We see that people enjoy hearing stories from the people involved in it. “Really?! You were there?! I must hear it again! Tell me the story again!”
Maybe it’s because we want to hear the story accurately, firsthand. But it really goes deeper.
The reason that we want to hear the story from the person involved is because then the story has much more heart! This person says the story with all the drama and emotion.
He Draws the People into His Emotions
When we hear a story from five hundred years ago about a Yid who went into the forest and got lost, it doesn’t take over our heart so much. We don’t follow along with his emotions.
When the subject himself tells the story, he draws the person into his heart with his feelings! Because the story happened to him, and therefore he invests his heart in it when he tells the story. When a person tells the story of his own past, he will always say it with more heart, and this is why his story enters the heart.
Relaying the Story of Yetzias Mitzrayim with Heartfelt Emotion
Every Yid has experienced events in which the Aibishter brought him freedom. Everyone has experienced their own exodus to freedom. We must be able to give this over with feeling.
There’s one way to do it: When a person says to his children on Pesach night, “Children, I want to share with you how the Ribbono shel Olam brought me salvation,” that’s one way.
But according to what we have shared here, there’s another mehalech. Even if a Yid doesn’t speak during the entire Seder, or if he doesn’t want to share his personal stories with his children—but he wants to transmit emunah to his children—he can transmit this emunah by preparing his heart, so it should be “words that emanate from the heart.”
The main thing is for a Yid to have these feelings in his heart, to become moved by the words that we say. He davened to the Ribbono shel Olam before Yom Tov, he reiterated words of emunah to himself before Yom Tov—he is now ready to speak words of emunah on the Seder night.
When a person prepares himself before Yom Tov to build up his heart with emunah—so that the emunah will overtake him—he builds vessels that enable him to fulfill the mitzvah of לבנך והגדת on Pesach night in the most spectacular way, with results that will last within his children and their children for eternity.
