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The Foundation Stone Haggadah: Urchatz 4: A Message of Unity



But there is another aspect I would like to bring up: Our sages were careful enough to not include a law, a Halacha, during the time of exile that would be a burden to the Jewish people. And that is why when we go and do it at the Seder that it is so powerful, if we can hear its message. So the question that is immediately popping in my mind is: Why do we go out of our way to create new Chumras when the Men of the Great Assembly, most of them prophets, concentrated on the opposite? We see that by establishing this once a year, it makes it so much more powerful, and this is a halacha they dropped, but we, our holy generation think we know so much more to go about establishing Chumras, not even halachas. Many times we do it because of our own insecurities, almost like saying, if this other group doesn’t do this, then they are worse. Few of us will be honest enough to admit this, but the few of us who are, will realize that we feel uplifted by putting someone else down in our mind.

 

The purpose of Pesach , as we mentioned above is to make us re-experience being slaves to reach a sense of freedom, a sense of Moshiach, which is a sense of unity of all of Israel. We can only unify if we are able to see the beauty in another person as opposed to putting them down. It is our choice of how to look, how to separate good from bad, and make the decision to gather those sparks of goodness that pretty much can be found in all of us.

So my blessing is that we learn from the law of Urchatz and that we elevate our hopes to be able to use the opportunity to wash before Karpas. That is would be the flicker to ignite hope, and that it will elevate us to better people by choosing to see the good in others and unify as opposed to the differences. It is truly then that we would be able to create the right circumstances to receive unification.

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