Last Days of Pesach 5773: Mitzvah of Remembering Bitter and Sweet Together

Welcome back, precious students, it has been nearly four weeks since we were all together with Journeys and Pesach Break.  

As I sat in shul this week for the last day of Pesach my mind wandered during the festival Torah reading.  My mind was thinking ahead to the end of Pesach that night when I would be able to eat real pizza or have a real slice of cake, but the words of Torah startled me.

During the Torah reading for the last day of Pesach there is an unusual mitzvah (commandment/divine exhortation) saying “Seven days you are to eat matzah – the poor bread – as you left Egypt in a rush – le’ma’an tizkor – in order that you remember the day of your Exodus from Egypt all the days of your life.”  (Devarim 16:3.) 

A commandment to remember the Exodus, really?!?  Weren’t these the same people who actually were liberated from slavery and rescued by the parting of the Sea?  They needed a commandment to remember?  How could they have forgotten?

Think about our own lives – how easy it is to forget.

So here comes a mitzvah of remembrance precisely because we forget too easily.  Then, as my colleague Salomon Gruenwald asks, "I wondered whether we are supposed to remember the bitterness of slavery or the sweetness of freedom."  The Torah is ambiguous here. 

Like Salomon, I believe the answer is “both.” We are to remember both the bitter and the sweet.  Some of us are inclined only to remember sweet moments – others only bitter ones.  It is how some of us are wired. 

Torah comes to remind us that a full life, a meaningful life, is filled with some of each – not all bitter and not all sweet. On the last day of Pesach, Torah is reminding us to take it all in, carry forward each of our memories, don’t discard them. 

Isn’t that why during the Seder we eat Matzah, bitter herb and sweet charoset all together because our lives are blended?  The two transform each other.  The bitter is tempered by the taste of something sweet.  We are able to appreciate the sweetness more powerfully when there is something bitter with which to contrast it. 

So, precious students, as we enter the fourth quarter of the year. Take a moment to think back over the last few weeks since we all sat together. 

Take a moment to remember something from your Pesach or your break that caught you up short, that stung or hurt. Maybe it was a conversation you regret, a gesture you wish you could take back, an opportunity you let pass.  Reflect on the lesson you can learn from it going forward. 

Now take a moment to remember something from your Pesach or your break that was sweet – maybe it was a relationship renewed, or a risk you were brave enough to take, or an accomplishment that makes you smile.  Reflect on the lesson you can learn from that going forward. 

Follow the lesson of the Pesach Torah reading – remember, don’t forget, remember the bitter with the sweet, use it all in the days and weeks ahead. 

May you have a wonderful quarter – filled with lessons from moments that are bitter and delight from those that are sweet.