Metzora – Pesach 5784 – Freedom for Servitude

Part I. Egyptian Slavery

Why Matzah?

One of the many thoughts that we are expected to think about when we’re eating matzah on Pesach – not only at the Seder night, but all eight days – is that at this time of the year, 3,000 years ago, we went מֵעַבְדוּת לְחֵרוּת, from servitude to freedom. That’s the purpose of eating matzah – it’s reminding us to think.

You ever tried that? It’s lunchtime, Tuesday, Chol Hamoed Pesach. You’re eating matzah and you’re thinking, “Why matzah? Why not a roll? Why not bread?”

“Well, the Torah says so.”

But why did the Torah say so?

The answer is the matzah reminds us to think about Yetzias Mitzrayim. “Wake up!” the matzah says, “זָכוֹר אֶת הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה אֲשֶׁר יְצָאתֶם מִמִּצְרַיִם – Remember that day when Hakadosh Baruch Hu set you free from Mitzrayim, וְלֹא יֵאָכֵל חָמֵץ – that’s why you’re eating matzah and not bread (Shemos 13:3).

Corrupted Freedom

Pesach is an especial opportunity – whenever you can steal for yourself a minute or even a half minute, think about that. That’s why Pesach is called Zman Cheiruseinu, the Festival of our Freedom, because it was then that we became bnei chorin; we became freemen.

Now, Zman Cheiruseinu, the Festival of our Freedom, that seems a quite clear and simple statement. ‘Freedom’, who doesn’t know what that means? But we’ll see now that it’s not clear and simple at all because what Pesach means has been altogether corrupted today.

I have upstairs a bulletin that was mailed to me by a Brooklyn Jewish Community Council. It was right before Pesach and so these ‘rabbis’ – rabbis with gentile names and gentile brains – were shepping nachas without end that President Bush was going to eat matzah balls in the White House. “Because,” they wrote there, “Passover is the festival of freedom not for Jews, but for men and women of all creeds and colors.” Passover is Zman Cheiruseinu for everyone – ‘the whole world should be free!’

Freedom and Reparations

It means that the blacks should be free to get the best jobs in the universities even if they don’t qualify. Women should be freed from the kitchen, from raising children. Freedom means to take away jobs from the men and give it to the women. Of course, it means freedom to kill babies too. Freedom to murder. Freedom for toeivah! Freedom to do whatever you want. ‘Freedom for everyone!’ That’s the clarion call of Pesach in the world. Freedom to do whatever you want.

Forget about it! Rabbi Charles and Rabbi Steve in the synagogue bulletin and President Bush in the White House know about Pesach like I know about Chinese holidays. They could only say such a thing because they don’t know what we mean by ‘freedom’, what the Torah means by cheirus.

Escape To Slavery

The gentile idea of freedom has nothing to do with ours because actually we didn’t go ‘free’ when we left Mitzrayim. The truth is that to a certain extent when we left Mitzrayim, that’s when we lost our freedom.

It’s true, in Mitzrayim the Bnei Yisroel worked hard. But don’t many people, even today, work hard for a living? So they also worked hard. But we know that they had their own homes, their own land, their own tzon u’bakar, and to a certain extent they had freedom. When Pharaoh was not looking or the servants were not watching you, you could do whatever you wanted.

It wasn’t a pleasant experience – it was slavery after all – but they were only meshubed to Pharaoh. Once they went out of Mitzrayim and accepted Hakadosh Baruch Hu as their Master, then they became real slaves. It’s a remarkable fact that we became less free after we left! We gave up our freedom entirely! In the midbar they couldn’t budge. Every little thing that they did was under supervision.

Nosy Mashgichim

First of all there was someone watching your every move. Every ten Jews had one of them as a mashgiach, a sar asarah, over them. It means they were under the watchful eyes of mashgichim all the time. The Gemara (Sanhedrin 18a) says there were more than 78,000 mashgichim over them!

And if you didn’t listen it went higher up. He hears in your tent how you are talking to your wife, how she is talking to you, and he reports it to the sar chamishim; there was another mashgiach in charge of every fifty. The sar chamishim says, “Oh no! That’s not allowed here.”

If that didn’t work the sar chamishim runs to the sar me’ah, the mashgiach over every hundred, and then to the sar alafim, the mashgiach of a thousand. There was no escape. And Moshe Rabbeinu eventually heard about it and took action. It gets to Moshe Rabbeinu’s ears and now the husband was summoned.

A man not honoring his wife?! You couldn’t do things willy-nilly in the midbar. “You’re not free here!” Moshe said. “There’s action and reaction!” “What do you mean? You hate a fellow Jew?! That’s worse than eating ham.” To hate a fellow Jew is worse than eating ham, you’re not free to hate.

And so they were very far from free in the midbar. When we left Mitzrayim and went out to freedom, we gave up our freedom entirely – whatever was left of it. Absolutely they were much more free in Mitzrayim than after they left.

Shmiras Sedorim in the Wilderness

Also, besides being subjected to strict surveillance and criticism they were also expected to study Torah all the time. It was a kollel! But not like the kollel where the kollel man goes home for lunch and spends an hour and a half eating lunch. Or he reads the paper in the morning and comes late to the seder. Like a rosh yeshiva once said to me; “אָנוּ אֵין מַשְׁכִּימִים – We don’t get up early; הֵם מַשְׁכִּימִים – the others get up early, but not we. We the yeshiva people don’t get up early in the morning.”

But in the midbar, they were mamesh אָנוּ מַשְׁכִּימִים. These kollel people got up early in the midbar. And אָנוּ מַעֲרִיבִים too; they stayed till late. It was וְהָגִיתָ בּוֹ יוֹמָם וָלַיְלָה – they labored hard in the kollel.

Moshe Rabbeinu was the rosh kollel and he meant business – he was a slave driver; he checked to see that you were making use of the freedom Hashem had given. Because that was the purpose of Yetzias Mitzrayim; to make something from yourself. Instead of slaving away making bricks, you’ll slave away making yourself. Moshe Rabbeinu drove them hard. That’s how it was; that was the cheirus.

And so if we had to describe in one word, in one idea, what the midbar was, it was an experience of ol malchus Shomayim; of being weighed down under the yoke of a King. Never was our nation as loaded down with the yoke of avodas Hashem. And it wasn’t an easy yoke; it was a real shibud.

The Torah Sets You Free

So you might say, “So where is the liberty then? Is that called cheiruseinu? Zman Cheiruseinu?! It’s the wrong name for the yomtiv.”

The answer is that our freedom is not the world’s ‘freedom’. אֵין לְךָ בֶּן חוֹרִין אֶלָּא מִי שֶׁעוֹסֵק בְּתוֹרָה – You’re not free unless you’re meshubad to the Torah, to Torah living (Avos 6:2).

It’s only when you study the Torah which is the fountainhead of the true ideals, and you learn direction in life, then you become a free man, then you gain liberty. Liberty from slavery to wrong practices; liberty from slavery to wrong middos. Liberty from slavery to wrong influences and wrong attitudes and wrong habits.

When a person knows there is a Hakadosh Baruch Hu Who commands observance of the Torah, and he lives according to the Torah ideals and attitudes – he tries at least – that’s the real cheirus. Because Torah gives you the freedom to live purposefully; the freedom to make something from yourself.

And so when we talk about Zman Cheiruseinu we’re thinking not only about how we we went free from Pharaoh; it’s what we did with that freedom that matters – we accepted the עֹל מַלְכוּת שָׁמַיִם!

Oh, that’s cheiruseinu! If we’ll go free into an environment that is forcing us to be decent, an environment that arranges our life so that we will live happily and successfully, so even though it’s done by the fiats, by a command, by shibud, by the jurisdiction of somebody over you, that’s the real liberty.

The Best Generation

And so when they went out of Mitzrayim into a midbar for forty years, this was the most exceptional opportunity for liberty that they ever had. All were together under the watchful eyes of Moshe Rabbeinu, under the watchful eyes of the Torah. And they gained such perfection that you have to know, they were called the Dor Deiah. We look back at them with admiration. Never again did we have people who had such shleimus as those people of those generations. You know why? Because they were free to obey Moshe Rabbeinu. They were free to be slaves to Moshe. And what did he tell them to do? Only things that were good for them.

And this great experience, the going out from one shibud to a different shibud was for a very important purpose. It was intended as a lesson; the forty years in the wilderness stand as an eternal model for what freedom is for, teaching us what it means cheiruseinu, what freedom means to a Jew.

We went out of Mitzrayim, not to go on trips to amusement parks. We didn’t go out of Mitzrayim for democracy. שַׁלַּח אֶת עַמִּי וְיַעַבְדֻנִי – Send out My people that they should serve Me (Shemos 7:16).

We went out into slavery; we exchanged one form of shibud for another form of shibud, a shibud of freedom. Instead of being avodim to Pharaoh, l’havdil now they became avodim to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. כִּי עֲבָדַי הֵם – ‘You are My slaves,’ Hashem says, אֲשֶׁר הוֹצֵאתִי אֹתָם מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם – and that’s why I took you out of Mitzrayim’ (Vayikra 25:42). We became slaves to a new Master, a better Master. We became enslaved to ol malchus Shomayim.

Part II. American Slavery

The American Seder

So we’re learning now a very big chiddush, a new understanding of Zman Cheiruseinu. When we’re going to be thinking on Pesach about how we went out of Egypt to freedom – and we should think if we don’t want our Pesach to go to waste. So we’ll remember that the purpose of freedom is in order not to be free.

You know, when that patriot said, “Give me liberty or give me death,” I don’t know if it was a wise thing to say. If you’re free just for the sake of freedom, liberty l’sheim liberty, that ‘freedom’ is death.

And that brings us now to America, to the Seder in the American home. We’re sitting together at the table and we say, הָשַּׁתָּא עַבְדֵי – We are slaves right now (Haggadah Shel Pesach).

So nobody takes it literally; it’s just words. We say it because it’s printed on the page but nobody actually feels the truth of these words. We are slaves?! Yes, we pay too much taxes, absolutely. But we’re not slaves; in America we’re free! There’s a Constitution; it’s ‘the land of the free’.

לְשָׁנָה הַבָּאָה בְּנֵי חֹרִין – Next year we should be free? We’re free right now! לְשָׁנָה הַבָּאָה we should be in Yerushalayim, yes. We should be with Moshiach, yes; but free?! What does that mean?

Enslaving the Jews

The answer is what we’re talking about now. If we understand what liberty is, what Zman Cheiruseinu means, so we understand that we are slaves! Hashata! Right now! In America we are in the worst slavery we ever had because we have all the ‘freedom’ to ruin our lives.

That’s why in America the Jewish nation forsook its ways more than in any country that we ever lived in. The Jews in America have fulfilled those terrible words וַאֲבַדְתֶּם בַּגּוֹיִם – you will go lost among the gentiles (Vayikra 26:38); more Jews have gone lost in America than any other country.

So הָשַּׁתָּא עַבְדֵי means literally, today we are slaves. The environment all around us has enslaved great parts of our nation. The fact that so many of us are able to survive is a wonderful thing, but still America is a tragedy, a crematorium. Wherever you go, you see Jews forsaking the Torah and going lost. It’s a terrible thing, a shmad; we’re in prison. הָשַּׁתָּא עַבְדֵי – We’re slaves now.

Free As a Gentile

Why is it that forty years ago you didn’t find divorces among frum Jews at all! In my old congregation we had only one gett. Years and years, one gett. Today however they’re constantly breaking up their families. What happened? Rabbosai, we’re ‘free’, that’s what happened. We’re free to read whatever we want, to think whatever we want, and that means that we’ve become enslaved to all the gentile attitudes of the street. We imagine that we’re free but it’s a mirage, a deception. Actually we’re slaves; we’re full of ideas from the street, from magazines and books and the radio. After a while we become exactly the same as the farshtupte gentile on the street.

The Jewish woman who is really free, she has in her head a composite picture of all the great Torah teachings and she is meshubad to them. That was always the authentic Jewish woman. She can’t quote exactly or point exactly at the source – some could – but she has a composite picture sum total of all teachings of Torah. And her outlook on life is a Torah outlook. She lives freely according to Torah ideals.

She knows that to break up a Jewish home is a tragedy of tragedies. Not only a ruination for the children, for the husband and wife, but it’s a breakup of an institution. A house, even a gentile house, a decent goyishe house, is an institution. A Jewish house? It’s a makom kadosh, a holy institution.

Slavery of Marriage

“But it’s slavery,” she says.

She’s thinking about her irreligious cousin in Manhattan who’s ‘free’. The free working woman who slaves away all day in an office for a boss and then comes home to an empty home. A wasted life of freedom.

I’ll tell you an extreme case. Here’s a woman, a Jewish woman, who wrote a letter to the New York Times. She has no time to get married, she said. She needs to be free. She’s a very busy woman, you see. She said she needed time to go to Afghanistan to visit the freedom fighters. The mujahideen in Afghanistan need her like a hole in the head. Meanwhile she lives in Connecticut in a small town among goyim; no husband, no children. This free woman is wasting her life.

One day she’ll be standing before Hakadosh Baruch Hu and He’ll say “What did you do in that world with your life, with the freedom I gave you?”

“Oh, I had a good job in Manhattan. And I visited the mujahideen.”

“Petch! Into Gehinom.”

Child Slavery

Today our children are slaves too. They’re enslaved because we have schools. We take money from the government and they stick their noses into our yeshivos and Beis Yaakovs. Even if we don’t we have to follow certain rules; but they’re there.

I’m not saying English is a bad thing to learn, but you have to learn things for the regent tests. For regents you have to learn about evolution – apikorsis has to be taught. Of course the teachers are told to say, “We don’t believe in it, but when they ask you a question in the examination you have to say this and this.”

Now, I’m not saying the yeshivos shouldn’t take aid from the government – they won’t listen to me anyhow – but I’m just pointing out the results. We’re slaves to the Department of Education.

The Land of Leitzanus

We’re slaves to entertainment, to leitzanus. For the last seventy years, America has been a place of jesting. As soon as the movies came around, entertainment became the American way and the Jewish nation swallowed the bait.

Today you pass down the block at night, you hear everybody is laughing at the same minute. They’re all laughing at the same joke they heard on the television. I was walking and all of a sudden from all the apartments, from the windows there was a big guffawing; all slaves to the entertainer.

You know the Am Yisroel lived without entertainment for thousands of years and we got along pretty well. Our forefathers never heard the word entertainment. In Hebrew it’s called bidur; it’s a modern word, a Hebrew word, not a Jewish word.

Stop Looking, Start Thinking

In the midbar, they learned that there was no such thing. If someone asked – they didn’t because they were free but let’s say someone took a walk outside the machaneh Yisroel and he saw that in Midyan or in Moav they had amusements, games, so he started imagining, “Maybe we also…”

So what did Moshe tell them? “Oh no. We’re not interested in becoming slaves to desires, to foolishness. The Torah doesn’t promise entertainment. When the Torah promises good things it says, וְנָתַתִּי שָׁלוֹם בָּעוֹלָם – There’ll be peace in the world, וְאָכַלְתָּ וְשָׂבָעְתָּ – they’ll eat and be satiated, and לְמַעַן יִרְבּוּ יְמֵיכֶם וִימֵי בְנֵיכֶם – you’ll live long, your children will live long. We’re busy with reality, not imagination. That’s our way of life.”

Why doesn’t the Torah promise entertainment or travel or fun? Nothing is mentioned there. The Torah teaches you how to be happy when you eat. It teaches you how to be happy when you sleep; to be happy when you get up in the morning, when you’re healthy. To be happy when you see your children and when there’s peace in the land. The Torah teaches you to be happy with achievement.

But in America we became meshubad to new ideas; fun, entertainment, games. We became enslaved to a country that’s sinking in an ocean of silly laughter, of leitzanus. Don’t say that it’s nothing, that it’s not a problem. It’s a very big something. It poisons the mind. It seeps in.

Slave to the Action Comics

I once had a yeshiva man, a frum yeshiva man, who married a girl from a not-religious family. Whenever he used to visit his in-laws they ridiculed his wife for wearing a sheitel. So one time his father-in-law said it too many times and so this yeshiva man took up and he struck his father-in-law in the jaw and knocked him down. He knocked his father-in-law out.

So I spoke to him and I said, “Do you know why you knocked your father-in-law down? Because you’re an American. You’ve seen so many movies and so many comics in which the hero punches the other fellow in the jaw. He punches him in the jaw and that’s the last of the pictures. And there’s a big star, a flash around the jaw.

So you got in your head that’s a noble thing to do. It means that you’re not a ben Torah yet. You’re a slave still. If you were free, you’d realize how disgusting that is.”

Chassideshe Slaves

And don’t think that just because you live in Meah Shearim, so it’s not talking about you. Even the best Jews are subject to the influence of the environment, gentile practices and gentile attitudes. Even let’s say a Satmar Jew who’s sitting in Williamsburg. He doesn’t have any television and he doesn’t have a radio. He doesn’t even have any English books in his house; and still he cannot avoid the influence of the environment. He thinks like a gentile.

His wife too. Why is it that women have to go out on the search for the holy grail in midtown New York – they’re seeking a good bargain; they’re seeking gentile styles – and expose themselves to perils? Manhattan today is teeming with crooks and with perverts. Why do good frum Jews go there to shop? Because we’re slaves.

And so when we say הָשַּׁתָּא עַבְדֵי you should know, actually we are saying the truth. At every step, we’re yielding to the environment. We look like our environment, we talk like our environment, we eat like them and worst of all we think like them. At every step, we’re victims.

And therefore the first thing we say is הָשַּׁתָּא עַבְדֵי – we are slaves right now. And we don’t say it just because it’s in the Haggadah. We’re saying the plain truth – we’re slaves – and we should say it like we mean it. We’re not entirely free.

Part III. Leaving Slavery

Hatzalah!

That’s why we ask, לְשָׁנָה הַבָּאָה בְּנֵי חֹרִין – Next year the Jewish nation should be free. ‘Ribono Shel Olam,’ we are saying, ‘וְקַבְּצֵנוּ וְהַצִּילֵנוּ מִן הַגּוֹיִם – Please come and take us out of the nations and rescue us.’ We want to be free! לְשָׁנָה הַבָּאָה – Next year at this time, בְּנֵי חֹרִין – we should be free! We want the freedom to be Torah Jews; to live freely under the Torah’s direction in our purpose of achieving perfection. That’s what it means when we look forward to לְשָׁנָה הַבָּאָה בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם.

But we don’t just say it – our function is to live that way right now; to prepare for the geulah. That’s why the Chofetz Chaim made a sefer called צִפִּיתָ לִישׁוּעָה – Did you look forward to that freedom? It’s a question that’s going to be asked of everybody. When the great day comes when we appear before the tribunal of heaven, the question is going to be, “Did you look forward to Moshiach? Were you waiting?”

So you’ll say, “Sure I was waiting. I said it every day. Three times I said it. Of course, I want Moshiach. Who doesn’t?”

We Want Moshiach Now?

But the question is, how sincere are you? Do you even know what you’re asking? לְשָׁנָה הַבָּאָה בְּנֵי חֹרִין means we should have Moshe again over us. When we look forward to the future, we say, “מֹשֶׁה יַרְעֵנוּ – Moshe should be our shepherd again.”

You know what that means? If Moshe took over once more, then you’ll see there’s no liberty anymore. He’d make sarei asarah once again, every nine Jews would have a mashgiach over him. No more liberty.

When we see that for real, some people will want to rebel. Because we’re accustomed to freedom, to American ideas of liberty, to do any way you want.

But that’s a mistake. We have to give up our empty liberty for the purpose of being shleimim. And so לְשָׁנָה הַבָּאָה בְּנֵי חֹרִין means we should be free to live under Moshe or someone like Moshe. We should have a Sanhedrin. We should have 80,000 mashgichim again peeking into our tents, into our lives. We should have Jewish policemen.

Arrested For Arrogance

You know even in Pumpedisa, in exile, the Reish Galusa had Jewish policemen who made sure you were subjugated to the Torah. Once they saw Eliezer Ze’era in the street with black shoes. In those days the Jews didn’t wear black shoes so the policeman said to him, ‘What’s this?” (Bava Kama 59b).

He said “I’m mourning for churban Yerushalayim.”

They said, “אַתְּ חֲשִׁיבַת – Are you important enough to mourn for Yerushalayim? You’re showing off. For showing off we’re arresting you.”

You hear that? They arrested him for bad middos; for yuhara, for showing off.

Later they released him; when he proved he was a talmid chochom, someone who was important enough to make his own chumros, they let him go. But otherwise showing off was an arrestable offense in those days, in Bavel. You weren’t free to be wicked.

Not Teddy’s Jerusalem

So you understand what Yerushalayim in the future will be; there’ll be no Teddy Kollek there to liberate the Jews from the chareidim, to bring Paris to Jerusalem. It’ll be like the ancient days; days when everybody was looking at you. Anything that was not right, it was reported right away.

Those are the days that we’re looking forward to. That’s the very best freedom. Because now you know you’ll never do anything wrong. You’ll live successfully!

And therefore when we say Pesach night לְשָׁנָה הַבָּאָה בְּנֵי חֹרִין, we should think if Moshiach will come it’s avada good. But in case he won’t come, let’s at least become bnei chorin on our own.

Slave to the News

We’re not going to make any revolutions, any trouble. Chas veshalom; we’re loyal Americans or loyal whatever we are, wherever we are. But in our own lives at least, let’s go free. Let’s stop reading periodicals. Let’s have no business with the newspapers. What do you need it for? You’re only enslaving yourself to bad ideas, bad habits. Your mind is enslaved to know what’s going on; who did this, who said what.

There’s nothing to news. Anybody who reads newspapers should know he’s wasting his life. Newspapers, news, is aroiss gevurfene tzeit. You were duped! אֵין כָּל חָדָשׁ תַּחַת הַשָּׁמֶשׁ – Nothing is really new (Koheles 1:9). The only news is the Torah. I don’t say you shouldn’t know the current events. When you pass by a newsstand, take a look at the headlines. But don’t pay to read details. Don’t waste any money buying it because you become a slave.

You know how you’ll be free? Become a slave to the habit of learning. Not only Gemara – Gemara is wonderful but learn Agadeta too. Learn Mesilas Yesharim. Learn Chovos Halevovos and Shaarei Teshuva.

Freed From the Zoo

Little by little, line by line, you become free. Your mind begins to think along new, more independent lines of thought. Your mindset begins to adjust to think only according to the ways these seforim describe.

You don’t believe me? Try it out. This Pesach try it. You have some time to be free on yom tov. You don’t have to go into the office; even on Chol Hamoed some of you won’t go in. So what are you going to do? You’ll go to the zoo the whole day? Everyone goes to the zoo so I also have to go? I’ll stare at the monkeys all day?

Free yourself! Pack up some matzah, a sandwich in a paper bag, say goodbye to the family and go to the beis medrash. Go free!

Stealing the Afikomen

I told you once what the Dubno Maggid said about our minhag, how the children steal the afikomen. I don’t know if the Syrians have this custom but it’s a custom among Ashkenazim that after Yachatz, when the father breaks the middle matzah so he puts away the bigger piece for the end of the Seder but the child comes along and he takes it away from his father and hides it.

And then, later on, when the time comes at the end of the Seder and you have to eat the afikomen, so the father looks around but it’s not there. The piece that he put away is gone. And the child refuses to surrender it until the father promises him a gift. That’s the custom. Not that I admire the custom, but it’s a custom.

The Minhag Explained

Listen however, because I’m going to tell you a little anecdote from the Dubno Maggid, what he says about this custom. And it’ll come in handy so remember it! He says that there’s a remez here; this custom is hinting at something very meaningful. The bigger half, the afikomen, represents our efforts that we should put away for Olam Haba. That’s what it means Tzafun; it’s concealed for the World to Come. The half that you put away for the end means the efforts that the father tries to put away for the Next World.

So the Dubno Maggid says like this. The poor father, he labors as a slave. His daughters need, his sons need, his wife needs; everybody needs. He himself wears the cheapest of suits; he spends little money on himself because he’s shelling out big bucks for his family. Even when his daughter decides that she wants to marry a kollel man, she does it on the shoulders of her poor father; he’ll have to take a second job for that. He’s also busy paying big premiums on his life insurance so that when he passes away, his wife won’t be able to weep much.

Slave to the Family

And so he’s thinking, “What’s all this about? I can’t be a slave ingantzen. I have to work for myself too. When am I going to prepare for the Next World?”

So he tries to tear away a piece – a bigger piece hopefully; it doesn’t always break the way you expected – of the matzah. He says “At least at night I’ll learn Gemara. Every night, I’ll sit for two hours and learn Shas.” Or, “At least Chol Hamoed when I have off anyhow, I’ll run away to the beis medrash and learn the whole day.” The poor father is trying to break off some of that matzah for himself and hide it for the Next World; he’s trying to put away some of his time for Olam Haba.

What happens? Along comes his family and they try to steal it away from him. They demand extra things that they want to spend money on and they want him to give away more of his life. They want his money and his time – they want to go to the zoo and the amusement parks – they steal it from him.

Freedom Now!

And so, if the children steal the afikomen at the Seder, we do that in order to remind ourselves of what we’re doing to ourselves all year long, how we’re being enslaved. And when we take back the afikomen at the end of the night and we eat it eventually, we should have in mind that we’re taking back our Olam Haba!

So if you must, then take your children to the zoo. The big ones are in the beis medrash but little ones can’t be stuck in the house all week long. So you take them outside a little. But come back as quickly as possible and run away to the beis medrash. Tell the children you must; it’s the yom tov of cheirus.

אֵין לְךָ בֶּן חוֹרִין אֶלָּא מִי שֶׁעוֹסֵק בְּתוֹרָה. It’s a very important lesson; to be in the straitjacket of the Torah, that’s called freedom.

And therefore we have to know לְשָׁנָה הַבָּאָה בְּנֵי חֹרִין has many meanings. It could be that you are going to start going to shiurim every night. You start coming to tefillah b’tzibur every morning.  Get into a place where you are forced to be a good fellow. That will make you free. Free of all the wickedness that’s in the air, the pop-culture, the stupidities, the rishus, the immorality, all the things that contaminate the atmosphere all around us. If we recognize that hashata avdei, that’s the beginning of going free, of making our Pesach a real Zman Cheiruseinu.

Have A Wonderful Yom Tov

This week’s booklet is based on tapes: 214 – Preface to Pesach V | 743 – Redeemed From the Gentiles | E-182 – Next Year Free Men | E-183 – Freedom for Servitude | E-216 – Freed From the Gentiles

Let’s Get Practical

Attaining True Freedom

The freedom from Egyptian slavery was not the liberty of the American people. It is the freedom found by embracing the Torah as our ultimate guide for life. This Yom Tov, every time I chew on a piece of matzah, I will bli neder take a minute to reflect on these lessons and see how I can incorporate them in my life.