we suddenly realize that there was no piece of the story that can be excluded, and that somehow, amid twinges of pain and joy through its millions of nuances, there was always a higher order, an infinitely Great and Close Being, bringing all the parts together into one gestalt.
Through telling our story, we weave the bitter and the sweet into a tale of tension and pathos, of struggle and heroism, and most profoundly, of love. When we have the courage to view our lives in the way of a story, exploring our histories from their inglorious beginnings and everything we went through, unedited, we expose our deepest humanity and it is there that we find G-d. We realize that there was nothing extraneous and that, to our surprise, He was there all along. Perhaps the best part is realizing the emergence of our own resources, for as much as we have come to admit our imperfection, now we are able to admit to our greatness. Thus, our experience becomes integrated into our deepest identities and the good and the evil are no longer seen as two separate entities. This is the heart of the Seder and when the real transformation starts to take place, though it would not have been possible without any of the earlier steps.
6. RACHTZA – WASHING FOR THE MATZA
Now, we are ready to wash away whatever hasn’t been redeemable in our story, as well as the layers of our erroneous belief structures that only obscure our deepest truth. What is left is a re-kindled attachment to God, and we are now clear on our mission to move as His people in the world. The fragmentation and pull between good and evil that we may have felt at earlier stages is gone and replaced with the galvanization of all our inner resources.
7. MOTZI
8. MATZA – TWO BLESSING AND EATING THE MATZA
With this step in the journey, we are ready to imbibe the bread of humility into our very selves through the act of eating, for there is no ego left, only connection to God. Food has become sublime and the act of eating matza is the fulfillment of a positive commandment. We are ready to live with our commitment to our relationship with God as a natural part of our lives and to receive all that He wants to give us.
9. MAROR – THE BITTER HERBS
Maror is the “real-life” factor.
Ask yourself a question: what is more delectable, sugar straight from the bag or well-made chocolate? Sugar water or lemonade? Hot sweetened milk or coffee? In all of these pleasures, an intrinsically bitter component is added to the sweetness, and yields a far more pleasurable result than consuming the sweetness directly.
In a similar way, light is brighter when it is on a backdrop of darkness, and it is at this point in the Seder that we are able to relate to our suffering from a different place and extend our compassion to ourselves as well as to all those who suffer. For reasons we cannot fully understand, God in His infinite love adds painful challenge to the mix of life, and through it we are made great and our souls expand. A Seder without Maror lacks depth and beauty, and a heart without some pain lacks empathy. This is an advanced step and accrues the tremendous eternal reward of accepting our suffering with love. Ultimately, our pain brings us to an even more refined level of spirituality where we eliminate any vestige of impurity from ourselves and appear completely cleansed before God.
10. KORECH – THE SANDWICH
Here we are able to bear paradox and thereby go above the limitations of our minds. We lean like free men and make sandwiches as did Hillel in the time of the Temple. The sandwich is the ultimate mixture: the bread of freedom (matza) together with the bitter herbs (chazeres), dipped in the sweet mixture of the charoset symbolizing the mortar from the bricks of slavery. This is a real concoction, a sort of coda of the awareness we have been cultivating thus far, where we relate to our lives in a far deeper way than how they appeared to us at first. The bottom line: true freedom is derived from our relationship to God and gives our spirits the huge dimensions through which we can bear even the most intense paradox.
11. SHULCHAN ORECH – THE MEAL
At this moment, we have reached the level of sanctification where the act of eating our prepared feast is now the pinnacle of our Divine service. To prove that this is so, just before the main course begins, we actually say the first two paragraphs of Hallel, the praises King David composed to be said at our highest and most joyous moments. It couldn’t be clearer that the act of eating is not an interruption of the holy Hallel, but a continuation of our praises in the form of the partaking of our delicious meal. We praise God, fusing the physical and spiritual into one.
12. TZAFUN – REVEALING THE HIDDEN
Now, with a new relationship to our suffering, we are on the other side of any ordeal we have been through, and hold up our battle scars with hearts brimming with joy and eyes brimming with tears. In this advanced stage, we have a deepeur understanding and see why it all had to be that way. Our souls are wide open. The hidden is revealed and we…
13. BARECH – GRACE AFTER THE MEAL
…move straight into the grace after meals, capitalizing on our joy which knows no bounds, as we identify God as the source of all the miracles that were unique to our journey. We are fully clear that both the difficult and the easy times originate from that very source.
14. HALLEL – PSALMS OF PRAISE
Now we utilize the power of our speech, which we have developed from the primitive groan of oppression to the brilliant articulation of our gratitude, into the realm of song. We master the art of turning our own lives into a song and we open our mouths to unashamedly sing that song that is uniquely our own. For this was the reason we came to the world in the first place.
15. NIRTZA – LONGING FOR REDEMPTION
We now come full circle, where all that is left to be heard is the scintillating silence after the song has ended its final notes and words are no longer necessary. The impression of our voices lingers in the still air while we bring our attention to our longing for the ultimate redemption. We pray that God receives all of our sincere offerings and grants us the ability to bring into reality all that we were able to touch within ourselves during the Seder. Next Year in Jerusalem!
[1] Triple beat as applied to the seder as heard in the name of R’ Dov Ber Pinsun
[2] Berachos 17a
[3] Rashi, Vayikra 19:2
[4] Rashi, Bereishis 18:4
[5] This year perhaps we have started this step through focusing on the essential by our being secured in our own homes
[6] Tehillim 126:5
[7] Shmos 2:23-25
_____
Coming out of Mitzrayim – the psycho-spiritual journey we travel every time we say Shema
“In every generation [and every day] a person is obligated to regard himself as if he had [that day] come out of Egypt” (Mishna Pesachim 10:5)
“This refers to the release of the divine soul from the confinement of the body, which is called the “serpent’s skin”
So that it can be absorbed into the unity of the light of the blessed ain sof (infinite light), by engaging in the Torah and commandments in general,
And in particular through accepting the sovereignty of Heaven during the recital of the Shema, wherein the person explicitly accepts and draws upon himself G-d’s unity, when he says; “Shema Yisroel Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad” …
This [dynamic within a person’s soul] is a form of “Exodus from Egypt”
Therefore, it was ordained that the paragraph concerning the Exodus from Egypt be read specifically during the recital of the Shema….
For they are actually the same thing.”
Lessons in Tanya by R’ Levi Wineberg, chapter 47
Blogpost Mar 2018
~
I don’t know if you’ve ever done the flip test. When you are holding a book in your hands for the first time, considering whether to read it, and randomly flip and read one line, to get a taste of what’s inside. That’s what I did about a year ago when I wondered what was inside the holy book of Tanya. And I came to that line, the one quoted above – that when we say Shema Yisroel we are redeemed from our perpetual bondage within the metaphoric confines of Egypt every day of our lives.
Needless to say, I didn’t know what this meant.
Yes, I knew what the words meant, and at a stretch, was the concept was saying, sort of … but I still had no clue.
I thought it would be a nice time, being the month of Nissan – to “unpack” this excerpt and experience its haunting beauty and penetrating insight just before Seder night.
~
I heard a classic piece of chassidus – (my new found love, or perhaps an old love, making its official entry into my life through access to the original Chassidic texts [1]. As a south African born, north American mid-western raised Bais Yaakov girl of 100% pure-bred Litvish descent, I will never forget the quizzical look on my teacher Geveret Leibowitz’s face, the BJJ legendary teacher, when she asked me after reading my papers; “eh are you chassidish??”. “No,” I replied, “but I have a Chassidish heart.”
Perhaps what I love about Chassidus is the unashamed relationship it has to the mystical layers of our Torah and how it applies its esoteric wisdom to our hearts, minds and lives.)
~
Here is the main idea: all the “players” in the “coming-out-of-Egypt-story” carry deep resonance when it comes to getting a grip on our inner lives.
This does not mean that the “pshat”/ simple meaning/ of the story is no longer relevant. No. אין המקרא יוצא מדי פשוטו – the explanation of Torah never departs from its surface meaning, only its deeper meanings are embedded within the simple meaning much like a well packed onion.
In fact, the depth of the simple meaning and the simple meaning of the secret layer are one and the same and cannot be separated (R’ Dessler, Michav M’eliyahu).
~
So, who are the players in the Pesach story?
Let’s start with Moshe.
He is the “player” who is sourced in Hashem Himself so to speak and is called “איש האלוקים” – a man of G-d.
Moshe, the one who filled the house with light upon his entry to the world and was given the name “Tuvya” – G-d is good.
Moshe, the man/ Divine messenger and redeemer who was so transcendent from human normal functioning that he couldn’t even speak and needed Aharon his brother to act as his spokesman.
Moshe, who needed neither food nor drink for 40 days while he lived in Heaven and brought down the eternal Torah to the people.
Moshe was truly a messenger of G-d and redeemer of our people.
משה – spelled backwards – says השם – G-d – literally “The Name”, our common term of awe and love for our Creator.
As such, Moshe represents the holy intellect, the seat of truth, and the seed of redemption.
~
Next – let’s look at Paroah.
Whatever Moshe represents on the side of holiness Paroah reflects the side of impurity.
פרעה – same letters as ערפה – the sister of Ruth the Moabite – the one who, unlike Ruth, turned her back to all that is holy. (The meaning of the word ערף literally means the back of the neck; and represents the backside of consciousness.)
Paroah – the one who lived in self-delusion – who went down early in the morning to relieve himself of his bodily functions so no-one would see his humanity and so that he could perpetuate the illusion of himself as a deity.
Paroah – the one who enslaved a people for 400 years, who refused to see G-d’s hand at play, even when it was impossible not to see it, who by the end of the Egypt story didn’t even hold onto his free will.
He was not only the representation of evil, but somehow the king of it.
~
The fulcrum of the story; the Jews.
The Children of Israel- בני ישראל – as they are referred to through the account of the exodus.
Let’s look at the word Israel – ישראל – can be broken up to ישר – א-ל – straight to G-d.
While Paroah is corrupt and convoluted, the children of Israel hold onto their “straight line” to Hashem through Moshe their leader and “place holder” of holy intellect, and as such, are children of Redemption.
On a deeper level, the children of Israel literally means “the offspring of Israel”, ie. of Moshe; and as such, they represent the emotions of the heart. Since Moshe represents pure intellect, the Jewish people represent the emotions, as guided by Moshe Rabbeinu. It is common understanding today that we are not a victim of our emotions but rather we create them through the thoughts that we think, and there-in lies our control.
As the Rambam said (centuries ago), all emotions are born from the intellect and the thoughts of our minds.
When the children of Israel are able to take their input from Moshe and discard the messages (subliminal and explicit) from Paraoh, the stirrings of the exodus begin to reverberate in the land of Egypt.
~
The Land of Egypt; ארץ מצרים.
Mitzrayim literally means a place of confines and restraint.
A place where you can’t move, can’t see the way out, and are in fact too mute to express your feeling of stuck-ness.
The first shift was a groan of the people, “and Hashem heard their sighs”. Ironically their knowledge that they were trapped in the land of Mitzrayim was the first step to the possibility of their ever getting out.
When Mitzrayim hurts – we know we are getting ready to leave. When the situation of our bondage to Paroah is no longer tolerable – we know we are ready for an exodus.
~
Now let’s plug this in to the simple meaning of the story and then take our newfound understanding to better understand the Tanya and what that means for us.
The Jewish people were serving Paroah in the Land of Mitzrayim.
Apply the above formulae to this statement and we get; the emotions of the heart (children of Israel – emotions that in their highest potential express the values of Hashem and truth but when they fall to their default setting, as they had in Egypt) were serving Paroah – the evil dictator who represents self-deception, corruption and falsehood – in the land of Mitzrayim – and the fact that they didn’t realize their unspoken agreement to adhere faithfully to Paroah’s values system means that they saw themselves as victims in the deepest sense with no option of release.
They groaned.
This was the magic moment.
The unseen internal shift that precipitated all events to follow.
Slowly, the awareness that life was never meant to be terrible takes roots in their minds and they become intolerant to being slaves to Paroah in Egypt.
Moshe comes and acts as the messenger of Hashem – as their moshiach – and redeems them, to serve Hashem instead of Paroah.
You see, whether you realize it or not – you are serving something.
The emotions of the heart have miraculously cut ties with their former boss, Paroah, and jump ship instead to Moshe, the vehicle of truth of holiness in the world.
The rest is history – Paroah can no longer contain them in the land of the slaves and Hashem performs miracles for them, confirming their relationship as ישראל – the people who have a straight line to G-d, and ultimately bring them to ארץ ישראל – the Land where this essence is manifest most tangibly.
Nothing stands in the way of the Jewish people, and despite the trauma of 210 years of heavy persecution and suffering, they emerge with the visceral knowledge of their mission for all time to come.
Hashem brings them, through Moshe, to receive the Torah, and they are en-route to the holy land, the permanent setting for their redemption.
~
Psycho-spiritually, this can be rendered into the following terms;
Our consciousness is always the results of the inner working of the soul and psyche – things are never just as they appear, there is always a reason for the state we are in, the thoughts we have, feelings that live in our hearts, and behaviors that we choose.
We are trapped and confined to our inner state of exile when we subscribe to beliefs that are simply not true.
The land of Mitzrayim is the land of false beliefs and alien G-ds.
The problem with this state of affairs that it is impossible to redeem ourselves from our plight, for as soon as we would know our false beliefs aren’t true we would be released from their grip; that means that our very acceptance of those beliefs is what puts us firmly under their mercy.
In other words, it is our belief in them that keeps us trapped.
Our mistaken ideologies manifest immediately in emotions of the heart that further perpetuate our commitment to those very same “Paroahs” – false beliefs systems – and our exile deepens.
So how do we get out of this conundrum if it is our state of awareness that is the key to change and yet it is exactly our state of awareness that is not seeing the difference between Hashem and Paroah, between truth and lie?!?! How do we release ourselves from the inside??
~
אין החבוש יכול להתיר את עצמו מבית האסורים – (Midrash, Shir Hashirim); “a prisoner cannot release himself from his own prison.”
Therein lies the irony. How can we escape our personal exiles? How can we be healed from our restricted consciousness and the emotions of despair and depression that come in their wake?
The answer is: Moshe was never part of the problem to begin with. That is why he can be the redeemer!
He was never enslaved by Paroah.
He grew up giggling on Paroah’s knee as his benign adopted grandson that his daughter Batya brought home one day from the Nile.
Moshe was always the man of truth, the ambassador of Hashem.
It was he that was able to take the people out.
True, they couldn’t release themselves from their prison, but Moshe could release them.
~
Let us return to our section from Tanya.
“In every generation [and every day] a person is obligated to regard himself as if he had [that day] come out of Egypt” (Mishna Pesachim 10:5)
This is a spiritual journey that is happening to us every single day.
In the yearly cycle, this happens most poignantly on Pesach.
Through our telling the story of our redemption, seeing the events that happened at he time of the birth of our people through a transcendent and divinely inspired perspective, we become immune to the dangerous and devious ploys of Paroah – the Paroah then and the Paroah of now.
“This refers to the release of the divine soul from the confinement of the body, which is called the “serpent’s skin””. [2]
The body is our present day Mitzrayim. It does not see the world from a Divine perspective but rather from a self-centered one.
A self-centered perspective is the viewpoint of Paroah – because it is simply not true.
We are not here for our bodies; for our personal success stories, for our attainment of pleasure, wealth or honor.
If we believe we are, we are serving Paroah, the king of delusion, the king of falsehood.
We are here for something greater.
We are here to serve Hashem.
Moshe, through the Torah, tells us this all the time.
When we listen, we start to feel this, and we are impervious to being trapped in the “skin of a snake”, our little and limited bodies, that make us believe that there isn’t much more to life.
We need to become non-complacent with this false message that has us believe that there isn’t a bigger picture.
Let us say Shema Yisroel Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad – acknowledge and attach ourselves to the unity of Hashem and serve G-d, not Paroah.
Therein we find our freedom.
~
“Therefore, it was ordained that the paragraph concerning the Exodus from Egypt be read specifically during the recital of the Shema…. for they are actually the same thing.”
We can serve ourselves, our egos, our pursuit of pleasure, our false beliefs and alien G-ds.
Or we can serve Hashem and see the world through the prism of His Unity.
The choice is ours.
The difference between one and the other is the difference between exile and redemption.
When we see the world as an arena for redemption, all of our experiences, aspirations and activities are expressions of Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad – then we cannot fall into the descending spirals and lose ourselves in the tunnels of darkness and doom.
And when we do fall into them – as we will, sometimes – many times – because we are susceptible to the murky playing fields that is our inner psyches – all we have to do is send down “Moshe” – our inner voice of truth – into the complex and remote regions of our hearts, and by doing so we take ourselves out of our Mitzrayim, and we know that Hashem is One.
Chag Kasher V’Sameach!
[1] I was inspired to write this piece after taking R’ Doniel Katz’s Elevation program.
[2] no wonder that snakes predominate Egyptian culture