Dvar Torah
Chizuk for Pesach By Rebbetzin Diane Liff
As women, we view Pesach with great trepidation – until we get to the freedom of the night of the seder, all we feel is the slavery of the cleaning and preparations. Even if we simply clean the chometz from our drawers, toy chests and kitchens, and not a spring-cleaning, we sometimes lose sight of what it is that we are supposed to be accomplishing is this particular form of service of Hashem. So I wanted to give over to us a pep-talk (chizuk) on where this preparation is truly meant to bring us.
On Pesach there is a prohibition against eating chometz. A mitzvah that precedes Pesach itself is to check in all nooks and crannies for chometz with the light of a candle on the fourteenth of the month. What is the purpose of this strange stringency? I mean, we work so hard to make sure that our houses are so chometz-free, what’s the purpose of this final check? What is it in the chometz that warrants this?
The Nesivos Shalom explains that the concept of chometz is explained in the Zohar as being an expression of man's negative side – his yetzer hara (evil inclination). There are many levels of “chometz" in a man’s soul; there’s chometz that everyone can see (nireh l’ayin), and there’s chometz that no one knows about. There’s chometz that is seeped into another object; a kind that gives a taste and a kind called "mashahu" , a something. So, too, in our souls there are many improper things that we do – accepting them matter-of-factly, for all to see and recognize. Then there’s the stuff we keep hidden from others, that only we have to grapple with. There’s the stuff that eats out our insides without us even being aware of what is happening to us.
All of these levels must be checked before Pesach, which means dealing with, and removing all chometz in order for us to be ready for the freedom of Pesach. There are two questions here: how do we do this, and why.
How can one acquire the clarity of vision to be able to see ourselves as we are, without the masks and defenses that we put up to rationalize our deeds? And how can we get to the next level of introspection in order to be in touch with our innermost will and thoughts that can taint our deeds, even when our actions seem fine on the outside? L’or haner – with the light of a candle.
The candle, according to Chazal symbolizes two things – man’s neshama (nishmas adam ner Hashem) and the Torah and mitzvos (ner mitzvah v’Torah or). Both of these tools can help man uncover his foibles and weaknesses – the “bad” that exists within him. If a person is introspective by nature, and he truly wants to understand what’s wrong with him, he’ll be able to call up his neshama, to light up the way to his weaknesses so he can work on them. But sometimes we need help from the outside – the power of learning Torah and mitzvos, which teaches us the difference between right and wrong, illuminating the path that we should be walking on.
The question remains though, why can’t we just check for chometz with a regular light? The answer is that when one uses a candle, he sees not only the chometz, but the shadows of the chometz as well. These shadows can reveal the little, seemingly invisible stuff that we would pass over with a stronger light. So too, when we check for our inner chometz, we have to search out those little things with the long reaching outcome of our wrong ideas, thoughts, and heart-space. For these things seemingly inconsequential, but in man if one cell messes up, it can be cancerous and can destroy the whole person. “With the light of the candle” is our time to look into ourselves and dig out where we have gone wrong, and where our tendencies can cause us to go wrong.
The Be’er Mayim Chaim (Vayikra) speaks about a man’s relationship with the things he owns. He explains that we know Hashem runs our world with hasgacha pratit , Divine Providence – nothing in our world is by chance. Everything that man owns is his because it belongs to him because of a shared nitztos hakodesh – spark of holiness—inherent in both the man and the object. The possession was given to that particular man to use to serve Hashem, thereby returning those shared sparks to their rightful owner – to Hashem.
These concepts about the things we own and pre-Pesach cleaning are very connected. Here we are, cleaning our houses like crazy so there should be no chometz in them for Pesach, and Chazal are telling us about this level of self-introspection that we don’t have to do any other time of the year. I think – give me a break, either it’s work or introspection?! But the truth is that we can do both jobs at the same time and bring us to our goal of sitting at our Pesach seder as free women.
The Malbim in his commentary of the Haggadah tells us that there are two Torah-obligated mitzvos on the night of the seder; telling over the story of our leaving Egypt, and eating matza. Since we’ve been talking about getting rid of our chometz, I want to focus on its flipside – the eating of the matza.
The Sefas Emes (Pesach trl”a, second day) explains that matza is a food without any fluff – fluff being the chometz of man. As we said chometz is man’s yetzer hara, or, as the Sefas Emes calls it, man’s ego, which pumps itself up with lots of hot air, and makes man think that he’s great. Not having fluff makes the matza into a simple food, meaning not complex, not being made up of lots of parts. As long as something is complex, it is constantly being pulled by the different elements of its being, therefore never being able to stand independently. Simplicity on the other hand, has a level of freedom that needs nothing else to exist except for its inherent being – and it is this independence which expresses ultimate freedom. As long as man is complex – connected to the chometz of his being, he can’t be free. Freedom comes only when man understands what his bottom line is – what he truly believes in, what he knows to be true, what’s truly worthwhile in life. And then to connect to it with his soul, and say this is what I am, and where I want to be. Simple truth, simple belief.
When we go through our possessions – which are an extention to our very selves- to clean them out from chometz, the only way to do so is to connect ourselves with that which is truly important, and not to that which isn’t. And when we throw out all forms of chometz from our homes, and hearts, we’ll be able to reach that simple place of clarity, truth, and ultimate redemption.