This is our final class before Pesach, which as we know, is called Pesach because of the korban Pesach. The Jewish people took sheep and kept them tied to their beds for four days-from the 10th of Nissan to the fourteenth of Nissan. They slaughtered them on the 14th and and ate them the night of the 15th. And that was the highlight of their Seder. Today we don’t have the Korban Pesach, we have the shank bone to remind us of the Korban Pesach- but it was all about the sheep that we slaughtered.
What is the significance of the slaughtering of the sheep? How does it fit into the holiday of Pesach and leaving Egypt? And what can we learn from this in our days?
They tied their sheep to the beds on the 10th day of Nissan, which was Shabbat HaGadol, and it was a great miracle.
The Bet Yosef quotes from Tosafot that when they tied the sheep to the beds, the Egyptian first-borns came and said, “Why are you tying those sheep to the bed posts?“
The Jews answered that they would be slaughtering them, and that the Egyptian firstborns would die.
Upon hearing that, rather than kill the Jews(which was the miracle) they staged a civil war against their fathers and Paroah, for not letting the Jewish people go-because they would die when the sheep were slaughtered.
But why were the first born Egyptians in particular bothered by the slaughter of the sheep? Why wasn’t anyone else concerned? And why did the Jews answer, “We are going to slaughter them and you are going to die.“ What did one thing have to do with the other?
The rabbis explain that there is something called Mazal, which is like horoscopes.
En Mazal L’Yisrael means we are above the horoscopes. But there is a real power to it. For example, the Mazal of Elul is a Betulah, a young maiden, which is called Virgo in the secular terminology. This shows that the Jewish people and God have a special love affair, “I am to my beloved as my beloved is to me.” The sign of the next month, Tishre, is a scale which is called Libra. The Mazal of Adar is Fish, called Pisces, which is fish in Latin. And so on and so forth.
These Mazalot are real, but we are above it.
And of the twelve Mazalot, the number one Mazal, the Bechor, First born of the Mazalot, in the month of Nissan, is Aries, which is a sheep. The Egyptians worshiped the sheep because they believed it was the chief Mazal. They felt that the month of Nissan was their month, because that was the month of the sheep. And the first born Egyptians, who felt a connection with the sheep, were actually the priests. There is truth to this. But God wanted to give them a message that the sheep is not the powerful force. God is. What would happen would be that the sheep would be slaughtered down here, which would in turn cause the horoscope, the symbol of the sheep in heaven, to fall. With that, the first born, who were connected to the Mazal of the sheep, would die. That is why the first born Egyptians got scared. They understood how it worked.
We can compare it to what is called voodoo dolls. The pagans believed in these little dolls that they made to resemble specific people. And if they put a pin in the neck of a doll, the person whom the doll resembled (let’s say, Putin for example), would suddenly get a pain in their neck.
Imagine somebody walking into the voodoo doctor’s office and seeing a voodoo doll that resembled himself, with needles in it. He would get scared.
That is what happened to the firstborn Egyptians. They saw the sheep tied to the beds and got scared because it represented them.
God showed En Mazal L’Yisrael. God showed that we are above everything. This concept shows up in a Gemara in Masechet Shabbat, in a story about a group of men walking into the forest to chop wood. A great rabbi named Shemuel was sitting nearby with a star gazer called Avlet. Looking up at the stars, Avlet said,
“Do you see that man walking into the forest? He is not coming back.“ The rabbi answered that if he was a Jew he might come back. When the man came back out of the forest, Avlet was stunned. He was never wrong. What happened? Avlet went over to the man and asked him to open his backpack. When he looked inside, he saw a snake, that was chopped in half. That showed that the man was supposed to die; the snake was supposed to bite him, but it didn’t. They asked the man what he had done that day. The man explained that when they went into the forest each day, they had a system whereby they each contributed a different type of food for their lunch.They would collect all the various foods and assemble a meal for everyone. But that day, the man noticed that one of the wood choppers hadn’t brought anything. He was poor. Not wanting to embarrass the man, he offered to collect the food for lunch that day. He made the sandwiches, pretending that he was taking a portion from that man. Then he gave his sandwich to the poor man instead. When the rabbi heard this, he said, “Sedaka Tatzil MiMavet/charity saves from death.”
That is what En Mazal L’Yisrael means. We have the power to do things down here that can change the Mazal. That is the message of the night of the seder. All the Mitzvot, and all that we do, will change the Mazal. We have the ability to change nature. That is what God said when He took us out of Egypt. The Mazal said that the Jews were never leaving, but we say En Mazal L’Yisrael. We are above it.
God chose the 15th of the month, when the moon is at its fullest, because that is when the Mazal is at its strongest. But God showed that He knocked the Mazal out, and He deals with the Jewish people in a supernatural way.
This goes back to Avraham Avinu, who, based on the Mazal, was not supposed to have any children. But God said, “Leave your stargazing and follow Me.“ That is the message of the Jewish people. The regular worldly rules and f other nations don’t apply to us. We go directly with God. Hashem Himself deals with us, until this very day. We have to believe that we are above all nature, above all statistics, above all predictions. All predictions said that Jews should not be here anymore. There’s a famous quote from Mark Twain that shows this:
“He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?“
We know the answer. The secret of his immortality is that we are connected to God. And that happens on the night of Yetziat Mitzrayim. May we all gain this important lesson and have a Hag Kasher V’Sameach