![]() Why do we use romaine lettuce as part of our bitter herbs at the Passover seder? It seems to have a rather sweet taste! And that’s exactly the point... Your sweet lettuce is a sneaky little vegetable. Its nature very closely parallels the Egyptian slavery experience. Indeed, lettuce has a gentle and pleasant taste. That is because we pick it when it is young. But leave the lettuce stalk in the ground for a bit longer, and it turns bitter and pungent. What starts off sweet turns sour in the end. This was the exact course of events in Egypt. When the Israelites first arrived, they were warmly welcomed and made to feel at home. Pharaoh invited them to assimilate into Egyptian culture and society, to participate in the economy and become fully-fledged citizens. The trusting Israelites accepted his offer with gusto. They felt honored to be accepted by such an illustrious nation as Egypt. And this was their downfall. They had been duped. The friendliness was a façade. Once Pharaoh had seduced the Israelites into a false sense of security, he could easily manipulate them. Before long, the welcome turned bitter, and the Israelites were enslaved. Like the lettuce stalk, it all seems sweet at first, but given some time it turns bitter. So at the Seder we eat lettuce. Not the mature and embittered type, but rather lettuce that is still tasty and sweet. Because the sweet lettuce is the bitterest of them all. The Egyptian slavery did not start when the Egyptians turned on the Israelites. It began when the Israelites felt comfortable in Egypt. That country, the superpower of its day, was renowned for its low moral standards. When the Israelites became impressed by Egypt's grandeur and lured by its sweet welcome, they lost something of themselves. When they took pride in the attention they received from a tyrant, they lost their freedom. We eat lettuce to remind us that not all that tastes sweet is indeed sweet. A bitter herb, no matter how sugar-coated, is still a bitter herb. There's nothing as bitter as selling your soul to be accepted, and there's nothing as sweet as the freedom to be yourself. Mendel (Menachem) Bluming of Potomac, Maryland and Rabbi Moss I look at the empty Seder plate with this lonely chicken neck left behind, and wonder, why is it there?
Here’s a thought: One of the most amazing characters in the story of the Exodus is Pharaoh. He witnessed with his own eyes the downfall of his country, he experienced firsthand the miracles of the Ten Plagues one after the other, he saw how every prediction Moses made came true, and yet he stubbornly refused to let the Israelites go. Only when every firstborn Egyptian died in the final plague did he relent and let them go. Stubbornness is sometimes called having a stiff neck. The neck connects our head to our body, representing the passageway that translates what we see with our eyes and know with our mind into what we feel with our heart and do with our body. A stiff-necked person is unmoved by what they know to be true. They have blocked neck, and the message just doesn't reach their heart. This was Pharaoh's problem. Indeed, the Hebrew word for neck is הערף -Haoreph. When you rearrange those Hebrew letters it spells Pharaoh פרעה. So the chicken neck that sits on the Seder Plate and doesn't budge is a little reminder of Pharaoh and his stubbornness. After all the miracles and all the wonders, he is still there, same as ever, unchanged and unmoved. When we sit at the Seder, we have a choice. We can be like Pharaoh, skeptical, cynical and unimpressed. Or we can take our honored place at the table of Jewish history, and marvel at the miracle that here we are, over three millennia after Pharaoh's demise, still eating our Matzah and celebrating being Jewish. Chicken necks get left behind. Don't be one of those. Mendel (Menachem) Bluming of Potomac Maryland and Rabbi Moss Imagine you're in the middle of a heavy work out at the gym. Pretty exhausted, you turn to your personal trainer and say, "You have asked me to lift these dumbbells. I am more than happy to do it. But why do you keep on adding weight to them? You're just making my job harder."
The trainer responds, "Yeah, that's the point. Every time you sweat, you burn calories. The heavier the load, the more you burn. I don't just want dumbbells to be lifted, I want you to work for it! The stronger you get, the more resistance you need to make your workout effective." It is similar with G-d's commandments. If He just wanted these things to get done, then it would be ridiculous for Him to make it difficult for us. You don't give someone a job and then put obstacles in their way. You don't ask someone to lift something, and then make it heavier. But our mission is not just to get the deeds done, it is to battle our resistant nature and illuminate the darkness in this world. and change the world for good through doing mitzvos. Every good deed we do brings a ray of divine light into the world. Anything that gets in way of us doing a good deed is a layer of darkness trying to block that light. When we overcome that obstacle, the powers of light have vanquished a little corner of darkness in the universe. And every victory over darkness, no matter how small, is a step closer to the ultimate goal, creating a world of goodness and light. If you are facing a lot of resistance to doing a mitzvah, that is a sign that you are doing a great job. The more hurdles you jump, the more darkness you banish and the more goodness you achieve. As you win more battles and your light gets stronger, you are sent new obstacles, because you now have the spiritual stamina to overcome them. Rabbi Moss and Mendel (Menachem) Bluming of Potomac, Maryland based on Tanya 27 |
AuthorRabbi Mendel Bluming also dedicated six years to serving on the board of directors of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, where he received the Matthew H. Simon Rabbinical Award for exceptional communal leadership. Archives
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