Here we are, Erev Pesach תשפ 5780
It’s a different Pesach than we can ever recall from previous years.
Let’s consider the power of Erev Pesach. In his sefer Daat Chochma U’Musar vol 1, Rav Yerucham Levovitz, the Mashgiach of the Mir, says (at the end of essay 37):
If a person looks into the Mitzvot of Erev Pesach, he’ll realize that it’s not humanly possible to fathom the purification and the filtering of the human being that occurs on Erev Pesach. We become purified and filtered.
Furthermore,
והיהודי של ערב פסח, גרידא כבר אין כל בריה יכולה לעמוד במחציתו
No creature can stand in the area of a Jew on a Erev Pesach.
Fire is coming out of him. We don’t realize it. He says, if we can think about the greatness of each Mitzvah: searching for Chametz, getting rid of the Chametz, preparing the Matzot...
He says,
אלמלא לא באנו אלא בשביל מצוות ערב פסח,לחוד דינו
If we came to the world just for Erev Pesach, just to get ready for the Seder, Dayenu. It would be enough. Just like getting close to Har Sinai would be enough.
What is a Jew like on Erev Pesach?! We don’t realize our powers or the powers of Erev Pesach.
Furthermore, Chacham Ben Sion Abba Shaul writes in his sefer Or L’Sion in the name of the Mekubalim that the greatest Arbit of the year is the Arbit of tonight, going into Pesach. The Chida writes that it’s Chashuv K’Ne’Ilah, it’s like the the highest prayer of Yom Kippur. Many have the custom to recite full Hallel tonight. The Arizal says that this shows us the power of this prayer. Normally, to get to Hallel, you have to build up to it, step by step: Arbit, kiddush, Shaharit, Keriat Shema, Amidah and then finally we can say Hallel. On the night of Pesach, however, we can jump right to Hallel after Alenu Leshabeach of Arbit.
These prayers are powerful. We are asking for the Geula, we are asking to be back in Yerushalayim. We can’t underestimate the powers and strength of these tefillot, and of the Seder, and what it can do.
As always though, we need to have the right glasses on.
There is a powerful Ramchal that my dear friend Mr. Michael Safdie shared with me, that I want to share, from Sefer Daat Tevunot:
To paraphrase:
You must know a very important introduction. Hashem never despises his creatures. Hashem never leaves the world. In a time of that it looks like the world is forsaken, he says it’s just the opposite. It means that Hashem is renewing the world for the better. All His Thoughts are always for making the world better, not to destroy it but he’s hiding himself in a very think layer. It looks like the world is being forsaken.
He gives the example of Yaakov Avinu. The Midrash says that when Yaakov asked the brothers
למה הרעותם לי
Why they made it difficult for him (when they told the viceroy that they had a brother at home) he was held accountable.
Never did Yaakov say anything for naught. Every word was measured and important. Only this one word was off. Yaakov thought things were difficult, but Hashem was really just turning the wheels so that Yaakov Avinu could get to Mitzrayim in serenity.
Sometimes we think Hashem is hidden.
נסתרה דרכי ה׳
But it had to happen in a way of pain for Yaakov, for very deep reasons.
There’s a rule.
וזה בנה אב. שלכל עילוי שרוצה ה׳ לתת לאדם או לעולם הנה כל זמן הזדמן הטוב, אינו מזמדן ובא אלא מתוך עומק עצה נסתרת
Anytime G-d wants to lift a person up, or lift the world up, it only comes in a deep hidden way,
ועל כן יקרה קדם לו צער
and that’s why there is always pain first.
This is a tremendous way of looking at things.
The bigger the pain, the bigger the outcome.
This is hard for us to understand.
Although the Holocaust looked liked a horror and terror to our eyes, Hashem was doing it for the betterment of Klal Yisrael.
Rav Wolbe, my Mashgiach, to whom, aside for my parents, I owe everything for giving me the proper outlook, gave me tremendous insight. He once said something that he got flack for (people wrote articles against him at the time). He said that during the Holocaust there was Middat HaDin/ G-d’s Justice. This trait demands perfection from us. G-d wants perfection. Like a coach that keeps making his client’s life difficult, making him hit the most difficult shot, G-d demands greatness from us.
Rav Wolbe said that during World War 2, he fled Poland in fear of the Germans, and went to Sweden, where he was hired to tutor the Lehman children.
(in a twist of Hashgacha Pratit, it was Meir Lehman, a son of these Lehmans, that convinced me to go to Rav Wolbe’s Yeshiva, Be’er Yaakov. I wasn’t even planning to go to Israel, but I saw him when he came back to America for a friend’s wedding, and he spent the whole night convincing me. And it was Rav Wolbe who taught his father. May it be a zechut for his neshama, a’h)
After WW2, when Rav Wolbe was in Sweden, he spent Rosh Hashanah in the hospital, going from bed to bed, blowing the shofar and giving hizuk to Holocaust survivors. A man there, who had worked in the concentration camp near the gas chambers, told him that every single train load, no matter who come off, be it the most irreligious, atheists, or Bundists, not a group came off that didn’t scream Shema Yisrael at the end.
That was their tikkun. They died Al Kiddush Hashem. They went up to high and holy places. We don’t understand or see it that way. We don’t understand it, but we have to know that everything Hashem is doing is to bring the Geula. It’s up to us to believe it. Who knows what we can do on the Seder night? How many people who have never broken a matzah will do Yachatz? How many people who have never done so will lead a seder?
We must believe with Emunah Shelemah that this is all good, and Be’ezrat Hashem we will bring Mashiach Tzidkianu B’mHerah B’Yamenu Amen.