What is the meaning of Pesach for us today?
Chag Pesach Sameach, Happy Pesach.
The original Pesach was a one-time event, never meant to be repeated. It may be surprising to know that today’s Haggadah has been developed over the years by our sages, but has nothing to do with the original Pesach. It has even changed from when our beloved Rabbi Yeshua celebrated it almost 2000 years ago. It is a rabbinic interpretation meant to teach us, but the bottom line is, “What is the meaning of Pesach for us today?” Why was it so important that the Creator asked us to memorialize it?
Exodus 12 begins with: “This month (Nisan or Aviv) shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you.” Tradition has changed the new year from Nisan to Tishrei; it may seem like a small thing, but whenever we change the words of the Torah and replace them with our own, we distance ourselves from our Creator. All other cultures which claim their own new year demonstrate man’s desire to superimpose their ideologies above the Creator’s will for us.
The Gentile world has developed its own traditions that, in my opinion, are morbid. It is as if people rejoice in suffering and glorifying the shedding of blood. These traditions separate Jews and Gentiles instead of uniting us. They separate us with the names of Yeshua and Jesus Christ. Some Jews understand that Yeshua ben Yosef was the anointed one of his day, and his purpose was to bring his people, Israel, back to Torah. He was alienated from his people by the Gentile world, when they changed him into a personality that never existed. Yeshua haMashiach and Jesus Christ are two entirely different entities; one is a historical figure, while the other is a theological invention.
My job, for the past 25 years in this community, has been to bring both peoples to understand the Yeshua whom the Jewish people have been taught to hate. This is very sad. By their rhetoric against Jesus Christ, they also mar the image of Yeshua, who was a righteous Tzaddik, a teacher, a rabbi, and a prophet. We know that we must not speak “lashon harah,” however, we are reacting to the invented Jesus Christ. Although they are trying to make him Jewish, there is nothing Jewish about him.
My desire is that we all come to know the true Yeshua. Some see him as a great Jewish teacher, while others see him as God incarnate who died for the sins of the world at Pesach. We need to focus on who he was – a rabbi who came to bring his people back to the Torah, one of the greatest men in the history of the Jewish people. I might even say a larger figure than Moses, given how his mere presence has changed the world. That’s a fact, not an invention. Yeshua did nothing to destroy Israel; rather, he wanted to bring us back to the Bore olam. My Gentile friends are free to worship Jesus Christ, but know that he is a creation of your imagination, and he can never replace the Creator. He never tried.
Why is it so important to understand Pesach, the festival of redemption? Redemption is about teshuva, korban, making us anew. We need to understand the idea of slavery, which is still alive in this generation, albeit more sophisticated. In certain cultures, there exists slavery of women and children, slavery to technology and wealth, and even philosophical and religious slavery. These are what the Creator wanted to free us from. They had dulled the minds of His people. The Israelites may have been taken out of Egypt, but Egypt still remained in the mentality of the people of Israel, right up until today. I once asked you, “Where is your inner Egypt to which you keep returning?” What doesn’t allow you to be yourself? We all need to fight to conquer it. In Psalms 139: 23 and 24, we ask the Creator to search our hearts and show us the areas that hold us back from walking with him.
The only thing that the Creator is asking us to do at Pesach is not to eat “leaven”. Our traditions are extremely burdensome because they have added so many “dos and don’ts” to this one command. Be careful not to be distracted by the multitude of rules and regulations that will take you away from the true message of Pesach. We lose the concept of why we are celebrating Pesach. It’s the time of “freedom.” Can you see the irony? Religion brings us back to slavery, and the more religious we are, the further we are from the Creator because we feel so good about ourselves, but it is not about Him.
Our Rabbi Yeshua told us,“ You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free”. The Hebrew understanding of truth (Emet) is that you shall know the Creator, and having a relationship with Him sets you free of all the extra rules not from Him. When we walk in the presence of the Creator, we are both physically and spiritually naked, because he can see through us. We can’t deceive Him. We can put on a facade of self-righteousness, but it’s all hypocrisy. We don’t need a mask with the Creator.
This message is simple, but it is not easy. There is nothing better than being “korban” to the Creator, i.e., to draw close to Him. The message of Pesach is freedom from ourselves. Some of us are so enslaved by our fear of every kind that we can’t enjoy life. This community isn’t popular because we don’t offer the hocus pocus that magically gets rid of all our fears. We offer a true and lasting relationship with God, ourselves, and each other.
We don’t need to play the game of being holier than thou or crying “peace and love” for the world. Israel is going through a very difficult time. It is sad to see Christians in the land who have turned against Israel, even though there is no other country in the Middle East that allows them to worship freely. They have been killed by the Muslims, but they are defending them against Israel. The Pope is silent about all the Christians who are being murdered around the world…where are all the protests? The United Nations recently passed 12 sanctions against Israel and only 5 against the rest of the world; not one word accusing Hamas and the Palestinians, or the Syrians who are killing their own people, or the Turkish people, or North Korea, or Russia, which took over a land that doesn’t belong to them, and of course, Venezuela. Something is wrong with this picture.
Do you know that the people of Israel, at no time, asked to leave Egypt? They would have remained there…they just wanted to be treated well. Their slave mentality was so entrenched that the Creator literally forced the Egyptians to finally throw us out! But they didn’t leave happily, even if movies about the exodus paint that picture. When I say Egypt, I am not only talking about the country, but about the mentality of putting other things above the Creator.
Let me return to Yeshua. I would like you to understand my point of view. The world makes a big deal about his crucifixion, his martyrdom, especially at this time of year. From a historical perspective, Yeshua was a tsaddik, a rabbi who sought to have Israël return to the Torah. Who was his battle against? … the powerful organized religion of his day. Here in Canada, it is so powerful that if you are not a part of it, you are nobody. They tell you what you can and cannot do. If you criticize it, you reap the consequences that threaten you with prison or punishment. At the time of Yeshua, it was the same. He spoke to his own people, not to the Gentiles. He spoke to the am ha-Aretz, the simple people, not to the religious, whom he called hypocrites, accusing them of dressing all white on the outside but being black on the inside.
The Aaronic priesthood was purchased from the Romans, not inherited. Those who left Jerusalem and went to the desert were the Qumran people, consisting of priests (cohanim) and Levites. They left the temple and its mikveh because they had been desecrated. Yochanan the Immerser (AKA John the Baptist) was a cohen and a member of the Qumran community. When Yeshua spoke against the interests of the Pharisees and Sadducees, they gave him up to the Romans. Their accusation against Yeshua could only work if the Romans believed that he was a threat to their government. They wouldn’t have cared if he were a religious threat, but they did care that he was a political insurgent, which is why the religious factions accused him of sedition against the Pax Romana! Yeshua wasn’t interested in being a zealot against Rome because he knew that true freedom comes from within and our relationship with the Creator.
The Romans loved crucifixion, and there were hundreds, if not thousands, of people hanged on Roman stakes all along the road to Jerusalem. We have lost sight of the reason he was killed. This was a collusion between the upper-class religious leaders of Israel and the government of that day. It had nothing to do with dying for the sins of mankind. Right now, Israel has the same problem. A hierarchical religious system dominates the government. If Israel had a secular state, the people who wanted to follow the Creator would have more freedom than they do now, living under the fear of going against the religious status quo. True freedom is following God of our own free will, not because it is imposed upon us.
Back to this festival of Freedom. Are we free of Egypt’s pollution, or do we still return to it? Are we working to free ourselves from that? We all, without exception, have been polluted, which is why Psalm 139:23-24 is so important, especially at Pesach: “Search me, O God, and know my heart, try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any way in me that is grievous, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
The teachings of which Jesus do you follow…Yeshua’s or Jesus Christ’s? Do you believe in the God of Israel or the gods of this world? In this generation, although most people consider that we are freer than ever, we are really more slaves than ever. We are losing the right to speak freely, and those who do speak the truth are accused of hate speech and persecuted. I don’t want to live in a world in which I cannot open my mouth and stand for what I believe.
The Creator took us out of Egypt against our will because He wanted to give us a better life. I propose that we all work to rid ourselves of the pollution in our hearts, open our eyes, and search our hearts. Let us ask the Creator to guide us on the right path, and let us be grateful to our Messiah Yeshua, our teacher, our rabbi, and our prophet, who taught us to return to the Torah, to the basic Ten Commandments. He never told us to turn away from them. They are the foundation for our liberation.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Netanel ben Yochanan Z’’ l