If you're in a bad mood. Welcome, everyone. Thank you for coming. Today you get extra credit and dedication. Today separates the men from the boys. Whoever comes today gets 100 times the credit. It doesn't mean you don't have to come for the next 99 weeks, but there's no question that you get 100 times the credit for making it out today.
Today's class is for the Hatzlachah (success) of all the soldiers in Israel, for the hostages to be released right away, and for all our brothers and sisters to have only Hatzlachah and Beracha (blessing). Amen.
In two and a half weeks, we'll be celebrating the holiday of Pesach (Passover). Crazy. By now, maybe we're starting to get to know the style of the question we ask when we start to study about a holiday: What is the message of the holiday?
Just for scheduling purposes, this week we're going to have the class on Pesach, God willing. Next week, we're going to have a class, and then we're going to break for the holiday. But next week, God willing, the plan is that I'll try to give you a few different things you could say over at the Seder (ritual meal). So if you want to bring a notebook next week, you can write things down and pick one or two. Maybe we'll try to get four or five different ideas, six or seven minutes each. You can pick the ones you like and say them over at your table, which I think is a nice idea.
But today, we just want to study about the holiday of Pesach. The question is, what is the message of Pesach? With all the cleaning and preparing, whether you're here or going away, there's always a message the rabbis want us to take from the holiday. So what is that message?
I was asking the girls in school yesterday. We were going around, but the rabbis explain that the message is gratitude, a.k.a. the Jewish Thanksgiving. We sit around the table with our families once a year. We're supposed to be thankful every single day, but once a year, we sit around the table and go back to the beginning. We talk about how we were slaves in Egypt, how Lavan tried to kill Yaakov and his children, and how Hashem brought us from being slaves to being the children of Hashem, princes and princesses.
Rabbi Diamond taught us that Hakarat HaTov is super important. If we don't have proper gratitude to Hashem for everything in our life, it means that we don't know Hashem. We don't know He exists. The way we connect with Hashem is through having gratitude. Right? The Pasuk (verse) says, Veyivtechu Vecha Yode'ei Shemecha. And you should have bitachon (trust) in Hashem, those that know Your name. Veyivtechu Vecha Yode'ei Shemecha. Veyivtechu Vecha Yode'ei Shemecha. Veyivtechu Vecha Yode'ei Shemecha.
Who knows Hashem's name? Who are we talking about that should have bitachon? The ones who know what Hashem does for us. The ones who have gratitude, who constantly look at their lives and say, “Thank you, Hashem, for my health. Thank you, Hashem, for my life. Thank you, Hashem, for my family.” So gratitude is a huge item.
I feel like we're weathering the elements here, huh? We survived. Specifically on Pesach, we go back to the beginning and spend time with our families. At our Seder, at our house, what we try to do is, besides following what it says in the Haggadah (Passover Haggadah) about having gratitude as a nation, go around the table so everybody can prepare something to say that they're grateful for, how they saw Hashem in their life. I'm sure people who are a little older have more to talk about. But you can say how we remember when we were young and had nothing. Hashem brought us; He helped us become religious. He gave us our families. He gave us our minds. He helped us so much. Really, the story of Pesach should lead every person to tell their own journey and their own story of gratitude in their life. So that's Pesach. It's a Jewish Thanksgiving.
The problem is, we have two questions about this concept. And it's true: gratitude is the theme of Pesach. That's what we're supposed to work on for the eight days of Pesach. By the time Pesach is over, we should be more grateful than we were before Pesach started, because we should have worked on being grateful for everything in our lives.
The problem is, we're thanking Hashem for taking us out of Egypt and taking us out of being slaves. But who put us into Egypt to begin with? Hashem. Who put us into slavery? We were there for 210 years, and we were in 86 years of bondage and slavery, of battle and back-breaking labor. So who put us in there? Hashem. Who took us out? Hashem. Why are we thanking Hashem for taking us out if He's the One who put us in to begin with?
Let me give you an example so you understand the question. Imagine, after today's class, this is an imaginary story, you go home to your house. You have your raincoat out because it's pouring rain, and you come into your house and go to hang up your jacket. You're walking home, and my wife is doing all the laundry. And suppose the closet and your husband's home, and he decides he wants to play a trick on you. When you walk into your walk-in closet, you left your bag, your purse, and your phone outside the closet, and your husband locks you in the closet.
At first you think it's funny, and you start laughing and say, “Okay, very funny. Let me out of the closet.” But he doesn't let you out. Two minutes, three minutes, and you start banging on the door. You say, “Listen, I gotta go to the bathroom. I gotta get something to eat. I need to eat lunch. Let me out of the closet.” And he doesn't open the door. Then he makes an announcement: “I'm leaving. There's nobody else home. Your housekeeper called in sick. There's nobody home.” And he leaves you in the closet for 20 minutes, 30 minutes.
Think about the different emotions that will roll through your mind. At first you were laughing. Now you're panicking. Then he leaves, and you start banging on the door. You're like, “Let me out of here! What are you crazy?” And you start going nuts. Imagine he leaves you in there for an hour, two hours. Your kidneys are hurting because you have to go to the bathroom so badly. After six hours, your husband returns. Let's say you get home at 1:30, and it's 7:30 at night. He comes and opens the closet door to let you out. Is anybody in this room going to thank their husband for letting them out of the closet, or are you going to beat him up, call the police, flip out, leave the house? You're going nuts, crazy! “She locked me in the closet for six hours. What's wrong with you?”
So my question is, we're thanking Hashem for taking us out, but who put us in there? Hashem put us in there. Hashem locked us up for 86 years. We were in a Holocaust. Why are we thanking Hashem for taking us out if He's the One who put us in? Everybody agreed nobody's going to thank Hashem—thank their husband—for letting them out of the closet after six hours. So the whole premise of this holiday is questionable. Why are we thanking Hashem for taking us out if He's the One who put us in there? It's a very strong question. Maybe we should cancel the holiday. We have to analyze this. Why are we being thankful? Hashem, don't put us in the Holocaust and don't take us out. Just leave us alone.
The second question is, if you look at the actual Seder, it's very strange, because part of the time we're leaning to the left like kings, drinking wine. Did we ever lean to the left when we drank on Pesach night? We're kings. We're drinking four glasses of wine, leaning to the left, celebrating, singing songs: “Hashem, if you wouldn't have done this, it would have been enough.” Very nice party. But then half the night we're focusing on the struggle and the problems that we have. We're dipping the celery in the salt water to remember the tears that we shed. I thought we're celebrating. Why are we focusing on the tears? We eat the maror (bitter herbs). We're like, “This is the food we ate when we had no food.”
Imagine somebody—I had a friend one time—was driving on the parkway and, Lo Aleinu (God forbid), his car flipped over eight times, and he came out without a scratch. He was a miracle. He literally fell asleep on the parkway. It was late at night. I saw him in shul (synagogue) the next morning. He says, “You don't understand. This is going back a few years. My life was saved. Hashem loves me. I flipped eight times.”
Imagine a person like that wants to make a party to celebrate that he was okay. On the year anniversary, when he wants to make a celebration, he calls all his friends. He's drinking wine. He's praising Hashem. But then he goes outside to his car with a sledgehammer and starts breaking his car again, smashing it. You tell the guy, “What are you crazy? What are you doing?” He says, “No, I'm commemorating what happened last year, so I want to bash my car again because that's what happened last year.” Nobody would do that.
If we're celebrating that we're free now, we don't have to eat the maror anymore. Why do we have to eat the salt water? We're free. Isn't that the point? Thank you, Hashem, for making us free. I don't want to eat this food. And I don't want to eat the matzah (unleavened bread) either. Why do we celebrate half the night by thanking Hashem, praising Hashem, leaning to the left like a king with four glasses of wine, and spend half the night dipping our celery in salt water and thinking about the tears? Why?
So really, both questions could be answered with the same answer. The Gemara says, “The same way we praise and thank Hashem for the good, we praise and thank Hashem for the things that we perceive to be not so good.”
When we look at our history, you know, the Jewish people have been around since we got the Torah for over 3,300 years. That's a long time. And we had a lot of enemies that tried to take us out. We had the Holocaust, pogroms, Cossacks, Inquisitions. How are we still here 3,300 years later? How did we make it? How are the Jewish people so resilient? You know what the answer is? As a nation, Hashem put us in the iron furnace, the Kur HaBarzel. It's called Mitzrayim (Egypt). Hashem put us in boot camp.
You know what boot camp is? When I was young, when I was single, I once watched a program with a small crowd so we could go off tangent and talk about TV a little. No, not really. But I watched a program about these kids who were 13, 14 years old and very spoiled. You know the type of spoiled they were: they made a grilled cheese, and the cheese wasn't perfectly on the bagel, so they stopped crying. So the man was like, “What are we going to do with these kids?” So they put them in boot camp. I remember a program like this. There's a certain host of a daily talk show, and he would take these kids and put them in boot camp for six weeks.
What happens? You have these guys with police uniforms and hats. The guy screams at the top of his lungs to these kids, “You wake up and clean your room, and you listen carefully.” And he's yelling at them. The kids get scared, and they go through this system for six weeks. By the end of the six weeks, the kid's just happy to have a bagel at all. He doesn't complain to his mother at all.
So they say, “Oh, this kid, he's too spoiled. He needs boot camp.” That's boot camp. Boot camp is something that straightens you out. What did Hashem do? He says, “How are the Jewish people going to last for 3,300 years and deal with every nation that's against us? How? How are we going to do it?” The answer is, before we become a nation, Hashem's going to put us in boot camp. He's going to put us in something much stricter than boot camp. But Mitzrayim's going to develop us to become resilient people.
So when we're thanking Hashem on Pesach night, at the Seder, in two and a half weeks, when we're sitting around with our family and saying, “Thank you, Hashem, for taking us out of slavery. Thank you for making us a nation. Thank you for bringing the plagues. And thank you for putting us in there also. Thank you for locking us up, because you know what? We recognize that it was good for us also, because we're still here 3,300 years later.” So we're thanking Hashem.
So let's go back to our questions. I asked, if your husband locks you in for six hours, are you going to thank him when you get out? Are you going to bless him? You know what the answer is? Imagine you found out that your husband made a deal with your father that for every hour you're in the closet, you get $100,000. After the six hours, you'll thank him for locking you up too. You'd think, “Why don't you keep me in there a little longer?” If you realize it was good for you.
What I'm saying is, on Pesach night, when we thank Hashem for everything that happened to us, we thank Hashem for locking us up too, because we tell Hashem, “We understand that was good for us.” So the whole night is one big thanksgiving. Thank you, thank you, thank you. That answers our second question. When we dip the celery in salt water, you know what we're doing? We're thanking Hashem for the tears also. We're thanking Hashem for the maror. We're saying, “Hashem, you know what you're doing. You know this was good for us. You know we needed to last as a nation.” So it's one big thank you the whole night. Thank you for the good, what we perceive to be good, and thank you for what we perceive to be not so good. Because we don't know what's good or not. Hashem, you know what you're doing. You don't make mistakes.
That's Pesach. It's gratitude that leads to faith. It's “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” and even “Thank you for the hardships, God. Thank you for the tears. Thank you for the bitter herbs. Thank you for when there are things that are bitter in our life. We understand that was also good.” I'm sure every person can go around the table and say, “By the way, I have my own story that I'm grateful for, and I want to tell everybody how my challenge ended up being good.”
You know, talking about boot camp, when we went through Mitzrayim, we came out resilient. We came out strong. A soldier is the best person to hire in your office, right? If a guy had to wake up at 2 in the morning and do push-ups, he could deal with a phone call that's a little bit stressful.
On Friday night, we had Yaakov and Janine eat by us. Whenever you invite them, there's always a plus one or plus two. They're always having people, God bless them. They're very generous, very kind. So Janine calls my wife Friday morning. She says, “We have a soldier who just came out of the army, and he's joining us for dinner.” We were psyched. Okay, unbelievable. So we spent the whole night together talking to him, finding out how it's going, what's going on in Israel. It was an amazing, amazing night. A lot of stories.
But just a funny story on the way out. It's 12 o'clock at night. They're leaving, and the soldier asks me how to get to a particular shul the next morning. So Yaakov tells him, “It's a 15-minute walk to go to that shul.” So I turned to Yaakov. I said, “Yaakov, you're talking to a soldier who just got out of the army. You think he's scared of a 15-minute walk? The guy has bullets coming at him in the war in Gaza. What do you mean? Because he prays two minutes from his house. He only has a 15-minute walk.”
So the guy turns to me and says, “By the way, Rabbi, when I became an officer four years ago, we had to walk 70 kilometers to become an officer. 70 kilometers, 45 miles. That's like walking from here to Shaare Zion.” Imagine walking on the highway, right? So this guy's like, “15 minutes? Nothing. It's peanuts.” I was just thinking of this story because it's funny. You talk to a soldier, right? The Jewish people went through Egypt. We became soldiers. We became resilient.
So a girl asked me in school yesterday, “But Rabbi, I didn't go through Egypt.” I said, “But you did. Because your neshamah (soul) is at Har Sinai (Mount Sinai) also. And it's in your DNA that you have resilience, that you could withstand anything. Because every single Jewish person is connected to Har Sinai.” I said, “And besides, any challenge that you have in your life, you could interpret the same way and say, ‘No, no, no. This is part of my purpose in life. This is part of what Hashem wants for me. So I'm going to thank Hashem for the good and what seems to be not so good.’”
I told a story years ago on the holidays. It was one of the most powerful stories. This week, something happened that reminded me of the story. There's a very famous motivational speaker. His name is Tony Robbins. The guy's unbelievable. So, like, six or seven years ago, I got very into his stuff. Somebody told me about him, and I was watching hours of his talks for a few days in a row. Very smart guy. A lot of the stuff, by the way, is based on Torah. Amazing. A lot of his principles are exactly the same as Torah.
So anyway, I'm watching him, and he has these seminars with tens of thousands of people. He does amazing work. He'll go through different moods with them. He gets the crowd into it. He makes everybody raise their hand every time he asks a question. He's very interactive with the crowd. He doesn't want them to be stale. He shows them, for example, how and you're, you know, down, you want to go sell something. It's very hard to do it or accomplish something. You know, you're very dreary. You can't get it done. Then he does a whole thing where he pumps up the crowd for 15 minutes. He says, “Imagine now that you just won the lottery.” Like, everybody gets hyped up. “Oh, he just won the lottery.” And he slowly builds you up, builds you up, until he has the lights and the screen going. At the 10, 15 minutes, he gets you in a psycho mood, and he starts playing music, and you're dancing. Literally tens of thousands. They're dancing and jumping up. And he says, “Okay, now go sell your friends something.” And the guy's like, “You're all hyped up.” He says, “You see the difference? You're negative. You're boy. You got to be positive.” The guy, he's very good. It's like $1,500 to get in to see him. It's like a three-day program. Amazing.
One of the things he's doing, he's talking and tells his own personal story. I just Googled it yesterday. He's a very successful man. He wrote several books. He meets with—he met with four presidents. He meets with the number one people in the world, the most richest and successful people. He's worth $700, $800 million. But he told his personal story.
What was his story? He was 11 years old, and he had a stepdad. His actual father left his house, and he had a stepfather. He said it was Thanksgiving, and he had nothing to eat. He was starving. He said his life wasn't too great because they didn't have any money, and his stepfather used to argue with his mother. It's late at night on Thanksgiving, and he gets his doorbell rings. He runs to the door, and there's a guy standing at the door with two huge grocery bags and a turkey on the floor. He's psyched. He's going to get a full Thanksgiving dinner, and he had nothing to eat in his house. He was hungry.
So he runs excitedly to tell his father that somebody's at the door. His father says, “Did you get the door?” He says, “No, the guy's here for you.” He comes back to the door with his father, and his father is standing at the door. He sees the guy with the food, and he says his father didn't take it well. He got very, like, he felt down on himself. He needs handouts. So he tells the guy, “We don't take handouts.” He's about to shut the door, but this guy's a professional, he said. He put his shoulder—he said he's a big, strong guy—into the door, but he can't shut the door. So the guy says, “Wait a minute, wait, it's not a handout. This is a community. We come together. We help each other. This is not a handout.” The father looks at him again. He says, “I told you, we don't take handouts.”
So he says, “Then the guy told my father something. I told my father to punch him in the face.” He goes, “Sir, don't let your ego get in the way of feeding your kids.” He goes, “My father looked at the guy for 10 seconds. He grabbed the groceries and shut the door.” He said, “But my father was so upset after that night that a few days later he left the house and never came back. It hit him so hard that he needed to come out to people. He left.”
He said, “That night, I was in my bed, and I was thinking to myself, my parents always said, ‘Nobody cares.’ My parents always told me, ‘Nobody cares about you, Tony. You're on your own.’ And I was lying in my bed, and I was thinking, but this guy cares. He came out on Thanksgiving to give us a meal. He cares.” He said, the whole night, for three hours, he's thinking about this guy. And he says, “You know, when I get older, if I ever make money, I'm going to go and care about somebody else.”
He says he was 17 years old. He made his first few dollars, and he had enough money to buy two meals for somebody in need. You can see this guy, Tony, is very organized, why he's successful. He goes to the supermarket and tells the supermarket person, “I'm buying two meals for charity. I need a discount.” He goes, “The guy was a cheapskate. He only gave me 10% discount.” He goes, “I went to the local church, and I asked the priest, ‘I want the two most needy families. I want you to tell me their addresses.’” He made a little postcard and wrote on it, “Dear friend, please enjoy this hot meal on Thanksgiving. And if you're ever in a position to pay it back, pass it on to somebody else in need. Love your friend.” He wrote it in English, and on the flip side, he wrote it in Spanish.
He goes to the priest. He gets the two addresses. He goes to the first house. He said he pulled up to this house. He borrowed a minivan from his friend. He pulls up to the first house. He said, “It looks like a shed.” He can't believe people live in a teeny little house. He said he put on jeans and a T-shirt. He didn't want them to think he gave it. He wanted them to think he's just a delivery boy. He put us in Egypt too. He goes up to the house, knocks on the door, and he says Tony's a six-foot-seven guy. The girl answers the door. She's maybe five feet tall. She sees him standing with all the groceries, and she starts to cry right away. She says, “Man of God, man of God.” And he says, “No, no, no. I'm not a man of God. I'm a delivery boy.” She says, “No, man of God.”
He comes into her little house and puts the groceries he bought on the table. Before he knows it, four little kids come running out, and they start opening all the food. Then he put it on the table, and they're looking at the pumpkin pie and the turkey and all the different side dishes. He said he stood there for a couple of seconds and took it in. He started to remember when he was that 11-year-old kid and how the guy came to his house. He went back to the car, and before he was about to leave, the woman came and gave him a hug, and the four kids came and gave him a group hug. She started repeating, “Man of God, man of God.” And he says, “No, no, I'm just a delivery boy.” He said he got back into his car and started to drive. He drove a few feet and burst into tears. He started crying and crying. And he realized that the greatest moment of his life was when he was 11 years old and that guy came to his house. Because he said, “Now I'm on a mission to feed America.”
At the time he made this speech, maybe it was 2015, he said he had already donated 100 million meals to people in need. He said, “My goal is to give 1 billion meals to people in need.” He partnered up with a company called Feed America. 1 billion meals. Why? How? Because when he was 11 years old, somebody came to help him out. And that changed his life. He said, “The greatest feeling in the world is to be able to give to somebody else. Nothing matches that feeling.” And he says, “That's my mission.” In the middle of one of his seminars, he goes, “If we get together tonight and donate 1 million meals, I'll match it. Another million meals.”
And I'm looking at this guy, and this is exactly what we're saying on Pesach night. This is the class. When we sit around and thank Hashem on Pesach night, we say, “Hashem, thank you for taking us out of Egypt. Thank you for giving us the Torah, giving us meaning in our life. Thank you for blessing us in so many different ways. And you know what, Hashem? Thank you for locking us up too. Because we needed it. Because we needed to become resilient. Thank you for helping us in our life with any challenge that we may be facing. Thank you for giving us the challenge too. Because we recognize that, Hashem, you don't make mistakes. Everything you do is for a reason. And we understand, and we have emunah (that's understanding that Hashem knows what he's doing), that you're doing the right thing.”
You know, when a person exercises—I tried it for three months. It wasn't for me. It's like moving furniture. It's hard. I like to play basketball, you know? But when you lift the weights, what happens? The first 13 reps that you do are just really to weaken your muscles. It's only the last two reps, where your arm is basically shaking, that build the muscle. The first 13 just weaken your muscle to a point. And it's those last few that develop your muscle. I say tomorrow it's going to be a little bit bigger, right? Men try to get bigger muscles. Tomorrow's going to be bigger because of those last couple that hurt. That's what builds a person.
If you read a biography of anybody who was great in their life, it'll never say, “This guy became great by sipping a pina colada in Hawaii.” Never. It'll never say, “This guy went on vacation for 10 years and he turned out great.” Never happened. Greatness comes from resistance. Greatness comes when there's a struggle and a challenge, and you fight through it and succeed and come out on the other end and say, “I'm a better person because of it.”
That's Pesach. It's a night of gratitude that leads to faith. Thank you, Hashem. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. And thank you for the hardships too, because we understand it's good for us.
You know, we cover our eyes when we say Shema (Shema prayer). So the rabbi says, “Why do we cover our eyes?” One rabbi says, “To help you concentrate.” But you don't cover your eyes when you say the Amidah (standing prayer). You're supposed to concentrate also. Why do we close our eyes when we say Shema? The explanation is, what do we say when we say, “Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad”? Hashem, the first name, Adonai, is Hashem when he's merciful. Elokeinu is Hashem's name when he's strict justice. So what are we proclaiming? “Hashem, when you're merciful and when you're Elokeinu, is really Hashem Echad. It's really mercy and it's one. It's all mercy, God. Everything you do, when you're merciful and when you're strict justice, you're really all Hashem Echad. You're all Adonai,” which is the name of Hashem and mercy. “Echad,” which is one. And the numerical value of Echad is 13, the same as Ahava, which is love.
So basically, we're saying, when we say Shema every day, “Hashem, when you do things that are Adonai, that are merciful, and when you do things that are Elokeinu, that are strict justice, it's really Adonai Echad. It's really only mercy. And it's really only one. It's one and the same, and it's only love.” So you know why we cover our eyes? Because we're basically admitting that our eyes don't see the truth. When we see things in our life and complain about them, and we're like, “Hashem, why?” we're basically saying our eyes are liars. We can't go with what our eyes see. We don't know. Only Hashem knows. So we close our eyes when we make the proclamation to basically say, what you see is not what you get. What you see and what you think you see is not necessarily the truth, because Hashem knows what He's doing. So even when it looks bad, it's really good. That's why we cover our eyes, to basically admit that Hashem knows what He's doing.
Let's just take it one drop further. Everybody has the if-only list. If only we would have a little bit more money. If only my child would behave a little bit better. If only my spouse was a little nicer. Everybody has the if-only list. We start with the list when we're very young. When we're 10 years old, we start thinking, imagine if I had this, imagine if I had that. Everybody has a list.
But we once said over a line that, if you understand this line well, it will change your life. But before I tell you the line, let me tell you a story. There was a Hasidic Rebbe (Hasidic rabbi) 200 years ago. He had an unbelievable Pesach Seder. He was wearing a white outfit. He invited guests. He stayed up to 4 o'clock in the morning singing, saying the Torah. Gorgeous. He had maybe 20 guests. I mean, you can picture it in your mind. Beautiful night. They did everything right.
The rabbi prays in shul at 5:30 in the morning. So at 4 o'clock, he says, “I have an hour.” He tells his assistant, “Wake me up in an hour.” He puts his head down and falls asleep. In his dream, his grandfather comes to him and tells him, “You know, I want to tell you, your Seder was unbelievable. In Shamayim (Heaven), you gave a tremendous Nachat Ruach. Hashem was so proud of your Seder. But I want you to know your Seder was second best. There's somebody in your town who had a better Seder than you.” He says, “Really? Who?” He says, “The simple tailor of your town. His Seder was better than yours.”
The rabbi wakes up from his little nap and can't believe it. This tailor, the simple guy, did better than me? What did he do so good? I need to know. He goes to shul. He prays. He has a little breakfast. He tells his assistant, “I want to go visit the tailor. I got to talk to him. I got to find out about his Seder.” He goes and knocks on the door. The guy says, “Rabbi, what are you doing here?” He says, “I need to talk to you privately.” “Okay, come on in.” He sits down with him. He says, “Tell me about your Seder from last night.”
The guy turns red. He says, “Rabbi, please don't ask me about the Seder.” He says, “What are you talking about? I insist. I want you to tell me about last night.” He says, “Okay, Rabbi, if you insist, I'll tell you the truth. The truth is, we never had a great Seder at my house. We did it half-baked. We came in last minute. We put it together. My wife, she's not the greatest in the kitchen. It's not her strength. This year, I decided I'm going to take over. I'm going to do everything myself. I took a week off of work. I bought the best matzah. I got the best wine. I even got involved in the cooking. I bought the meat. I went to the butcher. I handled everything. Rabbi, I can't tell you how excited I was. This year was going to be the best Seder we ever had.”
He says, “I left for shul the night of Pesach, and my table was set beautifully. In the center of my table was a beautiful candelabra. All the china, everything was set. The matzah was on the table. The wine. This is 200 years ago. I'm on my way home from shul. As I turn the corner to my house, I notice that my dining room is dark. I say to myself, it doesn't sound good. It doesn't look good. How could it be dark? There's a candelabra on the table, because I have a little pit in my stomach. I come in my front door, and I see that in my dining room, my entire table that I've prepared all week is on its side. Everything is on the floor, smashed. The matzah was ruined. Everything. I hear my wife crying from the bedroom.”
He says, “Rabbi, the rage that I had inside of me—I was ready to blow up. What is wrong with her? All she had to do was stay out of the dining room. I remember what the rabbi said: Be calm no matter what. I walked into the bedroom, and instead of yelling at her, I said, ‘What's wrong?’ She says, ‘I'm such an idiot. I messed it up.’ He says, ‘What happened?’ ‘I noticed the table wasn't centered in the room. I was trying to center the table. I was pulling it. The whole thing came crashing down. Everything's rolling. I'm such a dip.’ She's going on and on. He says, ‘Okay, honey. It's okay. We'll clean it up. We'll do the best we can. We'll make the Seder. Whatever it is, it is. We have wine. We have matzah. We'll do the best we can.’”
He goes, “Rabbi, to be honest with you, we barely had the right matzah. We didn't even have a whole matzah. We had them broken. We barely had the wine. That was our Seder.”
Now I'm going to tell you the line that could change your life forever: What people think is in their way to success is their way to success. This guy thought that his Seder was ruined by his wife. Wrong! His Seder was his wife ruining the Seder. That's what his Seder was. That's what Hashem wanted from him in that moment. And that's why his Seder was better than the Rebbe's Seder. He didn't even have the proper amounts of stuff that he's supposed to have. But that doesn't matter, because he dealt with the challenge Hashem sent him perfectly. He dealt with it perfectly. He didn't deviate. And the Rabbi in Shamayim said, “You know who's the best Seder in the whole town? This guy's.” Because what people think is in their way to success—“My wife ruined my Seder”—no, is the way to success. His wife ruining the Seder was his Seder.
Every challenge that we have in our lives was purposely sent there by God. He put it in front of us on purpose. Not to say, “This ruined it.” No, this is it. This is the direction Hashem wants you to go in. That's what we're saying about Pesach. When you sit around the table with your family and say, “Hashem, thank you for taking us out. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And thank you for putting us in there too.” Tony Robbins said, “Thank you for making me 11 years old and letting this person show up at my house with a turkey dinner, because you helped me give a billion meals to people in need. Thank you, God. You knew what I needed. I didn't know.” So whatever your challenges are, recognize that Hashem put them in front of you for a reason. Hashem put you in front of you for a purpose. What's in your way to success is your way to success.
And I'll just end with this beautiful mashal (parable) that I heard. There was once a movie actor, let's call him Leonardo DiCaprio. They sent him a script so he could do a movie. He reviewed it for three weeks and called his agent. He says, “I'm not doing this movie.” And they said, “Why not? Is it the co-stars you don't like?” He says, “No, I like them.” “You don't like the money? You want to get paid more? They're giving you 30 million.” “No, it's not that. Why don't you want to do this movie?” He says, “Because I don't like the part they have me playing in the movie. They have me playing the part of a retarded child. I don't want people to think I'm retarded. I'm not doing this movie.”
Now, this conversation never happened. You know why? In the movie business, everybody knows it's not what part you play. It's how well you play the part. You can play the part of a king, or you can play the part of a retarded child. Whoever plays the part the best wins the Oscar at the end of the year. Half the time, the people who win these movies, you never heard of them. They say, “Oh, the actor was great in this movie.” They give him the Oscar. So it's not what part you play. It's how well you play the part.
Well, guess what? It's that way in life also. In life, the part that we play is not up to us. How much money you have is from Hashem. How much brain power you have is from Hashem. What family you're into is from Hashem. Hashem doesn't judge you on what part you played. He made you that part. He put you in that part. He judges you: How well did you play the part that He put you in? In the circumstances that He put you in, you know who wins the Oscar after 120 in Shamayim? The person who plays their part the best. The person who says, “I take all the challenges in my life, and I understand that this is what Hashem wants from me, and I'm going to do the best I can,” just like the guy in the story. He didn't blast his wife. He bit his tongue. He says, “Okay, this is what Hashem wants from me.” That's emunah. That's understanding that Hashem knows what he's doing. That's Pesach.
You know what the dual message of Pesach is? You know what we should be thinking about for the eight days of Pesach? How grateful we are to Hashem for everything in our life. Grateful. You have to be grateful. You don't know God. Hashem is invisible. He's not in your life. Once you're grateful, once you're thankful, once you're thanking Hashem, include the things that you don't understand. Include the maror. Include the salt water. Include the suffering in your life and say, “Hashem, thank you for the suffering. Thank you for the maror. Thank you for the challenges also, because I know that you know what's best for me.” And that's the message of Pesach. It's a dual message: gratitude that leads to faith.
Hashem knows which kind of muscles we need. He put us in boot camp as a nation, and we came out as a resilient nation. And He put us in boot camp in our life too. So this Pesach, let us try to work on being grateful, and let that gratitude lead us to having more faith in our life. And if we do that, we accomplish. Besides all of the chametz (leavened food) that we're going to get rid of, let's work on being grateful and being people who have proper emunah in Hashem. And never forget: What's in your way to success is your way to success. Don't think, “Well, if only I could get around this. If only, if only.” No, no, no, no, no. Hashem knows what He's doing. He puts in front of you exactly what you need. Going through that challenge is what you need to succeed in life. It may not be easy. It may be hard to understand sometimes, but that's the truth. What's in your way to success is your way to success. Have a great day.