Rav Yerucham Levovitz has a question that bothers him: Hashem promised us with the 4 terms of geula, that he’d take us out of Mitzrayim (these are the four words that correspond to the four cups of wine).
He promises us He’ll take us out.
Why can’t He just do it? Why the promise first? If someone is in jail do we tell him first that we’ll get them out or do we just do it?
He answers with a beautiful hiddush based on Hazal:
He says that in order to get anything in the world, we need a merit. Our Bitachon, our reliance on Hashem earns us the merit to get the reward. To get out, they needed the merit of Bitachon.
In our times, Hashem challenges us in order to arouse our Bitachon, which in turn earns us the salvation. That’s the system.
Rav Levovitz says that without the Bitachon there’s no salvation. As proof, he discusses the earlier days of the slavery, when the Jews were working so hard that they didn’t listen to Moshe and so they didn’t get out at that point. Even though they were excused and weren’t faulted for it, they needed to rely on Hashem to make things happen.
We don’t have a promise on our daily glitches, but we have books and books of prophets that speak of Hashem’s promise of the final Geula that He will get us out of Galut. We have to rely on those promises. That makes it happen.
That’s a part of the Seder.
The Hallel is split. The first half בצאת ישראל- is about when Bnei Yisrael got out of Egypt. The second part is about our current Galut. לא לנו ה'
Rav Saadia Gaon talks about the four words גם את הגוי דן אנכי. “Also the nation that will subjugated you, I will judge” which Hashem said when talking to Avraham at the “ Covenant of the split parts “. He said you’ll be enslaved...
We read that, and we read the promise of Hashem to Avraham and then we raise our cup- for היא שעמדה - “It stood for us” what stood for us? The previous paragraph, which is the promise Hashem made to Avraham - that’s why we’re here today. Hashem promised Avraham that he’d save us in every generation. Not only that one time. Hashem saved us based on His promise and our reliance on Him.
The two words, דן אנכי - I will judge, allude to all the havoc that Egypt suffered. Just from those two little words.
Rav Saadia says if those two words brought such destruction to Egypt, imagine what will happen in the times of Mashiah, of which volumes have been written. Meteorites, total chaos etc. when Hashem punishes all our enemies.
There’s one catch though.
As Rav Moshe Shapiro, a great thinker and rabbi who passed away a few years ago has said, we are like a broken record that has a needle going around and around- stuck on the same track. He said our whole history is stuck on the track of אני אני הוא- the words of Haazinu. It’s all Me and no one can save you- I’m in charge it’s me: אני אני הוא - we are stuck there and we need to move on to the next part which is: Mashiah is coming- reliance on Hashem.
It’s up to us to move the needle to the next track. The better the Seder is, the more we rely on Hashem... beH
לשנה הבאה בירושלים