Countdown to Pesach 4-Four Cups

The Jews in the Kovno ghetto had no wine for the Pesach Seder. How could they carry out the mitzvah of drinking the Four Cups of Redemption? Rabbi Oshry replied, “Carry it out with four cups of sweet tea.”

Rav Oshry’s response is one of the most powerful expressions of Pesach Freedom; our creativity in Torah and applying it to life – ‘one of the most powerful’ – because the story contains an even more powerful expression of Pesach Freedom: People living in the most horrible of circumstances are committed to living an Eternal Life, through the observance of God’s Mitzvot, even while living in Hell on earth! They looked at each Mitzvah as an opportunity to be free of their immediate suffering.

We become so obsessed with observing the laws of Pesach, unnecessarily so, that we can forget to approach each Mitzvah as an opportunity to be free of the constraints of our problems, self-imposed limitations, and the challenges of this world.

We need only intend to observe the Pesach laws as did those questioners in the Kovno Ghetto.