The Hebrew word for Egypt, ‘Mitzrayim,’ is rooted in the word ‘meitzar,’ meaning boundaries, limits, restrictions. Egypt represents constraints and confinements: psychological, emotional and spiritual. Anything, from within or from without that inhibits our free expression is a form of mitzrayim.

Exodus is the most important element in life: The ability to free ourselves from our confines and get out of the rut. What better time to reaffirm G-d’s promise to Abraham that we will be freed from Mitzrayim? This promise was true for the first Exodus from Egypt and is true today, for in “Each generation one must envision himself as if he just left Mitzrayim.”

The Seder provides us with the keys to open the doors of freedom. “Passover Seder” is an oxymoron: The word Pesach (Passover) means to leap, to bypass the normal order, whereas Seder means order and organization! The Seder is an order that allows us to transcend order. Like music: By playing the defined musical scale we can create infinite musical combinations and songs.

The Seder connects us to our inner child, which is why the Seder focuses on children. Just as a child’s innocence is not been tarnished by adult entanglement, so, too, each of us has an inner child that is unaffected by the coarseness of the world.

The fifteen Seder steps represent fifteen keys to open doors freeing us from our confinements.

Step 1: Kaddish
Reciting Kiddush

The Seder starts with Kadesh, a blessing over a cup of wine. Kadesh means to sanctify – we sanctify G-d’s name and the wine. Kadesh also means ‘to separate’ between good and bad, holy and profane. The first step of the Seder process is to create a new space so we can begin our journey toward freedom. We separate ourselves from the enslaving past and enter the spiritual experience of the Seder which frees us.

Step 2: Urchatz
Washing the Hands

The second step is U’rchatz: washing our hands before dipping a vegetable (Karpas) in saltwater. We uplift and cleanse our ‘tools’ in preparation for the following 13 steps.

Step 3: Karpas
Eating a Vegetable Dipped in SaltWater

Our third step, is to dip a piece of onion, potato or other vegetable in salt water. We do this to provoke the children to ask: why? The Seder begins by stimulating the child to ask questions because a critical component of freedom is the encouragement and empowerment to ask.

Why Karpas? The earthy vegetable represents the body, which comes from dust, and the salt water represents the salty tears of pain. We take our earthly, physical body, and immerse it in salty tears. Salt is a cleanser, and tears are an expression of the soul. We cleanse our bodies with our soul’s tears.

Freedom comes when we realize that the material world is like a ‘vegetable’ that needs to be dipped in spiritual “salt water.” Karpas reminds us that the body is only a means, not an end in itself. Like the vegetable dipped in salt water, the body’s purpose is to transcend the world it lives in, by connecting itself to the soul, and so elevating and freeing both the body and the soul.

Step 4: Yachatz
Breaking the Middle Matzah

But even after this awareness, how do we actually release ourselves from materialism?

The answer: We break the middle matzah.

Matzah symbolizes bittul, suspending oneself for a higher purpose. Its ingredients are water and flour; water represents the soul and the Torah, while flour represents the body. The antithesis of Matzah is chametz (leavened bread) that is allowed to rise, representing the inflated ego, which is mostly “air.” Matzah on the other hand is the bare minimum of flour and water without any airs about it.

The subjective ego blinds us from seeing a broader perspective. Matzah empowers us with the ability to transcend our own viewpoint to allow in a higher truth.

Step 5: Maggid
Reciting the Haggadah

After the first four steps, we are ready to relive the Exodus story.

Telling the story begins with the child (inner and outer) asking the Four Questions. The first and greatest freedom of all is the freedom to ask, probe, explore and challenge.

Not only are we free to ask, we must ask. Healthy questions express our striving for something higher, reaching for a place beyond. If we are complacent, we remain stuck in our space. Questions allow us to grow.

Maggid is not just a tale of past events; it relives and experiences them, recognizing how they play out in our lives today.

Maggid – and the entire Haggadah– is the story of our lives, of harsh, oppressive forces in our personal ‘mitzrayim,’ and our liberation from them.

As long as we think that our constraints are ‘normal’ and ‘healthy’ we cannot even begin freeing ourselves. So we tell the story. Our story. By relating and recreating the story we recognize the limits of our personal struggles and challenges. Once we define our internal “exile,” only then can we start the process of redemption.

Step 6: Rachtzah
Washing the Hands

After we recite the story (maggid), we reach a new level. Just as we washed our hands at the beginning of the Seder (u’rchatz), we wash our hands again at this new stage. Once we rise to a higher level of holiness through the first five steps, we submerge our hands again, preparing for the next stage of spiritual growth and freedom.

The first five steps put us into a free person’s frame of mind. Actual freedom is only possible when our minds and hearts are open, when we have the hope and sense that there is more than our limited state. Once we reach that point psychologically, we are then ready to implement this new-found freedom in our lives, in a way we can maintain it. We live in a material world, and for freedom to be complete it needs to be expressed in a tangible way. The physical is changed to become a vehicle for our spirituality.

Step 7: Motzi
Reciting the Blessing HaMotzi

After washing our hands, we begin the transformation with Motzi: the first blessing on the matzah, HaMotzi lechem min ha’aretz, blessing G-d, ‘who brings forth bread from the earth.’

This first blessing emphasizes the ‘earthiness’ (the body) of Matzah (the primary ingredient of matzah is flour –grain of the earth – mixed with water). But unlike karpas, where the focus is on the negativity of materialism, matzah focuses on the positive of materialism; on its potential which is released when we reveal the Divine spark in it. “Not on bread alone does man live, but on the word of G-d,”—(the Divine spark within the bread).

Indeed, Kabbalah teaches us that the highest Divine sparks fall in the lowest places. Earth – symbol of materialism – contains the greatest spiritual energy. But it remains locked and trapped until we release it.

Lechem (bread) also means ‘to battle.’ A meal is like a war between the material and the spiritual sparks hidden within the food, between our temptation to indulge and our ability to transcend and elevate the material meal by revealing these sparks.

Step 8: Matzah
Reciting the Blessing on the Matzah and Eating It

The next step is the second blessing unique to matzah, blessing G-d for ‘sanctifying us with His mitzvot and connecting (commanded) us through the eating matzah.’ This blessing emphasizes not the ‘earthiness’ of matzah, but its spirit – the power of selflessness.

We eat the matzah, ingest it and make it part of our body, sustaining our body and soul. By consuming matzah – the food of bittul/humility – we assume its qualities. As the Rebbe MaHaRash writes, eating matzah is like ‘eating G-dliness.’ On the first night of Passover matzah is the “bread of faith;” on the second night it is “bread of healing.”

Matzah is the first real food we eat on Passover. It helps us achieve freedom by integrating the material and the spiritual, body and soul.

Step 9: Maror
Eating Bitter Herbs

Following the matzah we eat the bitter maror, freeing us from the need to have to experience any more serious form of bitterness. The bitter maror also teaches us the process of growth. An olive does not produce oil until it is pressed. So too, maror hardens our mettle – the setbacks and pain in life strengthen us.

The maror is dipped into charoses (a sweet combination of ground apples, pears, nuts and wine), sweetening it a bit (but not eliminating its bitterness). This demonstrates that even when we need to feel bitterness, its purpose and objective is not bitter, but to reach a greater freedom. As in Egypt – “The more they were oppressed, the more they proliferated and grew.” And today, 3316 years later, millions Jewish descendants sit around Seder tables around the world celebrating freedom.

Step 10: Korech
Eating a Sandwich of Matzah and Maror

We now unite the matzah and maror experiences in one sandwich, combining the matzah’s earthiness and humility with the maror’s bitterness.

There is a time to sing and a time to cry. A time to celebrate, and a time to feel the harshness of life. A time for the sweet, and a time for the bitter. We learn to join them into one seamless experience called life. Then we have freedom. Not through denial of the difficult and bitter, not by escaping into the spiritual, but by integrating them into one.

Step 11: Shulchan Aruch
Lit. ‘set table’ – Eating the Festive Meal

Now, finally, we are ready… to eat.

After the first 10 steps (corresponding to the ten sefirot) of integrating spiritual freedom into our material lives, we are ready for the first real test: Eating in an entirely new way, permeated with a sense of Higher Presence and G-dliness.

The meal is called “Shulchan Oruch (set table)” because a meal is not just merely a trough to stave off hunger. It is a total experience. When we feed ourselves and others – physically and spiritually -when we educate and offer services to others – we do so in a manner that prepares and anticipates everything in advance, everything is ready and prepared like a shulchan oruch, a set table.

When we recognize that we have been blessed and have received so much, including the gift of the Passover Seder table, we share the gifts with others. As Moses was told to present the teachings to the people like a ‘set table,’ so must we set the table for others who may not have the opportunity. We must offer them a prepared meal –physically and spiritually, sharing and teaching all that we know, and setting the table by providing all the necessary elements.

Step 12: Tzofun
Eating the Afikoman

Following the meal we eat the afikoman (the larger half of the middle matzah that we broke in Yachatz). Tzofun means ‘hidden.’ After we have eaten a complete meal as free men, women and children, a material meal eaten in a spiritual way, we now have the power to reveal that which is hidden and unconscious – tzofon – within ourselves.

We have the power to conquer not just the revealed dimensions of materialism as adversary, but also its hidden dimensions.

The Afikoman is eaten as a dessert; not for sustenance but for pleasure. The earlier matzah acclimates us to humility, as we learn to tame the ‘ego’ and ‘narcissism’ of materialism. Now we can integrate that humility into the pleasure of our lives, where even our pleasures are permeated with higher purpose.

Complete freedom is achieved only when we have freed not just the conscious levels but also the unconscious and hidden ones.

Step 13: Bareich
Reciting Grace

We conclude the meal by reciting grace. The meal is punctuated by two spiritual poles – the first ten steps prior to the meal, and the grace said after the meal. This ensures that food – symbolic of our material experiences – will yield the spiritual energy within its Divine sparks. Bareich (to bless) means ‘to draw down’ – to draw down spirituality and G-dliness into this physical world.

Step 14: Bareich
Reciting Psalms of Praise

Hallel also means ‘to shine,’ from the expression ‘behilo nero – when his candle shines.’ Hallel is recited on occasions when G-d shines into our physical world, revealing that G-dliness is the ultimate reality.

Having worked to achieve freedom in the first 13 steps of the Seder, we now say Hallel to conclude the process of attaining freedom.

Step 15: Nirtzah
G-d’s Promise to accept our service

Unlike the previous 14 steps, this final step is not expressed by prayer or action. It is beyond words. Accepted favorably by G-d, we are ready for the final and complete Redemption.

NEXT YEAR IN JERUSALEM!

Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the Alter Rebbe, did not include the passage ‘the order of Pesach is concluded,’ because the Passover Seder never ends. It continues throughout the year, continuously. Every day we must leave mitzrayim, transcend out previous limitations and reach higher levels of holiness.

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