Peschach is all about birth and newness. His’chadshus. Hakadosh Baruch Hu created the world in such a way that it renews itself twice a year, in Nisan and Tishri. It’s like being created another time.
If a person didn’t see his friend for a whole year, when he sees him, he recites the blessing Baruch... Mechayeh hamesim, “Blessed is He Who brings the dead back to life.”
The Maharsha explains that if a whole year passed by since they last saw each other, then for sure Tishri and Rosh Hashanah passed by. This means they were recreated. Hashem thus brought one’s friend back to life, so it is appropriate to bless, when seeing him, “He Who brings the dead back to life.”
The idea of “coming back to life” is true of Nisan in general and Seder night in particular. A tremendous and truly wondrous renewal takes place.
The world therefore has two “birthdays,” one in Tishri and one in Nisan. Tishri was the actual event of birth. But its original root, the day when the essential plan of the world was laid out, was the 15th of Nisan. (So it says in early Torah sources. See also Tosafos on Rosh Hashanah 27a.)
This digital publication is dedicated to the hatzlachah of הרב יוסף אריה הכהן בן רייזל שליט"א. May he see great success on 12 Nisan (the yahrtzeit of the Rov zt"l) and may he find favor and goodwill in the eyes of G-d and man. And may he see the fulfillment of וכל החושבים עלי רעה מהרה הפר עצתם וקלקל מחשבתם.
The Torah calls Nisan “the head of months”
[and the Hebrew word for month, חודש, implies newness and innovation: התחדשות.] It is the source of everything in the world that emerges and develops at a later stage. Accordingly, Nisan is not a time for us to remain essentially the same like we always were, and just make a little change for the better by improving certain details of our behavior and attuning to the atmosphere of kedushah and mitzvos. That’s not what Pesach is all about. Pesach is the time to revolutionize our lives, to recreate ourselves.
The idea of renewal is alluded to in the following verse, too: – היום אתם יוצאים בחודש האביב “Today you are going out, in the month of the spring.”
What is “spring”?
During the cold winter months, the natural world seems dead. Then spring comes and everything starts blossoming again. In the same way, we should aspire to revolutionize our whole way of life on Seder night. We need to undergo a profound renewal as Jews.
The birth of a baby is a wonderful metaphor for this process of self-renewal. When the Jewish people were in Egypt, sunk deep down in the 49 gates of tum’ah, they virtually ceased to exist as a people. They needed to be reborn.
Let’s look at the state of the Jewish people in Egypt, so we can understand what it means when we say they were reborn. By way of introduction, we will now talk about the parts that a human being is composed of. [We will focus on the neck, because its function is essential to understanding the Jewish people’s experience in Egypt.]
Between the Head and the Body
A person has two main parts: the head and the body. It is not the head but the body that houses the feelings of the heart. The body is the primary part. The head functions as a go-between that connects heaven to earth. The head can understand lofty, Divine matters. It can grasp elevated, ethereal concepts that are far above a person’s true spiritual level. This is because the head is not tied by the chains of materiality. Along these lines, Chazal say that Eisav’s head is buried in Me’aras Hamachpelah.
This signifies that he had an intellectual grasp of lofty spiritual matters. Yet, he remained Eisav, because mere intellectual understanding does not determine a person’s madreigah.
A person is rather judged by how his body lives its physical life here in this lowly, material world. The body’s earthly limbs and organs are locked in a continual struggle with the yetzer hara. Should one live according to the Divine image in which one was created, or live like an animal and even lower than an animal? Only those spiritual virtues that take hold in a person’s heart and influence his practical behavior can raise him to a higher level.
Our main task in the world is to see to it that the uplifting concepts comprehended in the head should make their way to the body. This is represented by the fact that physically severing the head from the body deprives the body of life. All spiritual nourishment, everything that sustains life, comes to the body through the head. (Even eating, although it is physical nourishment, comes through the head, because it is a life-sustaining act.) If a person could live without a head, his life would be totally earthly, and would have no value. He would not be a true human being.
Now we come to something amazing about the human body. A person’s body is relatively wide. Even the head is wide. (It is not as wide as the body itself because what the head contains is more concentrated.)
But the neck, which is the connection between the head and body, is narrow. The purpose of this narrowness is to make it difficult to transfer things from the head to the body. Everything needs to go through a bottleneck that can easily be stopped up. The neck is the place where shechitah, slaughtering, is performed, because the point connection between head and body is the life-point. Dam hanefesh, “life blood,” is only in the neck, not in any other vein or artery in the body. This is the life-point.
Spiritually, we are built the same way. The head is where we recognize the truth and oneness of Hashem, where we know that ה' אלקים אמת. Our body translates this recognition into practical actions that sanctify the Name of Heaven in the world. The connection between head and heart is thus essential. It brings the influence of the head’s wisdom to the body. Along these lines it is written: "Wisdom grants life to he who possesses it."
The connection between head and body is called daas. This passageway between head and body is the spiritual lifegiving point. It is the main factor that determines a person’s spiritual level.
Pharaoh’s Neck Grip
The word “Mitzrayim,” Egypt, derives from the word “meitzar,” narrow straits. At no other time in the history of the Jewish people were they subjugated like they were by Pharaoh in Egypt.
No king or ruler in any other exile grabbed hold of the life-point, the lifeblood, of the Jewish people. Only Pharaoh had that kind of control. He ruled the world as absolutely as Mashiach is destined to rule over it.
Pharaoh, in his desire to subjugate the Israelites, “grabbed them by the neck,” so to speak. In other words, he blocked the passageway between the head and the body. He took hold of their very life-point, which is called daas, the function of which is to bring the head’s intellectual recognition of Hashem to the rest of the body, which is the main part of a person. Pharaoh succeeded in stopping the flow of daas. The Jewish people’s body thus lost its connection to its head. This signifies cessation of life.
Pharaoh was the only one who succeeded in stopping up the Jewish people’s life-flow from head to body. He thus caused them to cease to exist as an independent, living people. As long as they were in Egypt, they were not an independent entity at all. They reverted to be like a fetus in the womb of Egypt, waiting to be born, but not there yet.
The Torah says about the Exodus that Hashem took “a nation from within (מקרב) another nation.” The word מקרב, “from within,” is related to the word קרביים, which means “innards.” The Israelites were inside the innards of Egypt like a fetus is inside the innards of its mother. A fetus makes the mother’s belly protrude a little. It is noticeable that a future person is inside her. But in the meantime, a fetus is considered a part of its mother, and has no independent identity.
That’s how the Jewish people was in Egypt. Their presence was recognizable, just as an unborn baby’s presence is recognizable. It was clear to all that the Jews are in there. The Midrash says that they were מצויינים שם, they had distinguishing characteristics; they had their own names, their own language, etc.
They had certain innate qualities that expressed themselves. “The people had faith” – ויאמן העם.
Indeed, the Jews had certain distinguishing traits, but their avodah zarah was much stronger than these traits. They could not yet be called Klal Yisrael. They were still part of the Egyptian nation. This stirred up in heaven a terrible accusation against them. Why do they deserve to be treated differently than the Egyptians, if “these people worship idols, and those people worship idols”? This opposition made their birth all the harder.
We say in the Haggadah: If Hakadosh Baruch Hu had not taken our forefathers out of Egypt, we and our children and our children’s children would still be subjugated to Pharaoh in Egypt.
Hashem took us out of Egypt, to be born into the world, because Pharaoh was holding us at our very life-point. It was a death-grip from which there was no way we could have freed ourselves on our own. Only Hakadosh Baruch Hu Himself came and took us out of Egypt to eternal freedom.
A Difficult Birth
In Egypt we were like a fetus waiting to be born, as we explained in another place. And the Exodus was the birth. Every time something new is created, it involves great danger. Something that already exists has established itself. When something new comes along, it needs to prove itself worthy of existence. (The same was true when Adam came into existence: the angels argued against his creation.)
When a baby is born, the first moment of birth is critical and fateful. It is a time of pikuach nefesh. Life itself is hanging in the balance. (The Gemara says, based on pesukim, that there are seven things that need to be done for the baby immediately upon birth, without which it could die.) In order for the baby to come into the world healthy and whole, a lot of miracles need to take place. (Chazal say that at the moment of birth, the mouth of the baby, which was closed for months, needs to open, and other places that were open during that period need to close.)
Yetzias Mitzrayim was a moment fraught with great danger, even more than an ordinary birth is. When an ordinary baby is born, there are no accusations hanging over its head. There is no opposition to its being born or to its right to live. But leaving Egypt was an exodus from the lowest levels of tum’ah. This engendered strong objection on the part of the angels, who did not see why the Jewish people deserved to come into being at all.
This danger continued also after they left Egypt, when they stood at the banks of Yam Suf. The Jewish people were being judged at that time whether to be saved or to be destroyed along with the Egyptians.
On Pesach night, the Jewish people merited ascending to great heights. The Shechinah was revealed to them. (Chazal say that Pesach night was illuminated like by the midday sun.) They needed tremendous miracles at that time. They needed enormous mercy to outweigh their great shortcomings. They left Egypt “hastily,” in chipazon, as the Torah says. Chipazon in this context means a sudden jump up to a madreigah much higher than the one that is rightfully theirs.
