Haggadah Intro…
THE REDEMPTION HAGGADAH
Guidelines, Rituals, Sources and Insights Inspired by Moshiach Consciousness.
Introduction
The narrative of the Israelites redemption from Egypt is a blueprint for the ultimate redemption, both personal and universal.
This unique Haggadah hopes to reveal within the text and lessons of the traditional text, the secret doctrine of true physical and spiritual freedom. Freedom from internal slavery, mental slavery, freedom from external slavery and even freedom from freedom itself?
This Passover Haggadah is a practical messianic manifesto, carefully crafted by modern-day mystics and inspired mavericks, as a guide and road map for those who wish to break out of the chains of all forms of slavery and long to bathe themselves in the waters of for true freedom.
THE SEARCH AND REMOVAL OF PERSONAL CHAMETZ
What’s the connection between, the search and removal of bread, oats, pasta, whisky, flower, cakes and other grain based products from your house or from you possession before Passover, and the story of Israelites escaping from Egypt over 3,300 years ago?
What has freedom or slavery got to do with wheat, yeast and anything made out of grains?
OK so maybe it’s just a ploy to get us to eat less carbs or wheat? Maybe for some deeply mystical reason God has a yeast intolerance that week?
As we’ll undoubtedly learn the story goes that the Israelites left Egypt so quickly that they didn’t have enough time to let their bread rise so they baked it without it rising, thus having to eat flat bread or “Matzah” when they were escaping.
The mystics claim that Matzah represents humility and effacement, and that “Chametz” that is, anything that has risen, is analogous with Ego or “Yesh” in Hebrew.
The Rebbe Rashab, R. Shalom Dov Bear explains that Ego is course by fundamentally a problem in how we view ourselves and the world, he suggests that the problem with Ego is that people often see themselves as being separate from the Universe and the way to achieve Holiness or enlightenment and to let go of our Ego is to realise our fundamental Oneness and unity with the Universe and beyond.
From this view, Chametz and Matzah represent the Ego (Yesh) and separateness (Hischalkus) versus Selflessness (Bittul) and Oneness (Achdus), respectively.
The search for Chametz parallels the elimination of Ego (the sense of individual separateness) that is a necessary prerequisite for personal and universal redemption.
There is a Kabbalistic tradition which suggests that we search all 10 elements of our personality, that we find that Chametz and nullify them before Passover.
The sages suggest that there are two main ways to get rid of Chametz before Passover; Burning and throwing away, literally casting it to the wind or into the sea. (See Talmud Pesachim 2a?)
Burning: It seems a little extreme and perhaps even slightly masochistic to burn a symbol of your ego. The sages actually warn against burning anything that was once part of you (cite). So “burning” your ego would seem extreme, even dangerously self-destructive if we just take it a face value. But the type of burning that the sages had in mind, were not the sulphur furnaces of Hell, but rather the burning fires of love in your heart.
We can through love, let go of our egos and dissolve our sense of self-centredness. Burning of the Chametz is not destroying our egos but letting go of our self-interest and the complete consuming of ourselves in the experience of Love and Oneness in God.
To the wind: The sages suggest that we simple abandon our Chametz, crumble it and throw it to the wind or into the sea. In that process out self is not totally eliminated or consumed, changed into carbon, but rather made into crumbs, made ownerless and dispersed with some rather dramatic and symbolic gestures.
Selling your Chametz: Simply speaking the Rabbi’s suggest that we let go of the Chametz by selling it to someone not Jewish, therefore releasing ownership of it.
Perhaps what is symbolises is a returning our misplaced form of ‘personality’ to the external culture to which we belong? And saying this ‘ego’ thing is in truth it’s not really me, I am not my Ego, it’s not something that belongs to me, it’s merely an unfortunate result of my cultural misidentity.
Blessed are You, God, our God, Queen/King of the universe who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us concerning the removal of Chametz.
Translation: May it be revealed within me, the consciousness of, that which brings into existence every moment, our divine corner of the universe, master of this concealment, you make us holy, in these acts of our connection, we are by virtue (of our Oneness) compelled to remove our chametz (misplaced sense of separate self).
All leaven and anything leavened that is in my ownership, which I did not see or did not get rid of, or that I am unaware of, are hereby considered naught and ownerless like the dust of the earth.
Translation: All things (of self) are inflated and exaggerated, particularly those things that are (closest to me and) in my domain, and those things about myself that I am blind to, or have chosen not to do anything about, and those things that I’m absolutely unaware of. Let them all go and be dissolved in the Oneness, so that I may be freed from them and that my sense of self might be in it’s correct place, like the dust of the earth
All leaven and anything leavened that is in my possession, which I have neither seen nor removed, and about which I am unaware, shall be considered nullified and ownerless as the dust of the earth.
Translation: All things (of self) are inflated and exaggerated, particularly those things that are (closest to me and) in my domain, and those things about myself that I am blind to, or have chosen not to do anything about, and those things that I’m absolutely unaware of. Let them all go and be dissolved in the Oneness, so that I may be freed from them and that my sense of self might be in it’s correct place, like the dust of the earth.
The Ten Pieces are burnt and the following is said during the burning:
May it be Your will ….
It is the Will of that which transcends even that which actively brings into existence every moment, our divine corner of the universe, and the spirits of our ancestors.
That just as we remove our ego from within ourselves and any reminisce from within our domain, so too all the illusion of the world and the spiritual folly and sense of separateness will disappear from the earth.
Any remaining tendency for imagining that there is anything negative are from now removed from us.
Give us in their place heart of flesh, emotions that are pure so that we may serve in truth. …
