2nd Days

[Nava Kaniel]

BSD

Hello Friends,

I hope that your chag has thus far been amazing. I had a few thoughts and I hope that you like them.

As I was doing bedikat chametz and looking through all of the corners of my house with an old school candle and feather I realized how blessed I am to not only have every corner of my house but, more importantly, every corner of my life. I'll elaborate.
When we need to get out all of the chametz from our house it is supposed to be a spiritual process along with a physical one. When we declare war on chametz we are declaring war on our ego. The shchina cannot dwell in the same place as arrogance which is also one of the reasons why the matzah we eat is flat. We get an idea that we need to be humble like the matzah and eliminate the ego that prevents Hashem from dwelling in our midst.  That is why this holiday is so amazing. When we make ourselves smaller, we understand that everything we have is a matana from Hashem that we, most likely, do not deserve. It's so easy for me to kvetch about things that go wrong or complain when something doesn't go according to plan, but when I did bedikat chametz I saw that every inch of my functioning home is a blessing and that I have no right to complain... which is all my ego and influence of the sitra achra.

Rabbi Joey Haber says that we get a beautiful understanding from the letter daled as it is the most prevelant number/letter of the chag and seder.Think about it... there are 4 sons, cups, leshonot geulah and geuolot. He brings in the example of 2 of Hashem's names: Shin-Dalet-Yud and ADOMAI.

When you take away the Dalet from each of those names you have Yesh and Ani. "Me" and "there is" which sounds egocentric. When you put the Dalet in, you have shem Hashem and without it all we'll have is ego. The dalet is added to make us smaller and make room for Hashem. Even more so, WE DID NOTHING TO DESERVE LEAVING EGYPT! This is the only geulah where we stood aside and let Hashem do everything in a revealed way from A to Z. In every other geulah process we were the extensions of Hashems hands.

This whole Holiday reveals to us that we are solely functional due to Hashems kindness and any power that we may think we have is an illusion of Gaavah. When we get rid of the chametz, we see that it has nothing to do with us and everything to do with being Hashems soldier as Rav Pincuz ZT"L says. we are called "Hashem tzvaot" (Hashem's army) when we leave Egypt. Rav Pincus defines a soldier as someone who completely submits his will to Hakadosh Baruch Hu.

May we all be zoche to be Hashem's soldiers and submit ourselves to the will of our ultimate General and at the same time realize that we are here only because of Hashem and no one else.May we also be able to see all of Hashem's Matana's in a revealed way.

Chag Kaser V'Sameach!

B'Ahavah Rabbah,
Nava