SPECIAL LIVE! Pesach 5780 The Haggadah as narrative therapy

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are live. So like I said, hi, I'm Mike Foyer. Those of you who know me know that I'm both a teacher, I work as a spiritual counselor, and as well as any number of capacities, plus I've got five kids who are just behind the door of that room. So if you hear anything funny there, just ignore it. We're all in a tight space here. But I say this not just to let you know who I am, but because what I want to do Tanakh is a little bit of an intersection between the type of teaching I like to do and the type of interpersonal work I like to do. The title of the class was the Pesach Seder as Narrative Therapy for a Nation. I have a podcast that some of you I'm sure are familiar with. It's called The Jewish Story, and I like to call it Narrative Therapy for a Nation because what narrative therapy is is learning how to tell a redemptive story.

Many of us in our personal lives and perhaps in our national lives feel like our story is already set in stone. I know what my life's about, and often when I work with people Well, interpersonally, they'll come to me, they'll tell me, oh, I'm a failure, or I, you know, have a problem, or etc., whatever, fill in the blank. And they'll piece together the events of their life in a way in which essentially reinforces the narrative that they've already decided on. And the work that I always aim to do interpersonally, and what I want to explore a little bit Tanakh in Haggadah, is how the events of life don't make a narrative on their own. The events of life, in fact, are strung together, consciously or not, by the people who participate in those events.

And therefore, they can tell multiple stories. And you're going to see, in fact, that the Haggadah is structured in just a way to do that. I do want to say one more thing. If you're not familiar with Zoom, there's a function you can raise your hand. If you click on participants at the bottom of your screen, you'll see you'll be able to raise your hand. So if people have a question, you can raise your hand and let me know. I'll try to keep the participants open here. And you can also send me chats as questions, and that way you can feel like, you know, you're getting a word into the flow. So in order to understand the Haggadah as a tool for reworking our narrative, and if you want to appreciate the degree to which this is possible, You know, today, we as a people struggle with the question of how do we incorporate the Holocaust into our historical narrative?

Or, you know, for some people right now, what's happening with the coronavirus is posing enormous questions. How do I understand this in the scope of Jewish history and my personal life, my relationship with God? You know, but just think about it. Once upon a time, slavery in Egypt was the biggest disaster that ever occurred to the Jewish people. I mean, according to the Midrash, four-fifths of Am Yisrael didn't make it out of Egypt. It was a tremendous trauma, 210 years of oppressive slavery, followed by a cataclysmic escape into the wilderness. And yet, despite the sort of scarring, tragic, fill in the superlative blank that you might want to characterize this event with, Nevertheless, this coming Seder night, my kids and maybe some of yours will be dancing around the Seder table singing that favorite Israeli song, If you don't know what that means, it means Pharaoh's out in his PJs in the middle of the night looking for Moshe and Aaron.

How is it possible that a national tragedy became a source of children's songs? And not only that, it's a national tragedy that we recall when we say Shema twice a day, when we say Kiddush on Friday night, And we can come up with any number of other places where we incorporate slavery in Egypt into our, not just our daily practice, but into our daily consciousness. This is a process that I call historical mastication. I call it that because it's a fun word and it sounds slightly off color. So if you say it to people, they'll look at you funny. Right? What is it? It's how you chew and swallow the things that life gives you. On a historical scale, it's how we chew and swallow the thing that life gives us on a national level.

but it works personally as well. When difficulty comes into my life, God forbid, tragedy strikes or fill in the blank of what it is that you struggle with, the real question in life is not what happened to me. The real question in life is what do I do with it? How do I digest it and use that very difficulty as a source of positive identity? Because today, the Exodus from Egypt is at the core of our identity as the Jewish people as a positive event, even though it was preceded by tremendous tragedy. And we tell that story in the Haggadah in ways in which that can really teach us how we can do that on a national scale as a people and also on a personal scale as individuals. And that's what I want to explore a little bit today is that process of historical mastication.

And our primary tool, always the primary tool for how one reworks a narrative in order to transform it from a tragic event into a source of positive identity, the primary tool is memory. if you look at the commandment that we're all going to fulfill please God on this coming wait Wednesday night right Seder Wednesday night Thursday yes if you look at the way the Rambam formulates it I happen to have it here I'll just read it to you I will put some sources up eventually on the screen share but for now I wanted to just keep the natural flow that the Rambam says mitzvah ase shel Torah it's the Torah level commandment l'saper benisi beniflo she naso avotainu mitzvah to tell all the wonders and the miracles that were done to our ancestors in Egypt on the 15th day of Nisan.

As it says, Shana Amar, so this is his proof text, Zichoret Hayom Hazeh Asher Yitzatim Mimitzrayim. Remember the day, this day, that you went out from Egypt. That's a strange thing. One might think that if it's a mitzvah to tell the story, he ought to be reaching for a commandment that says, Vihigad et elavinka, tell it to your children. or maybe there should be another verse that says, we saper it to see poor. Why is it when the Rambam says it's a positive commandment to retell the story of going out from Egypt on the 15th, on the very night, every year that it happened, why is it that he's reaching for memory as the source of the commandment? And the answer really opens up for us what exactly the Haggadah is attempting to do because of course memory, as many of you I'm sure have heard me say before, is not a passive recall of what happened once upon a time in the past.

First of all, it couldn't be the case here, of course, because none of us were in Egypt. So how could we possibly fulfill the commandment if it were simply a memory like, oh, I remember when I was 15 years old and I went to the, you know. It can't be that. But not only from that sort of technical reason, it can't be that because that's not how memory works. Memory is never a passive recall. We're not computers. Our memory functions, and I'll just say it briefly because it's not sort of the main meat of what I want to discuss Tanakh, but our memory functions as a re-membering. It's a re-attachment, a re-identification with events in my own life or on the historical scale with events in the national life.

I summon up an event which from a temporal standpoint is in the past, but memory exists in the present. When we remember things, we're remembering them in the present. So we're summoning up pieces of our past in order to incorporate them into our present identity, but the reality is the present is fleeting. We don't actually live in the present. I'm sure there are people out there that practice meditation or mindfulness. You know how difficult it is to be present to the present. This is far from a simple thing, right? And therefore, what we're really doing is we're living in the tension between our summoning up of the past and our aspirations for the future. We're taking the pieces of the past, incorporating them into our present identity, and hopefully, if it's telling a healthy, positive story, orienting ourselves toward the future which we desire to live.

And lo and behold, when you sit around the seder table, what are you doing? You're telling a story of the past in the present, and of course, the Haggadah to Levincha. You should tell it to your children. You're telling a story of the past to the future. This is what the ideal fulfillment of the Haggadah is meant to be. And yet the sages point out that, what are you supposed to do when you're alone? Anybody know? Somebody can call out if they want to unmute themselves. What are you supposed to do when you're alone? Do you just read the story? Anybody know? Help me out here since I can't see you all. Yes, you can tell it to yourself and you should tell it through asking questions and answering. Meaning you have a future self as well.

You have a future self as well that you need to tell stories to that will get you where you want to go. And that's one of the tremendous powers of memory. It's one of the tremendous powers of the agency that can be gained in learning how to tell your life story in a redemptive fashion. and it's one of the tremendous powers offered to us by the structure of the Haggadah. So that's just sort of by way of introduction. And now what I want to do is take a look at a couple of the fundamental structures and a few stops along the way in the Haggadah. And again, I want to remind you that if you send me a chat or you raise your hand, I will see it if people want to add in. Otherwise, you can hold your questions to the end and we'll see them when we get there.

So when you look at the Mishnahh, remembering that the Haggadah as we have it today is structured largely on the Mishnahh in the 10th parik, the 10th chapter of the Mishnahh in Psachim, not surprisingly. And when you look at the Mishnahh, there are a number of sort of critical structures and sort of points along the way that it gives to us. But the fundamental flow of the Haggadah is from a state of shame and disgrace to a state of praise or a praiseworthy state. We'll see maybe at the end the two faces there of a state of praise or a praiseworthy state. You're moving out of a sense of despair and disgrace into a sense of praise. Now, before we get into the implications of that fully, it's worth it to me to just mention that, you know, it seems a strange thing that we would start with the negative.

Why not? It's the night we came out of Egypt. Let's skip all that messy slavery stuff, et cetera, all the bad. And let's just talk about the Exodus. Why not start there? Well, I've got news for you that one of the fundamental requisites for growth and change in a narrative sense is the ability to look the reality in the face. So many of us, when we want to change things in our life, are shying away from the problem. We don't want to see how we ended up in slavery. We don't want to see our role as idolaters. We don't want to see what we've done to our friends, family, etc. We just want to be better and change. And the reality is, if you shut your eyes to the difficulties that are causing your problems, that means the last thing you ever see is exactly what you don't want.

All change starts with looking the situation in the face. And therefore, the Haggadah starts from gnut, from the state of grace, and it moves toward praiseworthiness. Now, the first question you always have to ask, and I do this a lot in my practice, is a very simple question. Where does this story begin? Where does the story begin? Now, you might think, that's obvious, Mike, it's the story of the exodus from Egypt. It begins with slavery. But the reality is, even a cursory glance at the Haggadah tells you that this is just not the case. Either in the chat or calling out, who can tell me more than one place where this story begins? Okay, one is going down into slavery. Where else does this story begin?

I'm holding my Haggadah here. I got my prop. Always go for Haggadah with less commentary, more pictures. That's my vote. That's a real question. Anybody have an answer? Where does this story begin? With Avram? With Terach. Terach, the father of Avram. Great. Great. That's excellent. Excellent. And by the way, the two classic structures of moving from disgrace to a state of praiseworthiness, so I see a chat that's very exciting to me, are moving from Terach, the father of Avram, meaning idolatry to divine worship. And the other one is from slavery to freedom. Excellent. I see someone here who's labeled as Limud FSU, so I don't know your name, that their talk between God and Avraham, the promise was called the covenant between the pieces.

Excellent, excellent. So we've got, maybe it starts with Terach, we move from idolatry to divine worship. Maybe it starts with slavery going down into Egypt, we went from slavery to freedom. Maybe, and we'll come back to, oh hi you there um uh the maybe we'll come back to this this promise to avram it was actually he was avram he wasn't even avraham that his children will be strangers in the land of egypt right i can think of others how about a classic joseph and his brothers right in many ways our narrative struggles in life start with family problems i mean you could say this is a family problem if Joseph, if Yaakov hadn't favored Joseph, his brothers wouldn't have hated him. They wouldn't have beat him up and thrown him in the pit and sold him to slavery.

It wouldn't have been in Egypt in the first place. You know, if you, when all else fails, blame your family. That's my personal opinion. No, I'm just kidding. Stop it. I'm just kidding. But, no, but it's worth it to examine. So wait, we have Terach. We have the wandering Arameans going down into Egypt. We have Joseph and the brothers. What about creation? I mean, on some level, every story starts there, right? Right? in the beginning. So before we get to that, I just want you to recognize we were able to come up with four or five Yitzchak and Esau. I saw someone typing there. Excellent. I mean, four or five, six. This is very important for the work which is offered to us. And the Haggadah itself will start, if you look, you know, everybody's probably familiar with right after Manishtana in the Magid, we start Avadim Hayinu, right?

Avadim Hayinu, or whatever tune you know. But it's often missed that the Haggadah starts with saying, and then we'll speak about what lays in between, and then suddenly it shifts, it almost like makes attack, meaning like on a sailboat, not like an attack, like a combat thing, and says, well, In the beginning we were idolaters, like, wait a minute, I thought this was a story of slavery, how did we get to idolatry? And another time, perhaps, in another context, we can talk about the deep intersection between slavery and idolatry, But here, I'm simply pointing out that a story always has multiple beginnings. And I can learn a tremendous amount from, no, I said Magid. It's true, fair enough, Alex, that the Haggadah actually starts with Kiddush.

But Magid, this telling of the story, starts with multiple beginnings. And I am always astounded what you can learn about yourself or another person. When you ask them, they come into you and want to talk about a story, something they're struggling with. Where does the story begin? Where does your story begin? And that's the first question I encourage you to take into Seder. Right? You know, many of us are going to be doing Seder on our own this year. Perhaps you're not used to running your own Seder. Maybe you're going to be alone. You know, if you are, God bless you. You should be healthy and well and stand strong. Right? If you are, it's always worth it to ask the question before you start, where does my story begin?

I end up here at this Seder. Where did it start? And here we just saw the Haggadah gave us multiple beginnings. and I want to touch for a second on one of those beginnings which is often missed and it's the one that Yulia pointed out there. But I'm going to take a step further back. Imagine every story starts at creation. Right? It's a strange thing, by the way, when you look at the Bible, by the time you get to Egypt, you get the sense that we are inside the inside the inside of a failure. Let's look at, right? God creates the world on day seven or sorry, even day six. Boom, Adam fails. don't eat that tree no you know like okay well let's try again says god and then you know they go with can and able oh no that doesn't really work you know they and then they start again with with with shayt with seth and the descendants of seth basically go right downhill into idolatry and all kinds of terrible stuff the flood you know then there's 10 generations from from noach to avram to the flood i mean it's dome we get this sense that we're failing and failing and failing and you might think that, in fact, it's only divine mercy that holds the world up.

Right God looking at the world saying Nebuch what am I supposed to do They my creations I hold them up You get this sense that either humanity is a failure or God is incompetent in creating a world which can actually succeed It's a strange thing. And by the way, you keep going. Structure of the first temple, the structure of the second temple. You go all the way forward in history. You might have a sense that this is not going well. Either God can't do it or we're simply a failed creation. But the reality is that's all premised on one flawed thought. That failure is an accident. see the key to unlocking jewish history and in my humble opinion the key to unlocking a successful narrative of your own life is understanding that failure is not a bit of it failure is an a priori part of life not an ad hoc not every failure not all the time but the fact that we fail means that we take risks that we step beyond the known that we put ourselves in situations where there's a potential for growth and unknown benefits.

And so therefore, sometimes we fail. And the thing that holds us up in failure is this beautiful idea of rachamim. Rachamim literally means mercy or compassion, right? But when God makes that space, rachamim is from the three-lettered root in Hebrew of rechem. which means womb when you have mercy or compassion on another person you're holding space for them to come to be mercy is when you hold space for a person who is not yet what they will be but in your belief in them and your desire that they should become that which they can be you hold the space for growth and process which means failure, but it's failing forward. The art form of Am Yisrael is that we have mastered the ability to fail forward in time.

Because if you never fail, that means you never risk. And if you never risk, you never grow. And if you want to survive, anything which is alive must grow. And so therefore, this whole idea of God creating a world where failure is a lechachil, it's an a priori part of the fabric of creation, is what allows for a creation that's not just a marionette that's like doing God's will. Sorry, whoever that is, can you please mute your mic? Uh-oh, hang on a second. There we go. I took control. Sorry about that. So, you guys with me? This idea that if you look at the story of creation, or you look at how did we get down into Egypt in the beginning? We were idolaters. We were, you know, we're just like a family fight that drew us into slavery, you know.

Or simply creation. Humanity just can't get it. If you look at those things as failure without understanding that that is actually what paves the space for independent action and therefore a depth of success and divine relationship, then you could end up in despair. Whereas when you understand that the great reality of Rachamim is Rechem, that the divine compassion is a womb which holds the space for us to come to be, well, then you'll realize that slavery itself is an act of Rachamim. You know, it's a hard thing to say. But right now, the world is suffering a global pandemic. I'm sure this is not news to any of you, since we're all probably locked in whatever house that we're in right now. And in the midst of this whole pandemic and the suffering, there's a tremendous rachamim which is available in the world.

Not in the sense we're used to thinking about rachamim. I'm not saying God is being nice and compassionate by sending suffering. Don't misunderstand me. What I'm saying is that the space of potential which is opening for growth and change in the world is enormous. what depends on us transforming it is our ability to embrace it as such and I'll give you an example from that starting point that Yulia mentioned when I asked you guys where does the story of slavery start so we have the two classics in the Haggadah which is it starts with the descent into Egypt or it starts with idolatry I also said every story starts at creation which is how we got to this whole Rachamim thing and I don't know if it was sent to everyone no it was sent to me privately Yulia said it actually started with a conversation between God and Avraham.

What I'm going to do is I'll share my screen now so you can see a bit of the text I'm going to be referring to. Let me just make sure I have the right one. There it is. So you may be familiar in the 15th chapter of Genesis with a conversation between God and Avraham. Or sorry, Avram. This is early on in his story. Where Avram says, Listen, life is great. You've given me everything, but I've got no kids. And I don't know what the future is going to be. And God says to him, I'm God that brought you out of the land of the Chaldeans, which is a familiar phrase for those of us learning in the Haggadah right now. That's a birthing. If you think about it, it's a very important image. On a certain level, the whole story of the Haggadah of Egypt is that Egypt is the womb of Israel.

It's the richest material culture of its day. in which we go from being a family and grow into a nation. We're birthed out with tremendous blood and suffering and all the craziness. For anyone who's ever been present as a birth knows that it's a dramatic event. Birthed out literally through the Red Sea, by the way, if you think about what the birth canal looks like, into the wilderness. And we'll speak about what our destination was before we're finished Tanakh. So here, Avram gets tipped off, as it were, to what lies ahead for his children. right? He says, God says, I take you out to give you the land as a possession. And what does Avram say? He says, how should I know that I'm going to possess it? It's a natural question.

Wow, it's a big promise, God. I'm just one guy. You brought me out of Urqa's demon. Now you're telling me this whole land will be mine. How do I know that I'll possess it? And God's answer, which if you look in the, sort of, you'll notice that I skipped a bit of their conversation, you know, but God's answer can seem somewhat troubling. He says, Oh, you're going to know, God says. What are you going to know? Your children will be strangers in the land not theirs. They'll be enslaved and oppressed for 400 years, but then I'll do great judgments on the nation that they serve, and they're going to go out with great wealth. Now, this seems to be a very strange answer. I mean, and many people read it as a punishment.

We can go back. Let's end the share there. many people read it as a punishment meaning Avram's got the chutzpah God made him a promise he's going to give you the land and then God says oh now you're in for it I've never, despite the fact that there are many traditional commentators that indeed understand it the way, I've never been able to relate to this in that fashion. Avram wants to know how is it possible that my children will inherit the land and God's answer is Egypt is what will make you fit to inherit the land slavery was a transformative process that made us into a people who were fit to inherit the land but of course only if we managed to tell the story of that slavery in a redemptive fashion right this by the way is true of our current situation as well i don't know how much we want to get into it now watching the time but just a small drop since i said that there's some great divine mercy that's coming into the world today i'm sure that you've heard all kinds of people explaining why.

You know, rabbis, unfortunately, have a tendency and religious leaders to try to tell you why this is happening. Don't worry, I'm not going to do that. Not that I'm not going to do that, I find it deeply troubling that people do that. But I will tell you this, of course, the question of why is above my pay grade, let's just say. The question, however, of what we're going to do with this is the real question. Right? The whole world, or at least half of it, has been sent to their room. You're all in timeout. Anybody who has parents out there could probably appreciate that, or anybody who's close enough to have been a child to remember their parents. Go to your room and think about what you need to do. This is where we're at right now, and therefore it's incumbent upon us to figure out what are we going to do with this?

What kind of world do we want when we all step back out into our full social being? And that horizon's there. Don't lose sight. We will indeed come back together. right and in the same way the story we tell about how we got in this situation what it means to us and what actions that it demands us that is exactly what was done to the the slavery in egypt and the ultimate exodus we managed to transform that whole experience into what makes us worthy as god told avram would happen made us worthy to inherit the land right someone privately told me it's because the tzionim. I'll get back to you on that one. So what I want to do now with all these frames is just touch a little bit on what's this story about in the Haggadah.

Just a few things because we're all going to go through the Haggadah again and then not only what it's about but I will end with an idea of where is it headed. Before I do questions or comments you can either try to unmute yourself or raise your hand or or type of chat in there. I just want to make sure that people get a chance at this point if they don't understand or they want clarification or response to something that I said. If I'm speaking too fast, that's tough luck. I don't actually have a slower speed than this. But I'll try. No, going once. Going twice. Okay. So either you're entirely mystified or you're with me. But at this point, we're in it together. Okay, so when you go through the Haggadah, every page is worthy of commentaries.

I'm sure you know, since it all gets a lot of ink spilled. I just wanted to touch a couple of places. First of all, the classic, right, the beginning of Magid. And now I'm really, I'm focused in Magid, in the telling of the story, because that's what we're here really to engage, right? And the moment of Manishtana. Why is this night different than every other night? raise your hand if you're going to be the youngest person at the Seder this year for a first time in a long time. I have five kids, so I'm not. But I saw a beautiful comment by someone who said that their parents are making Seder just the two of them this year. And since her father is just a couple of months younger than her mother, and they're in their 70s, that he's going to be able to say Manistana for the first time in decades.

So this is a fun opportunity. But have you ever noticed that we never answer the questions? we don't actually answer the questions. Why is this night different than any other night? Why do we eat on this night matzah and all the other night's bread? We don't answer the questions. We only pose them. And this itself opens us up to a critical piece, which I'm sure you're familiar with, but it's always worth noting, that the ultimate source of knowledge from the perspective of Torah is always a good question. answers are important because you've got to live your life, and sometimes you have to make decisions and practical guidance. But what really causes growth is a good question. And I would say in the context of the Haggadah, and in context of this sort of narrative therapy work that I so much love to do, and I see the Haggadah, as I've said, as a real frame, it's because questions are a fundamentally hopeful posture.

It's a fundamentally hopeful posture because hope, the definition of hope, is the deep belief that what is does not define what will be. See, when you believe that what is defines what will be, you don't have to ask questions because you already know. And there's no hope because you already know. The opening of the Magi with questions that we don't answer serves as the same type of frame for the deep personal work which is available in leaving one's own mitzrayim, their own mitzrayim, their own narrow places, which is asking open questions. How did I end up here? Where do I want to go? What do I need that's going to get me from point A to point B in an inner space or an outer space? And not assuming that you're going to be able to answer them, but just feel the freedom, the space, which opens up with a question.

Because the truth is, question is all about the possibility. And so it's not surprising that our Seder begins there. Then if you notice, there's a really strange shift, which I find. Somebody have a, yeah, there's a question there, comment? Somebody's speaking. Go for it. No? Okay. But if you're not asking a question, then I would ask you to re-mute. Okay, great. But don't be shy. I'm looking straight at the chat. So if you have something that's easier, it's also easy to write it in there. so we're not going to do everything as I said but the next piece I just wanted to put my finger on is this telling the story of the story telling the story of the story have you noticed in the Haggadah first we say we're going to tell the story then we start to tell the story and then we tell the story about a bunch of people rabbis in Bnei Brak who are telling the story so we're telling the story about people telling the story of the story we're inside the inside the inside here and it's a beautiful image that Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yoshua and Rabbi Eliezer ben Azariah and all these rabbis are together and they're telling the story until dawn, until the students come and say, rabbis, it's time for shachari, right?

And on a simple level, the message here, I think, is you have to let your story absorb you. There's a way in which the depth of engagement and commitment with your own life as a story needs to give you energy. But the only way to do that is to feel, of course, that you are a subject and not an object of your story. That you're an active character. And ultimately, if you really can get it as a co-author, that's the work that I'm really always aiming to do. When people ask me, like, what do you do as an erytheraist? I say I'm trying to move people from being an object in their story to a subject in their story and ultimately to being a co-author with God that allows them to write the script. Now that takes a lot of work, but more than anything else, it comes to a height of awareness.

You know, one of the self-awareness, like that I'm in a story. It may be that this story of all these tenayim, these masters of the Mishnahh, is taking place. Anybody ever heard historically, especially the fact that Rebbe Akiva's there? What period in history is this? Anybody know? yes the Romans ruled and it's likely that what we're looking at is a veiled reference to the Bar Kokhba revolt the great revolt the third Roman Jewish war you can look it up on the Jewish story if you don't know the story you can send me an email I'm happy to share the show with you but the third war between the Romans and the Jews Rabbi Kilo was the spiritual leader of that war and it was a messianic revolt he believed that Bar Kokhba was going to be the redeemer of Am Yisrael before the Messiah became sort of a mystic, almost magical figure.

At this point, he was the political figure who was going to come and restore sovereignty upon the territory of Judea and return the service to the temple. So here's Rebbe Akiva and all his friends telling the story of the Exodus, which was once upon a time, but using it as fuel for understanding that they themselves are now participants in the process of redemption And it so absorbing that they tell the story through the night And that so important You have to see yourself not as an object which is acted upon, as a victim of your story, but as a subject who has a full agency. And that demands an awareness of where you are in the story, like Rabbi Akiva understood exactly where he was. He gambled and lost.

the truth is that that failure put more energy into the future of Am Yisrael than perhaps many successes now there's a lot more in that little event there, I'm tempted to go into it but I'm not, because I want to go forward to a couple more pieces so one more piece just in the structure of the Haggadah Haggadah flows on and I'm hoping you guys are familiar we go again, we encounter the four sons and once again the classic sort of my father was a wandering air man or an air man tried to destroy my father notice by the way, the very fact that you can tell that phrase my father was a wandering air man or an air man tried to destroy my father that's a classic example of narrative reconstruction which story are you in?

are you a victim of the air man or are you a wandering lost air man yourself? right same phrase two different stories so but but the next piece i want to pick up on is after the plagues right oh look at that so yeah that's in all the right that's well that's the one of the classic interpretations but if you look at the source texts, from Parshat Ki Tavo of Aramio Ved Avi by Yered Mitzrayma, you'll see in the classic commentators two readings. That either an Aramean sought to destroy my father, which is the Lavan reference in the Haggadah, or my father was a wanderer Aramean who went down into Egypt. It's literally two ways it can be read. So, the piece I want to hit, because I'm quite conscious of the time and and oh there's just so much i've got a it's like you do it every year and it always surprises me um it's this really strange i just yeah well i think my wife wouldn't be so pleased with that um oh not only that but do you guys also feel like we're all just working twice as hard to stand still at this point in in history it's like it's unbelievable the amount of energy that's coming out but there's after the plagues in egypt we're all familiar with the ten plagues, you may be familiar with this very strange argument that breaks out in the Haggadah between Rabbi Yosef, Rabbi Eliezer, and Rabbi Akiva again, about how many plagues happened at the splitting of the Red Sea.

It's like a strange thing a lot of people just cruise through in the Haggadah. It's like, what am I supposed to do? They're like gambling. Well, you know, there were actually 50 plagues, because it says the finger of God, and there were five fingers on the hand, and each plague was ten. No, it's actually 200 plagues. It's actually 250 plagues. I hope you guys are familiar. It's a strange thing. By the way, for fun if you want, just for your theatrics, I once prepared stacks of ten agarot coins, taped them all together so they weren't mux on Yom Tov, and started to just throw them out on the table like I was in a gambling frenzy. My kids went nuts. Like, just to the feeder of it. And the feeder is such an important thing of the Haggadah.

But here, I want to touch on why it might be that the Haggadah is trying to tell you, oh, ten plagues in Egypt? That wasn't so impressive. 250 at the Red Sea that's what's impressive why the emphasis of the Red Sea why has the Red Sea in this moment of the telling of the story become such a critical time that the rabbis are playing a game of one-upsmanship about its importance so here I think it opens up for us yeah, yeah, yeah Chaim yes it's definitely doubling down on like the the narrative arc like really everything has been preparing for this moment and it is a revelatory moment right like as the sages say that that the lowliest maid servants saw more in the splitting of the red sea than than the prophet is cheskiel So I think you're correct.

There's a part of this is just, you know, showing what the climactic moment is. But I think for the use of the Haggadah as a framework for personal work, for my own exodus, as it were, and getting out of my narrow places, there's another piece which is critical to understand. You know, every morning in the traditional liturgy, we say the Song of the Sea, right? And we preface it with the verses that precede it in the Torah. V'yar Yisrael, ya g'dolah, asher asa Hashem b'mitzrayim, right? Am Yisrael saw the great hand, which had been done to Mitzrayim. Right? They feared God and Moshe's servant. It's a strange thing. Now they saw the hand of God? I mean, what about the death of the firstborn? What about darkness for three days?

Why is it now at the sea that they actually saw God? And what did it have to do with the fact that they saw Egypt dead at the sea? Notice it says they see Egypt dead, and then they realize. Then they see the hand of God. It wasn't even the splitting of the sea that showed them God's hand. It was the fact that they saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. The splitting of the sea on some level is part of the same theatrics that the ten plagues. But seeing Egypt dead on the seashore was something fundamentally different. And in this, it opens up for us a very important aspect of what Geulah, of what redemption is that we're headed for. because the reality is slavery has two faces. There's many of you that we've learned together before.

I've told you this, but it's always worth hearing again. If you want to understand slavery and you want to understand the human condition, you must read a book called The Pedagogy of the Oppressed by a Brazilian educator from the 70s called Paulo Freire. People want, I'll write it in the chat in a minute, but Paulo Freire was an interesting character himself. he's a Marxist. The first two chapters of the book, though, the second two are like Marxist constructs and not so simple or really even necessarily worthwhile. The first two are an exploration of what it is that happens to the human consciousness when it's developed in a context of oppression. And this is Am Yisrael's problem at this point. You could physically leave Egypt, but how do you become free?

You could liberate yourself from the external pressure, but how do you actually become a free human being? because Freire notes that every slave lives a dual existence every oppressed person lives a dual existence there's your experience of oppression and there's a dream of freedom but the problem is because oppression is so no I think you spelled this name correctly the experience of oppression is so consuming and narrowing usually the oppressed have only one image of freedom their oppressor which is why historically so many people have gained liberation and recreated a system of oppression which looked just like the one that kept them down, but they're now on top. Or why in an even, in my eyes, more painful situation, I've worked with many abused children, and it's a sad fact that children who are raised in an abusive situation are statistically far more likely to become abusers themselves because they've internalized abuse as a model of relationship.

in the same way that the slave internalizes slavery as a model of relationship. Therefore, liberation from the external pressures of slavery is not enough. The ten plagues getting out of Egypt was not enough. Even going through the Red Sea was not enough. What you need to do is see Egypt dead on the seashore. You need to spit out that model of freedom, which is really just an internalization of one's oppression, in order to be prepared for the true freedom that lies on the other side of the sea. This is critical. As you're going through your own process with the Haggadah and in life, you have to not only free yourself, you have to imagine how that freedom could look other than simply gaining power in the way in which someone else once had it over you.

I see a question. It says, how are the people who didn't survive not korbanim? Right? We need slavery to be free, but how are those who didn't get to taste the freedom not sacrifices? That's a very hard question. We can apply that question to many places in Jewish history. Listen, here we are, some of us sitting in the land of Israel, some of us in America, but all of us healthy and well and free. What about all our brothers and sisters that didn't make it out of the Holocaust? The reality is I'm not qualified to answer that question. we could say that they were sacrificed and i would say that that what they do is they create an obligation to us to live freedom to its fullest the obligation we are living the dreams of every generation which preceded us and that doesn't put an obligation that oh they have to live for someone else it means i have to really value and use my freedom in the way in which i can that's the brief answer to your question shir so just to round this out and and and take us to the next step that this Red Sea in many ways represents the step, not just liberation from Egypt, but an expulsion of the Egyptian model from within us in a preparation for true redemption.

Because of course, where are they headed when they leave the Red Sea? That's a real question. Somebody can just shout it out. Where are they headed? Well, not yet, though. There's a very important stop. Right? Where they're headed is Sinai. They're headed to the Sinai. And in order to get the... Yes, absolutely. Because God tells Moshe to go to Paro and say the famous phrase, which was corrupted by Charlton Heston in the Cecil B. DeMille film. He doesn't say, let my people go and stop there. He says, let my people go that they may serve me in the wilderness. and he promises Moshe in the third chapter of Shemot, you will know that I'm telling the truth because my people will serve me on this mountain. See, what happens is we're freed, or sorry, liberated from the externals of slavery.

And then in this moment of splitting the Red Sea, we expel the Egyptians from our midst and we're wide open to be able to receive a real model of redemption and freedom, which is the Torah. That is exactly the way this structure works. Right? And in that sense, the going through the Red Sea is a very important model for what it is to not just be liberated but to be free. It's one of the reasons, by the way, when you look at the halacha, the legal comments on the morning prayer, I mentioned that we say this every morning in the traditional liturgy. So the Mishnahbruah, turn of the 20th century, you know, sort of very legalistic and somewhat dry mind, actually quotes the Zohar. And when the Mishra Brewer quotes the Zohar, you should sit up and pay attention.

He quotes the Zohar and he says, anybody who says the Song of the Sea and feels the joy of what it was to go through the Red Sea, all their sins are forgiven. What's that mean? And now I think you can get a little sense, which is that you can actually feel the joy of not just liberation, but freedom. of having left all those pursuers, those other models of who you're really not that you've internalized, leave them behind, see Egypt dead. Now, at this point in the morning, the day is wide open and hopeful. You could be anyone. What can be more joyful than that? And that's what I understand is your sins would be forgiven. Not sins as like the chalk marks against you and the scoreboard in the sky, which I'm not such a big fan of that conception of sin.

but sin in the literal sense of missing the mark. That's what chet means. You're missing the mark when you've internalized someone else's notions of who you ought to be. And when you can expel those notions from within yourself and become the person that you really meant to be, what could be a greater source of joy than that? That's why, in my humble opinion, the Haggadah pauses at the Red Sea and has this one upsmanship, because what could be bigger than that? That's bigger than liberation. That's freedom. and it's paving the way ultimately for that destination which is redemption i got five minutes left until i want to open up for questions so um maybe i'll take maybe 10 minutes and so what i want to do because i said i'm only stopping a few places along the way here in the hagadah um what i want to do is just ask the question if when i'm working with in personal work or i'm looking at the Haggadah, the opening question is, where does the story start?

Then, what's the natural closing question is, well, where is it headed? And in there, someone already mentioned, yeah, we might be headed to Eretz Yisrael, right? The beauty, though, one of the things I really love is getting to Eretz Yisrael is not enough. Right? As the joking comment I got there from Chaim there, the Zionim, right? You know, Zionism, in many ways, is the re-entry vehicle of the Jewish people into the land. It's a political construct, which is very powerful. I'm very grateful for it, personally. But unless one willfully closes their eyes to it, it's got many, many problems. Right? Which is fine. Nothing's perfect. But that means that it's not the end unto itself. It's a vehicle for a vision.

And what's beautiful is that that vision in the Haggadah comes right on the wake of crossing through the Red Sea, which is the PU, it's the liturgical poem, Dayenu. Right? Dayenu, Dayenu, we go through all the steps. It's, you know, it's always a beautiful thing, by the way. It's basically a gratitude poem, and it's worthwhile to do that work in the lead up to the Seder, to write your own Dayenu. What are the things you're grateful for that would be enough? You know, if I'm sitting in my apartment, I haven't left this apartment for any significant purpose in almost three weeks, got five kids, got three jobs, pressure's on, as I'm sure you guys are all feeling as well. But pausing to say, I'm grateful.

I'm grateful that I'm working. I'm grateful that I have food. I'm grateful that my children are relatively happy. You fill in the blank. There's so much to be grateful for, which is what the Dayenu is about. But notice where it ends. Right? Right? Right? Right? The culmination, culmination in many ways of the vision is not just the entry into the land of Israel, but is actually the building of the temple. Now, rather than sort of get all messianic on you guys, I want to take this building of the temple as a model for what Deula might look like and how you can imagine what redemption looks like in your own life. And I'll close out sort of the frontal portion of what we're doing with that, and then I'm happy to open up for questions and comments.

because, you know, I'll share this screen with you again so you can look at the sources I'm going to quote. We're going to go over that one. Let's go to destination, shall we? Just a few weeks ago, when we spent all that time in the Torah portion on, you know, gathering the stuff for the temple and then laying out the blueprint, not temple, sorry, the tabernacle, the Mishkan, laying out the blueprint for the Mishkan and then actually making the Mishkan and all the vestments of the Kohen Gadol. There's a tremendous wealth that can be learned from all the details. But what always moves me is that the Torah tips us off to the fact that there are two fundamental motions of the heart which are necessary for building a Mishkan.

If you want a vessel that can connect heaven and earth, you want that vessel in a physical sense in the Mishkan, you want that vessel in a oh somebody drawn on my screen How that possible Must have been me You want that vessel in a physical sense of Mishkan You want it in an interpersonal sense between spouses. You want it in your own life that your heart should become a vessel that connects heaven and earth. There are two fundamental motions of heart which are tipped off to us by this pasuk, this verse I brought you here. It's in Shemot 35, 21. We evoke all yishashir nis, sorry, nis olibo. And everyone whose heart lifted them up came. The Kol Asher, Nidva Rucho. And everyone whose spirit caused them to be generous.

And they brought the true Matashem, right? They brought all the free will offerings for the work that was going to be done. But notice this is very interesting. Nisa libo v'nidva Rucho. That's a he feel. Their heart lifted them up. And their spirit moved them to generosity. right and this and i want to really focus on is the first one they're both the the deserves its own treatment but for right now i want to just ask the question what does this mean that his heart lifted them up and i want you to just picture if you can probably look at the commentary at some other time just picture here's moshe it's it's hard enough that these people have been slaves and and and now he's asking them to give the gold the silver the the fine cloth which likely they got from their Egyptian neighbors or they gathered from the spoils there of the dead Egyptians on the Red Sea, right?

Now, this is the first wealth their family's seen in 210 years. Now, Moshe's asking them to give them up and what was called for there was not simple. But then, just imagine this. Now, Moshe says, and now we're going to make vestments for the high priest and we're going to create, you know, draperies and I envision, says Moshe, a golden ark with the crew bin and you, Shimon, you're going to make that. You know what Shimon says to him? What are you, kidding? He's like, I make mud bricks. My father made mud bricks. My father's father gathered straw to make mud bricks. You want me to make fine work in silver and gold? I can't do that. See, it's natural for us to be trapped by our low expectations of what we are capable of based on what we've done up until now.

And that will never allow us to tell a redemptive story. So when the Haggadah says that what we're headed for is building the Beit HaMikdash, building the temple, it's not just some sort of national historical model. It's a personal model which is founded on the sense that your spirit can lift you up. That you can pick yourself up out of a history of mud and bricks and straw and imagine the work you could do with fine silver and gold. right that ability to imagine what your redeemed life might look like is a critical tool in telling a redemptive story because just as much as you have to know where your story begins and recognize your story begins in multiple places and where you choose to begin it when you tell it will have a lot to do with where it ends and you have to understand the power of questions that open up a horizon where what is is not defined by what will be.

And you have to deeply engage in your story as a thing of not just the past, but present relevance. And of course, you've got to look out for the difference between liberation and freedom. Ultimately, to tell a redemptive story, you have to imagine the fact that you are capable of building a better world than you've even ever seen. And that, to me, is one of the reasons that the Haggadah puts that beautiful image at the end of Dayenu. And it's a turning point, really, if you look in the way in which the structure goes. From there on out, right, we then get the fundamentals of Pesach, Masa, and Maor. It's like the pace picks up. We get the beautiful mission that says in every generation a person's obligated to see themselves as if they themselves went out of Egypt.

And then, song. Because what could be more indicative of a redeemed state than bursting into songs of praise? and then at that point you have moved truly from that state of disgrace that gnut to a state not only of praiseworthiness because you've imagined the redemption that your life could be but you are in the act of giving praise that's just a little taste in my experience of how the Haggadah can serve as a model for our own leaving of our narrow places and an entry into a redeemed state and I'm going to stop there because I've been talking for quite some time and I'm going to open up the floor for questions or comments. Happy to hear what people have to say. You can put them in the, yeah, go for it.

Hey, Charlie. I can't see everybody right now, so. Yes. Yes. Mm-hmm. Oh, you faded out there. Charlie, I lost you. Maybe write the question into a chat because I can't hear you. Somebody else? Yep. Hi, I can't see who it is. Who is it? How you going? What do you mean? oh I understand well yeah that's why each one is it's a multi-tiered discussion meaning Eretz Israel is a necessary precursor to the Beit HaMikdash and what's interesting is that we don't get any comment on what would come once we had the Beit HaMikdash what I offered is the Beit HaMikdash always represents that place where heaven and earth connect where the potential and the actual flow into one another and I agree with you, it can never be static there is no end Dayenu can keep going and going and going I mean, practically speaking, if you try to do it everybody at the Seder is going to stop you but you hear what I'm saying?

I think that it culminates with the image of the temple with the Beit HaVichira because then once you have a place where you have an earth connect anything is possible and you're correct, without Eretz Yisrael there is no Beit HaMittash but Eretz Yisrael without the Beit HaMittash is lacking that connection and will always remain a small and somewhat sort of contested piece of territory as we've seen throughout our history. Great. Thank you for that clarification. That's at each stage along the way. If God had brought us out of Egypt and he hadn't brought us to the Red Sea, what do you mean? Then we'd have all died in the desert. I think part of that is recognizing that gratitude is not contingent upon full success.

We're not grateful, certainly not to God and not to other people. Think about your interpersonal relationship. If you have a long-term committed emotional relationship, which I hope you either have now or have had before, then you know that no one can do everything we need for us. It's just not possible. And if I make my gratitude and love for another person contingent upon getting exactly what I want, really what I've done is I've cut myself off from intimacy of relationship. We need to be grateful for everything that a person does for us, even if it's not exactly what I wanted or it doesn't go all the way. Gratitude is a posture which is not contingent. It's just a recognition of the good which has been done, which is the power I find in Diana.

Do you hear what I'm saying? You're absolutely correct from sort of a historical narrative arc. If God had left us out there in the middle of the desert, what good would that have been? But from a human posture of gratitude, we need to recognize each piece was something we should be grateful for. because it's not like we deserved it. It was, we say, Megillah, it was coming to us. And therefore, well, I don't need to be grateful. No, each piece is an act of grace. That's what I would say. And yeah, the whole poem itself is problematic in that sense. And it's worth it, that's a great question to bring up in the Seder. Like, what are we saying? How could we possibly be grateful if we had not actually made it all the way out, gotten the Torah into the land of Israel and the temple?

Great, I have a question here in the chat. You said that slavery is what made the nation worthy to inherit the land, but only if they could interpret it in a positive light. Can I expand on that? At what point in the Jewish people's journey to the land of Israel did that interpretation occur, or is it upon us a continuous thing? I think it's the latter. It's a continuous act. Now, you can see in the Torah, many times we see the phrase, remember that you were slaves in the land of Egypt. Treat the stranger this way because you were slaves in the land of Egypt. or the saying of Kriyat Shema is bound up with the fact that God brought us out from Egypt. So I think it's a continuous attachment to our status both once upon a time as slaves and trying to overcome the problem that Freire identified, that having internalized our oppressors, you'd think we would be more sensitive to others.

But the reality is, and we face this challenge here in Israel today, it's quite hard. The world looks at us and says, you were refugees. You were oppressed. How could you not care more than anybody else about the oppressed of the world? So the obvious answer to that is, yeah, and you know what? Life has been really hard, and I'm really interested in undermining my safety on behalf of others. At the same time, the moral call there is very real, and that's why the Torah says, yeah, the result of slavery needs to be empathy, but it doesn't happen naturally. Empathy only emerges from suffering if one revisits their suffering with a determination that it become a source of positive identity. It's a conscious choice to cultivate empathy.

Otherwise, one's own suffering generally narrows them and makes them callous to others. You'll never do that to me again. Right? So that, I would say, is definitely a continuous act. Great. That's a great question. Other questions, comments, things people want to throw out there? Yeah, Chaim, we got... yes and i would like to donate to the following phone number in order to make it happen no um the um no it's not the way i understand the process i see the the temple is always a culmination of a process never it's beginning we built the temple tomorrow we'd fight each other sadly before the nation's ever closed in on us right um but what i would say is that when we can bring ourselves to the point where we understand what it means to have the responsibility to connect heaven and earth then the physical sort of construct of the temple will be will be sufficient to get the result that we're after there can somebody whoever's talking there please mute your uh mic thanks um that's okay um the you hear what i'm saying that it's it's not you build the temple and then the whole world will recognize, ah, right, the Jews actually belong there.

No, no, no. We need to fulfill our mission, and through that recognition, the temple will be built. It's the end of the process in my eyes, not the beginning. Other questions, comments, things people want to throw out there? Yes. Sure. Mm-hmm. Yes. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, there are a number of questions, if I understood you correctly. There are a number of questions that you can frame. The most important in my eyes is as you approach Pesach, you need to figure out what are the narrow places where I'm stuck and what's the chametz in my life that's preventing me from being free. Right? Those two pieces can open out the structure of the Haggadah and the story of the Exodus as a personal journey. And I think you're entirely correct.

Now it's not the place. I think I can point out to you that throughout the Jewish calendar, the Pesach is the place where the story dominates. But throughout the Jewish calendar, throughout the cycle of the holidays, there are many places in which we're called that Cheshbon Nefesh, to that self-analysis and the constant process of building ourselves into that sort of best possible self. And the last thing I would say, at the risk of sort of the shameless plug, is that it's true that no one else can tell you how to run your life, but there is definitely a skill set out there which can help you understand your own story. And I encourage people to reach out, right? I think we were going to draw this to close with maybe one more question, but I encourage people to reach out to me.

You can find me on Facebook. My email is robmikefoyer at gmail. If you want to start that exploration, it's something I do as a professional, but it's also a life mission. And now is a great time that we're all sitting sent to our rooms. But we're in time out. We don't just have time. We've been sent to our rooms to decide what we're going to do when we come out. So I want to thank everybody. I want to thank Shira in particular for putting things together. I want to encourage people to send me feedback. I'm more than happy if you had a question that I can get to or you have thoughts you want to share. You really can reach out. I'm happy to hear. I see some more questions coming in here. Let me see if I can at least take a – wow, they're coming in really quickly.

Enhancing Second Seder. I'm sorry. I can't help you with that. I'll just be honest with you. one of the number one reasons I came here was to get back on to what I see to be the natural rhythm but I'll think about it if anything comes to me okay everybody so so welcome to stay around and schmooze for a little bit I'll stick around for a few more minutes but I'm going to stop the recording and that means we're officially done