22 Mar THE SEDER AND TESHUVAH

Incredibly, spring is
in the air and we’re
getting ready for
Pesach. Children
are told not to carry
around their cookies.
The global Daf Yomi
community, learning Masechtas
Yevamos, is careful not to eat food
over its open Gemoras, and everyone
is pitching-in to do the yearly chometz
purge. But another angle of Pesach
– besides choosing the particular
vintage of your Seder wine and the
shmura matzah bakery from which
you plan to buy your matzah – is
the preparations we need to make to
ensure that our Seder experience is a
spiritually inspiring one for the entire
family. Especially in today’s day and
age, when the outside environment is
so tempting and inviting, we need to
take concrete steps to etch and engrave
the important lessons of our tradition
and heritage in the minds of our family.
Here is one of the very first steps to
take to make a successful Seder. The
Haggadah Vayaged Moshe sites the
verse, “L’rasha amar Elokim, ‘Ma
lach lisaper chukai,’” – “Hashem says
to the wicked, ‘What do I need for you
to relate My statutes?’” Since Hashem
despises the evil person as He is, so
to speak, nauseated from the praise of
the wicked, it is a good idea to preface
our Seder with teshuvah. Thus, we
should suggest a moment of silence to
our families before starting the Seder
in order to accept contrition for past
misdeeds and to commit to be better
in the future.
This is one of the reasons why the
Seder starts off with the declaration,
“Kadeish.” This is not simply because
it indicates the saying of Kiddush. It
is also to hint that we should sanctify
ourselves with sincere repentance.
This is one of the reasons why we
don the kittel before the Seder, for
the white garment which serves as the
Jewish shroud reminds us of the day of
death – which the Gemora in Berachos
says is the strongest motivator to do
teshuvah.
The Skolya Rebba,
Shlit”a, in his
excellent Haggadah,
quotes the stanza,
“V’hi sh’amdah laavoseinu v’lonu – It
was IT that stood
to protect us and
our forefathers.”
He observes that
the word “v’hi”
[vav-hei-yud-alef]
is an abbreviation
for “Hashiveinu
[hei] Hashem
[yud] Eilecha [alef]
v’noshuvah [vav].
This points to how the power of
teshuvah has saved us throughout
the generations. That we should be
ready to make our Seder experience
as acceptable as possible in the Eyes
of Hashem is no small matter for, as
the Rebbe points out, in the famous
declaration “Ma nishtana,” the word
‘nishtana’ is an acronym for ‘tein
shana,’ which means “Give us a good
year,” and indicates that in the
merit of a worthy Seder, Hashem
will give us another good year.
We know that we invite to the
Seder all four children; the wise,
the wicked, the simple minded, and
the one who is too young to even
ask a question. The Haggadah
discusses how we should treat
the impudence of wicked fellow.
When he derisively declares,
‘What is all of this stuff that you
are doing? You’re eating enough
romaine lettuce to grow a garden
in your stomach, and what’s all
of this prattle? It’s late already.
Why don’t we eat!’ the Haggadah
says something shocking. We
tell him the Passover experience
commemorates the Exodus. You
should know however, “Ilu hayah
sham, lo hayah nigal – If you
would have been there, you would
not have been redeemed.” At first
glance this is mystifying. After all,
we invited the wicked person to
the Seder in order to embrace and
rehabilitate him. This rejoinder, it
would seem, would only serve to
enrage him, or at the very least to
turn him off.
The saintly Rebbe from Lininov,
Zt”l, Zy”a, gives a wondrously
exciting explanation. We tell him, ‘If
you would have been in Egypt before
we received the Torah, you wouldn’t
have been saved for at that point
Hashem had not given us the gift of
teshuvah. But now, on the other hand,
you can readily turn things around and
start fresh with us right here and right
now, for Hashem has blessed us with
the kind treasure of erasing our past
and starting a beautiful new spiritual
future at any time, no matter how old
we are or how sinful we were.
May it be the will of Hashem that our
Seder experience is a powerful one,
and in the merit of always trying to
improve ourselves, may Hashem bless
us with long life, good health, and
everything wonderful.