Hi friends, and welcome back to Talmud Daily. And today, I want to talk a little bit about some of the daily practices, or a daily practice, that you can be involved in that comes out and emerges from Tractate Pesachim.
As we mentioned, Tractate Pesachim is all about the formation, how we commemorate the formation of the Jewish people, which is at the heart of Passover itself. It’s really about Jewish identity, and we see this in such fascinating ways. The Talmud in Tractate Pesachim on page 96a notes something extraordinarily interesting. It notices that there is a difference between the original Paschal Lamb that we brought as we were exiting Egypt, and the one that was commanded for all future generations.
Now, all of the laws of how to bring this sacrificial lamb really derive from that original sacrifice that we brought as we were leaving on our way out from Egypt. This is the formation of the Jewish people. And all of the laws derive from that first telling. However, there are some very notable differences, and one of the differences that the Talmud highlights is that when they brought that initial sacrifice as they were leaving Egypt, God tells them you’ve got to do it bechipazon, do it quickly, do it in haste. You’ve got to get out of Egypt, go very quickly. But all future sacrifices, even though we kind of reenact and try to envision ourselves as if we are leaving Egypt, there is no law that you had to offer the yearly Paschal Lamb on Passover, the Korban Pesach, and give it very quickly. Like that didn’t transfer over. And the question is why? The Talmud notes like, you don’t have to do this quickly. That was only the first time. All other time, you can kind of do it slowly and carefully.
And why is that? So, a Chassidic teacher that I’ve already mentioned so many times, Reb Tzadok HaKohen MiLublin, who’s the Chasidic thinker that I think has influenced and shaped my understanding of Judaism more than anybody else, opens up his first work of Chasidic thought known as Tzidkas HaTzaddik, which is a work that he wrote just as he was entering Chasidic life for the first time. He wasn’t born a Chasidic Jew. He came to it much later in life. He opens the entire work up with this idea, and he explains that Passover is all about how we cultivate Jewish identity, how we really build our relationship and practice with God. And he says, when you first start, and this is that kind of the zeal of the convert, when you first start, you have to move quickly. You have to do it with passion, with excitement, bechipazon. Do it quickly. Don’t wait for all the right moments to align. Don’t wait for all the stars to align.
You know, sometimes you’re at a wedding, and you’re waiting for just the right moment to dance, you know, in the central circle with the bride or groom. And like you’re waiting and you’re waiting, like, “Oh no, now’s not the right time. They’re dancing, you know, with their parents. That’s an uncle, it’s a cousin, these are roommates.” And before you know it, the whole wedding can be over.
Reb Tzadok says this the same with Jewish identity. When you first start, and you first get excited with learning, you first get excited with Jewish commitment, move quickly. Make commitments, be passionate, just bite off more than you can chew, like really immerse yourself in it. But afterwards, the Passover lamb that’s offered in all future generations. Now you have to move slowly. Now you have to digest, now you have to process.
And this is true of all of our arcs in Jewish life. We want to start with an excitement, with a passion, with a seriousness, but then, says Reb Tzadok—and this emerges directly from this difference between the initial Korban Pesach and the one that we offer all other future years—you start off with intensity, you start off with passion, you start off with zeal, and then move slowly, and then process, le’at-le’at, slowly but surely.
And I think there’s something even more profound that emerges as a daily practice really from Tractate Pesachim itself. And that is at the heart of what Pesach is all about. Jewish identity is really understanding what generations came before you. With specifically with Passover, it’s this new beginning. It’s the childhood of the Jewish people. It’s why it’s the only holiday that has a makeup date, because everybody deserves a beginning. Everybody deserves that home, that childhood to come back to. So Passover has that second makeup date, which is on the 14th of Iyar, Pesach Sheini, the Second Passover.
But at the heart of Passover, what it’s really about is something that you can do the entire year around, and that is understanding your story. There is an article that I love to share and of course we’ll put a link to it in our show notes, but it’s genuinely one of the most profound things I’ve ever read, and is written by Bruce Feiler, who we actually interviewed on the main 18Forty Podcast, and the article is called “The Stories That Bind Us.” And it tells the story of two psychologists who worked at Emory University, Marshall Duke and Robyn Fivush.
And these two psychologists were exploring what builds resilience. What makes some people more resilient than others? And even as they were studying this, it happens to be, 9/11 happened. So they had this whole group who they were able to really explore who’s able to recover from trauma and who gets stuck. And they found something absolutely amazing and, honestly, all of Judaism, this is the foundation, in my opinion, of all of Judaism.
You know what they found? You know what builds resilience more than anything else? Knowing your own familial story. There are different ways of just understanding where you came from, to understand your own story. And they have like a checklist: Do you know where your grandparents were born? Do you know somebody in your family who struggled with illness? Do you know how your parents met? They have a whole scale, it’s called the “Do You Know” scale. And you could go through it, we’ll link to it, of just like general questions about family history.
This is at the heart of Passover and I think it’s at the heart of being a Jew. In tractate Pesachim on page 116a, there’s actually a dispute about how we’re supposed to share our story. They all agree that you’re supposed to matchil, begin, bignus, with the difficult times, with the hard times, umesayeim, and end, bishevach with the good times, where you are now. And there’s all the time in between and we actually do this at the Passover Seder. We start with, again, the dispute in the Talmud is what are the bad times? Are the bad times slavery in Egypt or maybe the bad times even earlier, where Avraham had to contend with idolaters, a story that we’re very much familiar with by now. And there’s this dispute in the Talmud which are the bad times that you’re supposed to retell. But at the heart of Passover, what emerges from this tractate, is we’re supposed to tell the entirety of our family story. We begin with the difficult times and we’re supposed to end with the joyous times.
And I think, this is what Bruce Feiler says, there are different ways that families tell their stories. You know, some tell a very neat story, you know, “We came to the America, we had no money, we had no nothing, and now we’re all wealthy.” Sometimes people have a very negative arc, where “We used to be very wealthy and perfect, and now we’re broke and destitute and miserable.” The narrative that these psychologists found build the most resilience is the oscillating narrative, is the narrative where you have ups and downs, highs and lows throughout history.
And I would challenge as the daily practice to emerge from Tractate Pesachim, and I really mean this: learn your family story. Not just your parents, not just your grandparents. I think at minimum to be a Jew, if you’re able to—no, not everybody can stretch this far back—understand the lives of the three generations who came before you. You’re the fourth generation of somebody. And it’s actually very interesting because when God first tells Abraham that they’re going to be slaves in Egypt, he says it’s the fourth generation that will be redeemed. Saysexplicitly in the 15th chapter of Genesis.
So I think that part of having that Passover awareness is know that you’re the fourth generation of somebody and you could bring redemption to your own life, but you have to know what are the other three generations that came before me. What am I the fourth generation of? To understand the lives of your parents, the lives of your grandparents, the lives of your great-grandparents. Take the “Do You Know” test. Learn about your family history.
My personal practice, we try to do this, we started during COVID, is actually, at our Passover Seder, we try to bring pictures of like our grandparents, of the generations that came before us, because Passover, Pesachim, more than anything else, is the birth of Jewish identity, and each of us carries a Jewish identity and it begins by really understanding the world and the narrative from which each of us actually emerged.
So thank you so much for listening to Talmud Daily, and let’s keep making Torah sweet.