Sobriety

URCHATZ 

The Leader of the Seder only, now washes his/her hands from an ewer into a bowl held

by another celebrant, wiping them dry on a hand towel. We have accepted the need for

leadership, we wash the leaders's hands. This small, formal act of service is a symbol of

our recognition of their leadership. This is an ancient Jewish ritual in and of itself. 

At this point in the Seder, washing the hands has a specific purpose other than to

punctuate and elect. It is a statement of purpose, an elevation from the mundane. It

symbolizes the wish to be relieved of the bondage of self. Before the Cohen (priest) could

perform any of his duties in the Temple, he had to wash his hands and feet from the

copper urn in the courtyard. Silently he prayed as we do before we begin the Seder.   

"Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Your will. Make me an

instrument of Your purpose, take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear

witness to those I would help of Your power, Your love and Your way of life". 

The Washing of hands refers back to the Great Copper Urn and further back to the Jewish

women and the mirrors they used in Egypt. That was the prime example of an action that

served Hashem's purpose. The way water flows between the fingers as it passes over the

hands leaving them cleansed, copies the action of lust as it flows through the body. Water

always tries to shed its energy and come to rest after doing so. So too do the sensations of

lust and longing.  

When we eat dry foods, washing the hands is not necessary. But as soon as liquids are

involved, as with the ritual of KARPAS we are about to perform when we will dip

vegetables into salt water, we must prepare our hands by washing them. It is easily

explained in terms of hygiene and cleanliness. But in light of what we just said, it attains

a far deeper significance. Whenever hunger, lust or the expression of any of our needs

comes over us, we beg Hashem to help us express His will. We ask Him to ensure the lust

or the hunger washes over us passing through our fingers. Leaving us cleansed the way

washing our hands does.  

Washing of hands, (before the advent of theories regarding hygiene) is a singularly

Jewish ritual with no counterpart in any contemporary or adjacent cultures and religion.

Greeks and Romans had no such symbolical actions in their lives. So its real meaning is

closely reflected in the metaphor "I wash my hands of it ".  

YACHATZ

Is matzo poor man's bread or the food of free men? Can it be both? If we regard it as the Bread of Affliction why did we carry dough on our backs out of Egypt, to let it bake in the hot sun without leavening and rising? Can one Matzo be both a symbol of wretchedness and deliverance?

Matzo is a paradox.

Not only is it so, but in breaking the middle matzo we also break with symmetry. There is a bigger half and a smaller half. This unpalatable truth is almost a preamble to the Haggadah. The universe is not symmetrical, all is not evenly divided. There is a richer and poorer half. The distribution of assets is not equal. This is one of the mysteries that persists, omnipresent, throughout time. Life the universe and everything is not fair. We cannot balance this sorry scheme of things entire, and so it goes. What was our response as children to the dawning realization that it was not fair? Did we have coping mechanisms? We survived so we must have coped, but we sacrificed our health in order to do so. We split. We broke into pieces. We hid ourself away. And this is how we prepared ourselves for life. Like the hungriest of paupers eating what we absolutely must, laying aside the greater part for later, when the time is riper. We compromised, accepting this imbalance, bowing to the "Law of Unfairness” which must prevail.

In many ways this acquiescence preceded addiction. We grew satisfied with the expression of a mere fraction of our personalities. We went into "survival mode", subsisting on crumbs of humanness, hiding the greater part of ourselves from ourselves. As we do with the AFIKOMEN.

The focus of our lives grew narrower as our preoccupation with gnawing hunger grew stronger. We had nothing to spare for growth when all we had went to feed our habits. Fewer and fewer opportunities to begin the fixing, as we chased the fix with growing desperation. In the end it became obvious that we had developed a pathological relationship with the "bread of our affliction".

We break the middle matzo because the middle matzo represents the Great Mothering Principle of the Kabbalistical Sphere of BINAH. We lost the ability to take care of our most basic needs, to Mother ourselves.

If the recitation of the Haggadah is our "war-story", our qualification, why are we breaking the matzo now before beginning our war story?

The answer is heartbreaking. The reason this happens before the Haggadah, is because the splitting of the self almost always occurs when we are still in a pre-verbal state. The disorder of our personalities, the shaming and abandonment of ourselves happens when we are still babies, infants. What follows is the story of our lives after the rupture. The inevitable, inexorable descent into the blast-furnace that was our Egypt, and our deliverance. There are no words to describe the event. We simply break the matzo, leaving the smaller section on the Seder plate, We wrap the larger piece in a pillow-case and put it away for afikomen.

Recovery is a lifelong process. We must realize, actualize and integrate the whole of ourselves. We will do this by eating the Afikomen as a symbolic "last-act" of the Seder. When it is all over we will have achieved a reclamation of the "self" we abandoned. We take the Afikomen we have wrapped in a pillowcase, slinging it over the shoulder we explain to our children:

“This is what our parents did when they came out of Egypt;”

As it is written:

“Their dough slung over their shoulders in sheets”

And the sun shone so hot that it was baked, without the opportunity to leaven as dough left alone will do. And so they continued to eat the unleavened bread even when they came out of Egypt".

Why did we continue eating this bread after we had left Egypt? Why is this a point worth mentioning? In a sense we are reminding ourselves of those times early in Recovery when we found ourselves in very painful situations, eating what seemed identical to the bread of our affliction. We can only see with hindsight that we were eating bread of freedom. In our haste to leave Egypt we were prepared to go to any lengths; even mothers with tiny children walked away from the only homes they had. Walking into the wilderness with nothing to eat but unfinished pastry dough and trust in their Higher Power. It is customary to hide the Afikomen, allowing children the excitement of the search. Just another way of keeping them awake and alert whilst the Seder continues.

The story of passover includes discussions of slavery and oppression. While we would love for this to be only a discussion of the past, these topics are still part of our lives today.

When we talk about being delivered from Egypt, we use the word Mitzrayim, which has been translated as a narrow place.

What are the narrow places we know from our own life experience? Are we still in a narrow place and longing for deliverance?

No topic of conversation is forbidden at the seder table.