Charoset: The Profound Meaning of Pesach - the Time of Our Freedom, in Light of Chassidus

00:00 Seder night is a special night of the year. We do so many things on it: mitzvos from the Torah, mitzvos instituted by the Sages, and Jewish customs. You could say that Seder night is the most special night. Jews of every background, all over the world, celebrate it in a way unlike any other night. We see this with every Jew—even Jews who may not yet observe Torah and mitzvos in their daily lives during the year. Seder night is sacred everywhere. Wherever they are in the world, Jews come together, family by family, and gather for the Seder. At the Seder we see all kinds of very unusual practices. Some are easier to understand, and some less so. Today we’re going to look at something very interesting. One of the things we do at the Seder seems, at first glance, utterly minor. We hardly pay attention to it. Yet through it we can see that every detail of this night, this special night of the Seder, has essential meaning. It gives us strength and a direction in life, a way to look at what is special about the Jewish people—and something to take into our daily lives as well. What can we learn from it? Today we’re going to talk about charoses. One of the things we put on the Seder plate is charoses: various fruits—apples, pears, nuts—according to Jewish custom. There are different customs about exactly what goes into charoses. We mix the ingredients together and make this special mixture called charoses. What do we do with it? Almost nothing in particular. It sits on the Seder plate among the Seder items, rests on the table, and at a certain point we use it. When we reach the stage of eating maror, this is what we do today: we take the maror and dip it—dip it just a little—in the charoses. According to halachah, there is no

02:21 required amount of charoses to eat. Even if you used just the tiniest drop, you have fulfilled the obligation. We do the same afterward with korech: when we put the maror in the middle, with matzah above and below, we dip that special korech sandwich in a little charoses too. And that is basically its entire role. What is special about this? Why do we do it? What is there in charoses, and what does it have to do with the essential meaning of Seder night? Today we’ll explore it in some depth and see how something that seems utterly minor is not minor at all. On Pesach night, nothing is minor. The simplest things, the things that seem least important at the Seder, have profound meaning, a tremendous lesson, and guidance for a Jew’s daily life. What do we take from Pesach night? We know, all of us know, that Pesach night is the birthday of the Jewish people. It is the night when we went from slavery to freedom. “In every generation, a person is obligated to see himself as though he had left Egypt.” We don’t celebrate the Exodus and Pesach night as a holiday commemorating something that happened more than three thousand three hundred years ago. Rather, we celebrate Pesach night as something personal that is happening to us today. We see this again and again in the Pesach Haggadah that we read that night. We also notice it in the halachos—in many of the halachos we observe at the Seder. One of the things halachah emphasizes is that we do not hold the Seder merely to remember events of the past; we are meant to live them in the present. When we speak about the redemption from Egypt, the season of our freedom, Seder night, Pesach night, we mean both physical and spiritual redemption. In Egypt, the Jewish people were subjected not only to physical backbreaking labor under the Egyptians who enslaved us,

04:37 as the Torah relates, but also to spiritual bondage. “The Egyptians treated us badly,” the verse says. The Frierdiker Rebbe further explains “the Egyptians treated us badly” to mean that the Egyptians instilled evil within us. They wanted to bring evil into the Jewish people, to implant it in their souls. Egypt was not only a place of physical backbreaking labor; there was a kind of spiritual backbreaking labor too. The evil of Egypt’s impurity, the depravity of the land, clung to the Jewish people while they were there. The exile and enslavement of the Jews in Egypt were not only physical exile and bondage, but spiritual exile and bondage. The redemption from Egypt was a redemption of the body together with a redemption of the soul: freedom for the body and freedom for the soul. The Jews, the Children of Israel, left Egypt. Of course, there was physical freedom from backbreaking labor, and along with it there was freedom of the soul. The soul was freed from the impurity and evil of Egypt. The pure Jewish core awakened; a Jew’s point of faith was set free. Every year, when we celebrate Pesach, we are also celebrating our own birth. For a Jew, Pesach, Seder night, is the night when we are born anew. It is the night when we awaken as a Jewish people, going from slavery to freedom, from exile to Geulah, from darkness to great light. This is true in the physical sense: a Jew sits at the Seder like royalty. And at the same time, it is the redemption of the soul. The soul is freed from the darkness and impurity of Egypt. The story of the Haggadah tells us this, as do all the customs of the Haggadah and all the halachos surrounding it. First, let’s talk about matzah. Matzah is the principal mitzvah of Seder night, a mitzvah from the Torah. As the Gemara and halachah tell us, today, in exile, we do not have the Pesach offering. May it be Hashem’s will that this very year we merit the complete Geulah and be able to eat of the Pesach offerings and the other sacrifices. In exile, there is no Pesach offering. As the halachic authorities rule, maror is an obligation instituted by the Sages during exile.

07:11 What remains of the festival is only matzah—the eating of matzah, which is the principal mitzvah from the Torah. The Zohar tells us: What is the point of eating matzah? What do eating matzah and the prohibition against eating chametz throughout the days of Pesach represent? The Zohar explains that matzah is called the bread of faith. Matzah is called the bread of healing. Matzah strengthens a Jew’s faith. Matzah gives a Jew true healing. What illness are we talking about, for which we seek a cure? What illness do we mean? As the Zohar, the writings of the Arizal, and the works of Kabbalah and Chassidus explain, the root of all illness is what is called the kelipah of Egypt. The root of all illness is chametz. Chametz represents pride. Chametz represents egotism. Chametz is leavened bread that swells up. That swelling expresses the feeling of self-importance: I am at the center, and everything revolves around me. I want, I like, I need, I feel like it—in every language, in every form. Putting the ego at the center: pride, the sense of self, in the language of Chassidus. I exist, and “my strength and the might of my hand have brought me this wealth”; there is nothing but me. This is the symbol of Egypt. A verse in Tanach describes Pharaoh, king of Egypt, saying, “My river is mine, and I made myself.” Pharaoh feels: I exist, I am at the center. “Who is Hashem that I should obey His voice?” He does not want to know what Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants; he is unwilling to set himself aside. He is the symbol of egotism, pride, and self-importance. That is the essence of the kelipah of Egypt. It is the root of evil. It is the root of all illness. When I am at the center and all I care about is myself and my own desires, then, as the Alter Rebbe explains in Tanya, all the negative traits emerge from there: anger, pride, the craving for pleasure, sadness, depression. In fact, at the root of all the ailments of the soul that we experience, at their innermost core, lies egotism. Me. I exist, and I am at the center.

09:54 And everything revolves around me. When I put myself at the center, all the other negative traits follow from that, and that is why Egypt is considered the root of all exiles. The Midrash says: “All exiles are called by the name of Egypt.” Chametz—bread that has risen—symbolizes this point. When we let it swell, that is what chametz represents. Pesach arrives, and the Torah forbids us to eat chametz, even the tiniest bit. We have to be careful about chametz to the utmost: it must neither be seen nor found. We stay away from even a trace of it. During Pesach, chametz is utterly rejected. The Arizal says that anyone who is careful to avoid even the slightest bit of chametz is assured that he will not sin throughout the year. The slightest bit of chametz, the slightest bit of pride and self-importance, the slightest bit of egotism—that is what leads a person to all the other sins and transgressions. On Pesach we avoid chametz and eat matzah. Matzah, the opposite of chametz, symbolizes the point of faith, the point at which a Jew submits himself to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Matzah does not rise, and it has no flavor. We do not put salt in it or add anything salty or sweet. This matzah symbolizes that point—the essence of Jewishness, the faith with which a Jew believes in Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That is what the Zohar says: matzah is the bread of faith; matzah is the bread of healing. On Pesach, beginning especially on the first night, when eating a kezayis—or two kezaysim—of matzah is a Torah obligation, the matzah we eat gives a Jew faith and, along with it, healing, to heal the root of all illnesses. Then we can truly begin to work on ourselves and refine our traits, our feelings, and our behavior. As we know, after the first day of Pesach comes Sefiras HaOmer, forty-nine days that represent all the work of refining our traits

12:12 that a Jew is meant to do throughout Sefiras HaOmer, until the Giving of the Torah. So when we speak about Seder night, that special night when a great light shines from Above—as the Arizal writes, there is great joy in saying the Haggadah aloud and with joy, because on Seder night a wondrous light shines, a revelation of the Shechinah, just as it did on the very first night of the Exodus from Egypt. The same thing happens every year on Seder night. A Jew sits at the Seder table, and the whole essential point of the Exodus from Egypt is renewed. How does all this connect to charoses? Listen to something interesting. We open the Gemara in Pesachim, page 116, where it discusses the mitzvah of bringing charoses to the table. The Gemara asks: What is this charoses? What is the point of bringing it? What is the reason? And the Gemara gives two explanations. One explanation says: It is a remembrance of the mortar. Once we mix and prepare the charoses, it becomes something like mortar, recalling the harsh enslavement of the Jewish people in Egypt. That is one reason for the charoses. On the other hand, the Gemara gives a second reason: the charoses recalls the apple. What is the apple? It is “Under the apple tree I awakened you.” One of the wondrous things about the Jewish people in Egypt was that despite the exile, all the hardships and trials, the enslavement and backbreaking labor, they continued bringing children into the world, generation after generation. That is the story of “Under the apple tree,” as the Midrash describes in detail: despite all the hardships, they bore children. This was the generation that experienced all the great miracles. “They recognized Him first”—the children born in Egypt. They were fruitful and multiplied, and “the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied

14:39 and spread.” This was the generation that left Egypt, crossed the sea, and received the Torah. So when we talk about charoses, we have two completely opposite things. On the one hand, charoses symbolizes the mortar; on the other, it symbolizes the apple. What is more, Tosafos there on page 116 cites the Geonim, who say to specifically select various fruits for the charoses—fruits that symbolize the Jewish people, citing verses. The apple symbolizes the Jewish people, the fig symbolizes... various fruits that symbolize the Jewish people and their beauty and sweetness. Those are precisely what we put into the charoses. It is remarkable: charoses symbolizes two complete opposites. As we said earlier, what is the purpose of charoses? In halachah, there are two requirements concerning charoses. The first is that it must be on the table. In other words, when a Jew sits at the Seder and recites the Haggadah, telling the story of the Exodus from Egypt, the Torah says, “Matzah and maror are placed before you.” They have to be on the table. Matzah and maror are part of telling the story of the Exodus, and charoses, too, needs to be on the table. There is a reason to bring charoses to the table even before you do anything with it. Then there is the second halachah: we dip the maror into it. Some also dip matzah. The Rambam writes that matzah, too, was dipped in charoses. Most Jewish communities do not follow that practice. The Shulchan Aruch says that, in principle, we do not do that today; we only dip the maror, and, as we said earlier, just a little bit—no more than that is needed. What does all this mean for us in everyday life? If we look at charoses as mortar, as enslavement, then charoses

16:55 symbolizes the exile in Egypt, its essential point. What does the exile in Egypt represent in our lives? As we said earlier, it is the enslavement, the backbreaking labor, in which a Jew becomes a slave to his own egotism. There is no slavery, no bondage, no backbreaking labor greater than being completely under the control of your own egotism. Such a person sees only himself. He cannot see another person; he cannot see what is happening around him. He is entirely wrapped up in himself and his own needs, along with all the other things that follow from this, as we said. That is the root of evil, which then spreads into all kinds of other things. As we said earlier, the kelipah of Egypt—all exiles are called by the name of Egypt. It all begins at this point. This is the mortar; this is charoses in its negative sense, symbolizing darkness, the kelipah of Egypt. On Pesach, the Jewish people were freed. The essence of Pesach is liberation from the mortar, from the darkness, from the negative side of charoses. We moved to the positive side: on that very night, Pesach night, the night of the Exodus from Egypt, the Jewish essence awakened. What is the true essence of the Geulah from Egypt? Pesach is when the Jewish essence awakened and came alive again. The moment of the Exodus symbolizes, as we said earlier, the awakening of faith, the awakening of a Jew’s very essence. A Jew has a soul that is literally a part of G-d Above. Once a Jew is aware of this—“I have a soul that is literally a part of G-d Above, a part of Hakadosh Boruch Hu”—he has something over which nothing has control, something no evil in the world can rule. We only need to bring it from potential into reality and let it govern our daily lives. On Pesach night, the essence of a Jew went from exile to Geulah. This is, in fact, what the Maharal of Prague explains in his book

19:22 In Gevuros Hashem, the point is—why is Pesach truly an eternal festival? Why do we celebrate Pesach every year with such joy, sitting like free people and eating while reclining? The obvious question is: We are in exile today. How can we celebrate Pesach as free people when we are not free? We know that we are still subjected to backbreaking labor in all kinds of ways, in a long, difficult, exhausting exile. So how do we celebrate Pesach? The Maharal of Prague explains: As we said, Pesach is the day the essence of a Jew was revealed. The essential point of the Jewish people is their bond with Hakadosh Boruch Hu: “literally a part of G-d above.” Once that point was freed, no exile could ever gain control over it. From the Exodus onward, we became free people in our very essence. Exile is an outer covering. Wherever a Jew may be—in any place, any situation, any country, any darkness, any period of history, even the darkest—he can always feel: This exile is not me. It is an outer covering. My true self is literally a part of G-d above. That is my essential point. Afterward, we need to bring that point into daily life, into our actions. But the point itself is the essential point of Geulah, and that is what we celebrate on Pesach. This is what we symbolize with the charoses. The charoses is there on the table. As we said, it has two sides. One side symbolizes exile. That is why there is no required measure of charoses: there is no mitzvah to eat a kezayis of it, or a revi’is, or any particular amount. We simply need it to be

21:39 on the table, and when we use it, we use just a little. But what does it symbolize? As we said, both sides. Throughout the Seder night, we do things that express both sides. We speak about exile and about Geulah. We recount, “At first our ancestors were idol worshippers, and now the Omnipresent has brought us close to His service.” We speak about the past and the future, about exile and Geulah. Charoses symbolizes both sides. There is the reminder of mortar, symbolizing evil, darkness, and selfishness—the root of all exiles and all the evil within the soul. And on the other hand, there is the reminder of the apple tree. Here is the beautiful point: What is a Jew? Even in the darkest, most difficult place, when they were captive there, they continued proudly to bear children, knowing that Hakadosh Boruch Hu would take us out of exile. It is the point of emunah, the point of trust, the point of Jewishness that shines within every Jew. That is what is revealed on Pesach, and that is why the charoses is on the table. It symbolizes the passage from exile to Geulah. We dip the maror in it and use a little of it, but afterward we need to take from this—as from everything we do at the Seder—the strength to carry through the entire year: the strength of emunah, which is also our power to heal. The Seder night is the night when we free ourselves from the various inner exiles we are in and decide to leave exile for Geulah. That is why we say something very interesting. Look at the wording of the Haggadah: “At first our ancestors were idol worshippers, and now the Omnipresent has brought us close.” What does “now” mean? Why do we say “now”? It did not happen now; it happened more than 3,300 years ago. “At first our ancestors were idol worshippers”—we begin with Terach, with the parents of Avraham Avinu, who were idol worshippers,

23:57 and then—surely that was not now. But the wording is precise, because it is happening now, on the Seder night. “And now”: right now, Hakadosh Boruch Hu is bringing us close to His service. Today we are born anew. “Who redeemed us,” we say in the blessing over the wine and the second cup: “Blessed are You, Hashem, our G-d, King of the universe, Who redeemed us and redeemed our ancestors.” But the first thing we say is “redeemed us.” On this night, all of us—you, me, the entire Jewish people—are redeemed. We leave exile for Geulah, emerge from darkness into great light, and enter a state of inner Geulah, a redemption of the soul. The charoses on the table teaches us how to become free: how a Jew can move beyond selfishness, the symbol of exile, to the side of charoses represented by the fruits for which the Jewish people are praised—to the inner essence of a Jew, who is literally a part of G-d above. That is the healing power that cures us of all our ailments. Once a Jew understands that he is connected to something far more exalted, something eternal and Divine, it frees him from all his worries, anxiety, fears, and anything else that can undermine the joy of his soul. From there we draw the strength of Geulah and freedom for the entire year, until we merit actual Geulah and freedom—the complete Geulah. May we merit it this year, even before Pesach. And with Hashem’s help, this Pesach, as we say in the Haggadah, “We will eat there of the Pesach offerings and the festival offerings”—because this year it is after Shabbos, that is the wording—we will merit to recite a blessing and thank Hakadosh Boruch Hu for all the miracles and wonders He performs for us. Blessed are You, Hashem, Redeemer of Israel—Who redeemed Israel. A kosher and joyous Pesach to each of us.