On the Seder Night and Its Commandments

[Speaker A] Rabbi, you’re on mute.

[Speaker B] Okay, let’s begin. Whoever can turn on cameras, I’d appreciate it—I’d be happy to see who I’m talking to. Okay, we’re in—as I wrote to you—because the next topic is a bit long and we won’t finish it in one meeting, I thought I’d push that off until after Passover and spend today dealing a bit with Passover matters. This is the last class; next week we’re already in Passover vacation. I want to talk a little in a more general way about this chapter and about the Seder night. The chapter “Arvei Pesachim” is the last chapter of tractate Pesachim, and it deals with the laws of the Seder night. Meaning, until there we’ve basically been dealing—the tractate deals with the laws of leaven, the laws of matzah, a bit of the festival offerings. There’s quite a lot of sacrificial material here, dealing with sacred offerings in the early chapters, the obligation of destruction, all kinds of things like that. The last chapter is devoted to the laws of the Seder night, the story of the Exodus from Egypt, the four cups, everything we do on the Seder night, eating matzah, and so on. Eating matzah not in the sense—because eating matzah has two aspects. Eating matzah not in the sense of being careful not to eat leaven and only matzah. But as matzah for fulfilling the commandment. Right? That’s not a commandment; that’s only refraining from the prohibition of leaven, so that if we eat something, it should be matzah and not leaven. On the Seder night, on the first night, there is an obligation to eat matzah, not only a prohibition against eating leaven. Say, on the rest of Passover, if we don’t eat bread and we don’t eat matzah either, nothing happened. But on the Seder night we can’t avoid eating matzah, because there’s an obligation to eat matzah, not just a prohibition against eating leaven. That’s why the eighth chapter deals with this. The other chapters also mention matzah and leaven a bit, but only in the context of matzah as something that is not leaven. It’s bread guarded from leavening, but not in the sense of matzah for fulfilling the commandment. For example, baking the matzot with specific intent—so plainly speaking, there is a Maggid Mishneh who says otherwise, but straightforwardly, baking the matzot with specific intent is a requirement in matzah for fulfilling the commandment. Meaning, when I want to fulfill my obligation, the matzah has to be baked with that specific intent. But ordinary matzah that I eat during Passover—if it’s not leaven, then there’s no problem at all. I don’t need to fulfill a commandment; I just need not to eat leaven. The Vilna Gaon talks about this possibility, that maybe there is also an existential commandment to eat matzah on the other days of Passover. Meaning, there’s no obligation—if you didn’t eat, you haven’t neglected that positive commandment, unlike the first night. But if you did eat, then you fulfilled a commandment. That’s what the Vilna Gaon claims; that’s his own view. And then perhaps one could understand that even this matzah of the other days of the festival also needs to be baked with specific intent, to be guarded with specific intent. But in the simple understanding, that’s not so. In any case, this is the last chapter, dealing with the laws of the Seder night. It also deals with the laws of eating matzah, the matzah for fulfilling the commandment of the Seder night, the laws of drinking wine, the laws of reclining, the Exodus from Egypt, Hallel, and all the details of the laws of the Seder night. So I want to look at this a bit from a broader perspective. The first Mishnah opens the chapter with four laws. I’ll share the file here. “On the eve of Passover, close to the afternoon offering time, a person may not eat until it gets dark. Even a poor person in Israel may not eat until he reclines. And one may not give him fewer than four cups of wine, even from the charity plate.” Right, four laws. First law: close to the afternoon, a person is not supposed to eat until darkness falls. Second law: even a poor person in Israel is forbidden to eat until he reclines. That’s the matter of reclining, which for some reason also applies to the poor person. Third law: one does not give fewer than four cups of wine. When it says “they may not give him fewer,” it means the poor person. But really, by way of the poor person it’s being said about everyone. Meaning, everyone has to drink four cups of wine, and even for a poor person they do not reduce it below four cups. And then they add a law that applies only to the poor person: even from the charity plate. Meaning, in the laws of charity it’s not straightforwardly obvious—we don’t give charity to the poor so that they can use it to fulfill commandments. Charity is not intended to enable the poor person to fulfill commandments. Charity is meant to enable him to live. If he wants to fulfill commandments, then from his own money. He has no money? Then he’s under compulsion. But charity is not supposed to finance commandments. Here, with the four cups, the novelty is that they do give him even from the charity plate. Meaning, even if he has no money, they give him from charity for the sake of fulfilling the commandment of the four cups, and we need to understand why. I’ll comment on that later.

Okay, so why do these laws actually appear in the first Mishnah, opening the chapter? So the obvious possibility is that this is some kind of chronological order. Right, “On the eve of Passover, close to the afternoon, a person may not eat until it gets dark.” Meaning, it’s not because this is the most important law—quite the opposite, it’s a marginal law. But it’s a law that deals with how I enter the festival, the first moment of the festival, and therefore chronologically this is the first law brought. When I enter the festival, I’m supposed to enter it hungry, right, having not eaten until now, until it gets dark. There are, however, various explanations among the medieval authorities (Rishonim). Rashi and Rashbam say it’s so that he’ll eat the matzah with appetite. For the enhancement of the commandment of matzah, it’s good for him to come hungry, because then he eats the matzah with appetite. According to Tosafot on 107, as I directed you to Rabbi David, the Ran’s novellae, and Tosafot and others, they say it’s because if he eats beforehand, it may be that he’ll eat the matzah as overeating. Overeating—right, there’s a passage in Yoma—overeating is basically eating on a full, very full stomach. Then that isn’t even called eating at all. And therefore if you come on a full stomach, it may be that you won’t fulfill the obligation of eating matzah, because you ate the matzah as overeating. And overeating is not called eating. So that’s the second explanation of this law of not eating until dark.

After that there’s the second law, that even a poor person in Israel may not eat until he reclines. So first of all, there’s obviously the novelty of reclining here. It isn’t written merely as such—it’s written with regard to a poor person—but basically what we have here first and foremost is the general law of reclining, that everyone has to recline. But that “everyone” means even a poor person. Meaning, they say here together the law of reclining, which extends even to the poor person, but really the primary novelty here is the law of reclining. What is the novelty? Tosafot says here as follows, “Even a poor person in Israel may not eat until he reclines”—I’m reading from here: “One might have thought that the reclining of a poor person is not considered reclining, for he has nothing on which to recline, and this is not the manner of freedom.” Right, this poor person has no furniture, no cushions, no comfortable chairs—so what is he supposed to recline on? On his friend’s knees? That’s not called reclining; that’s not the manner of freedom. So therefore the poor person wouldn’t need to recline. The novelty is that no—the novelty is that the poor person does have to recline. And notice, the novelty is not—this doesn’t deal with the person, the poor man, at all, but with the form of the reclining. Meaning, even reclining that is not on cushions but on his friend’s knees is still called reclining. That’s the novelty of the Mishnah. It’s a novelty in the laws of reclining, not a novelty in the laws concerning the poor. The poor person, who is someone who has no cushions, still has to recline because even such a thing counts as reclining. Okay, that’s one possibility.

A second possibility is to say that the novelty is about the poor person. Meaning, there was an initial assumption that a poor person is in a state such that he doesn’t have to recline, just as there’s a list—you may have seen in the Talmud—a list of all those who don’t need to recline: women, slaves, and various others whose status, or at least relative status, is not that of fully free people; it’s not the highest social standing, and therefore they don’t recline. Right, that includes women in the Talmud’s context; that was the reality then, at least. In any case, you saw the Rema saying that nowadays women are considered important, and therefore their law is like men’s, but in their time it was different. So one can say that the novelty here is not a novelty in the laws of reclining but in the laws concerning the poor. The claim is basically that even poor people have to recline—not that reclining on my friend’s legs counts as reclining. Not a novelty in the laws of reclining, but a novelty in the laws concerning the poor: that the poor person is not included among those exempt from reclining. The poor person also has to recline; as long as he is the master of the house, he has to conduct himself in the manner of freedom. The fact that he is poor is a subjective matter—he should work on himself and understand that he is in fact a free person, and for a moment ignore his objective poverty. That is his role on the Seder night, and therefore the obligation to recline is imposed on him as well. That’s one possibility, a version of the first possibility: either it’s from the laws of reclining, or from the laws concerning the poor, that he too has to recline.

A second interpretation in Tosafot—I’m going back to Tosafot—“And some explain that it refers back to the previous statement,” meaning it refers to the earlier law: “until it gets dark.” What does that mean? “He may not eat until it gets dark, even a poor person in Israel.” That is to say—

[Speaker C] That means—

[Speaker B] That the prohibition against eating until darkness falls applies even to the poor, despite the fact that they’re hungry. If they already have food, let them eat. The explanation is: even a poor person who hasn’t eaten for several days may not eat until dark. And then this has nothing at all to do with the laws of reclining. Right.

[Speaker A] Basically, he connects all four of these laws—you could connect all four of these laws—to the idea that they’re all related in general to the poor person. Because the novelty of this Mishnah is with regard to the poor person. Even a poor person also has to refrain from eating until dark, even a poor person also needs four cups, even a poor person also needs to recline, and even a poor person needs to take even from the charity plate. So I saw that what ties these laws together is simply the novelty here, that even a poor person has to fulfill his obligation in—

[Speaker B] That would perhaps be according to the second interpretation in Tosafot, but even according to that interpretation, the first law—“a person may not eat until it gets dark”—isn’t about the poor person. Only at the end do they tell me that the first law also applies to the poor person. When they stated the first law itself, they weren’t dealing with the poor person, and therefore I don’t think the whole Mishnah is about the poor. The Mishnah comes to say that all four of these laws have to be fulfilled even by a poor person, but it’s not that the novelty is about the poor person. The novelty is about the four laws, except that there’s a further novelty that these four laws also apply to a poor person. Right.

[Speaker A] Yes, but I think that basically the question is why all these laws appear together in this Mishnah.

[Speaker B] Okay, that’s what we’re going to discuss. That’s the question.

[Speaker A] Now I wanted to ask something that wasn’t clear to me from the start. The commandment of eating matzah appears in the Torah for us. From where do we learn the—this is a Torah-level commandment, and therefore we have a discussion about whether one fulfilled the obligation of eating matzah or not, whether he has to repeat it because he has to fulfill a Torah-level commandment. But where do we get the commandment of reclining from? Where does it come from?

[Speaker B] Reclining is rabbinic.

[Speaker A] So reclining is rabbinic, and the four cups? Also rabbinic.

[Speaker B] Also—

[Speaker C] Rabbinic.

[Speaker A] Because in the whole discussion I didn’t really see any reference at all to the fact that this is rabbinic and that is Torah-level, and therefore some distinction ought to be made regarding what one repeats.

[Speaker B] No, it doesn’t matter. Rabbinic too—what do you mean? If you didn’t fulfill your obligation, then you didn’t fulfill your obligation. Rabbinic commandments also have to be fulfilled.

[Speaker A] Right, but if, say—I was thinking that if he goes back, if he ate matzah without reclining and then afterward—and if he did not fulfill his obligation only because of the reclining—if he goes back afterward, then what happens? After all, he’s already full, and now he has to eat the matzah again. And we said that overeating is problematic. So he’s basically repeating something… If he didn’t fulfill matzah, then he would have to go back in order to fulfill matzah. Okay. But this is a Torah-level doubt?

[Speaker C] Because it’s a Torah-level doubt whether he fulfilled it or not?

[Speaker B] What’s the question here? That’s just a question for the Talmud. So what happens with overeating? The assumption is that this is not considered overeating.

[Speaker A] No, because I’m saying that for purposes of the halakhic discussion, it seems to me that it does matter whether it’s Torah-level or rabbinic.

[Speaker B] Of course it matters whether it’s Torah-level or rabbinic, but not for our purposes. For our purposes, both Torah-level and rabbinic are laws that have to be fulfilled.

[Speaker C] No, maybe the question is whether he repeats it or not—that’s the question.

[Speaker B] True enough. Yes.

[Speaker A] For example, because if he repeats it, it will cause him to become intoxicated, so then maybe we give up on a rabbinic commandment.

[Speaker B] No, no, that’s a different discussion—

[Speaker A] That’s already not related at all. But here, if he has to repeat it because he didn’t fulfill the Torah-level obligation of eating matzah because of this, then the consideration of whether he added to the cups or got drunk doesn’t enter. But if it’s rabbinic, I think there is a practical difference here.

[Speaker B] Why doesn’t that consideration enter? Of course it enters. What’s the difference between Torah-level and rabbinic? A Torah-level law and a rabbinic law are both laws that need to be fulfilled. The difference between them lies in the laws of doubt, that’s all. But if you didn’t perform a rabbinic law, you need to go back and do it. What difference does it make whether it’s rabbinic or Torah-level?

[Speaker A] Because if as a result he’ll get drunk, then maybe not for rabbinic. Why? Who says? And if as a result he’s adding to the cups, it will look as though he’s adding to the cups, so maybe not.

[Speaker B] Why? Who says? I don’t know, I think that consideration does come in.

[Speaker A] It might come in.

[Speaker B] No—who says it comes in? You decided that it comes in, that’s what I’m saying. I’m asking. No, I’m saying: maybe you’re right, but that’s not an objection, that’s a question. It may be that it comes in. Fine, that’s another discussion, it doesn’t concern us. In principle, certainly there are laws here that are Torah-level and laws here that are rabbinic. I didn’t make that distinction because at the moment it doesn’t matter for our purposes; I’m not dealing with the laws of doubt. If we were dealing with the laws of doubt, there would be room to discuss it. In principle, both Torah-level and rabbinic laws need to be fulfilled. Matzah is Torah-level, Passover is Torah-level nowadays. Right, maror as well. So this obviously has implications, but for our purposes—I don’t think it’s important to the discussion we’re having here.

The question is of course: what are these four laws doing in the first Mishnah? So the first part is the beginning of the chronological order of the Passover festival, right? How one enters the festival. But after that—reclining and wine and four cups and poor people—why is all that in the first Mishnah? What is it doing there? At least from an editorial logic, I would have expected that this Mishnah would point out the framework of the discussion. Right? That it would basically give me some kind of general map of the discussion. And then in practice perhaps one can say that after they said how to enter the Seder night—to enter it having not eaten until the Seder night—they begin by laying out the framework of the night. And what is the framework of the night? Here we have reclining and four cups. That’s what appears. What about matzah? What about the story of the Exodus from Egypt? There’s a difference between reclining and four cups, even though they are rabbinic, and matzah and the telling of the Exodus story, which are Torah-level. Specifically reclining and four cups, these rabbinic commandments, are the framework running through the whole night. The entire Seder night proceeds along the lines of reclining and four cups. It accompanies the whole night. The story of the Exodus, for example, is one specific part—it’s Maggid. Okay. But reclining also exists during the meal, meaning maybe also when one is telling the story, and also at the meal. In other words, the cups and the reclining actually provide a more general framework, even though they are only rabbinic, while matzah and the story of the Exodus are important details—Torah-level, but details within the laws of the night. And therefore maybe the Mishnah is trying to tell me here specifically the general framework.

And why indeed did the Sages establish reclining and the four cups as a general framework, something that accompanies—

[Speaker C] I think there’s something here—I think specifically because it’s rabbinic, the Sages understood the commandments in the Torah and took them in a more tangible form in order to bring us into a consciousness of freedom. Because with the commandment of matzah, I might relate to it the way people do with “Who brings forth bread from the earth” on the Sabbath, so now you do it over matzah. But here they’re saying: before you begin, change mental gears, and that finds expression in reclining, in wine.

[Speaker B] And basically what happens is this: after all, matzah and the telling of the Exodus story, among other things, are meant to bring us into this whole matter of freedom, which was then and should also be for us now—we’ll talk about that later. But when you look at it simply, halakhically we do not derive law from the reason for the verse. We don’t ask for the reasons of the commandments. We don’t deal with their reasons; we fulfill the commandments according to their halakhic details and definitions. Now the Sages come and say: fine, but you can’t ignore the message that these commandments are meant to convey—the message of freedom. Now, the Torah-level commandments themselves—we don’t derive law from their rationale. So the Sages come and say: okay, we’ll establish a framework here for the Seder night that will express those reasons that we can’t insert into the definitions of the Torah-level commandments. And therefore they establish reclining and the four cups as expressions of the way of freedom. And if you saw—we’ll get to this later—when one drinks wine, “he fulfilled freedom but not wine,” if you remember that Talmudic passage. Basically, the wine is an expression of your being a free person, and of course reclining is an expression of your being a free person. Therefore, in a certain sense, even though reclining and the four cups are rabbinic commandments, there is something more fundamental in them than in the Torah-level commandments. The Torah-level commandments are some details that the Torah obligates us in—important details, Torah-level, indispensable, all true. But the spirit of the story—what is all this really meant to do? What is the purpose of this whole ceremony? The purpose of this whole ceremony is basically to enter into an atmosphere of freedom, which existed then and should also exist for us today. And therefore the Sages say: we will take the rationale of the Torah-level commandments and turn it into Jewish law in its own right—rabbinic laws. And those laws are drinking the wine, four cups throughout the whole Seder night, and reclining throughout the whole Seder night. And why does this accompany the whole Seder night? It accompanies the whole Seder night because this is actually the way we are supposed to carry out the Seder night. It’s not the Seder night itself; it’s the way we are supposed to carry out the Seder night—as free people. As free people.

It reminds me a little—I’ll maybe illustrate with something I may once have discussed with you years ago in one of the previous years. At one point I had an argument, doesn’t matter, with various people about acceptance of commandments in conversion. I argued that there is no conversion without acceptance of commandments; someone who does not accept commandments remains a gentile. Meaning, it doesn’t matter that he was circumcised and immersed and there was a religious court and everything—if he did not accept commandments, he remains a gentile.

[Speaker C] Acceptance of commandments?

[Speaker B] Acceptance of commandments. I won’t get into now what scope, but in principle he is obligated in commandments. What he knows and what he doesn’t know, what he will actually observe afterward and what not—that’s less important. That certainly doesn’t prevent it. In any case, never mind, this is only an example so I won’t get into it too much. So someone said to me: look, but in the Shulchan Arukh, acceptance of commandments doesn’t appear in the laws of conversion, and not in Maimonides either. So I said to him—it wasn’t said, it was written to him—I wrote to him that in the Shulchan Arukh it also doesn’t appear in the laws of acquisitions that one has to intend to acquire. It doesn’t appear—go look. Now, if someone did not intend to acquire but performed an act of acquisition, he did not acquire. But that doesn’t appear in the Shulchan Arukh, and not in Maimonides either. Why? Because when the Shulchan Arukh writes the laws of acquisition, it’s addressing someone who wants to acquire. If someone wants to acquire, then he opens the Shulchan Arukh and checks how one acquires each kind of thing. Someone who doesn’t want to acquire—no problem, then he doesn’t want to, so it’s not for him. The Shulchan Arukh does not need to write that one must intend to acquire, because it doesn’t need to. If you intend to acquire, here’s how you do it. If you don’t intend to acquire, excellent, no problem at all; no one is obligated to intend to acquire. Therefore there is no reason to write that one must intend to acquire. It is obvious that if you didn’t intend to acquire, you didn’t acquire, because that’s what “to acquire” means. Someone who wants to acquire and performs such-and-such actions has acquired. I claim that the same is true in conversion. Meaning, in conversion, the entire process is basically meant to create a procedure that brings you into acceptance of commandments. If you don’t want to accept commandments, then this entire procedure is irrelevant to you. So it’s not that the Shulchan Arukh writes that one needs acceptance of commandments. It doesn’t need to. If you don’t want to, then don’t accept commandments and remain a gentile. But if you want to accept commandments, then you have to do it through circumcision, immersion, and the offering of blood—the procedure of conversion. Therefore the Shulchan Arukh doesn’t need to write that one must accept commandments. Acceptance of commandments is the very essence of conversion. What the Shulchan Arukh writes is the procedure of how to do it in practice.

Now something like that is what I want to say here as well. Basically, the Seder night is about entering an atmosphere of freedom. That’s the point. How do you do that? From the Torah’s point of view: matzah and the story of the Exodus. Fine. So the Torah doesn’t write that one must do it in the manner of freedom. Okay, it doesn’t write it. Obviously, because that’s the whole point; it isn’t one detail among the laws. It’s the whole story. We need to enter an atmosphere of freedom. We do it by means of the Torah-level commandments of matzah and Passover and the telling of the Exodus story. But the Sages saw that we are liable to miss that. And what do they do? They take that same idea, which in fact is Torah-level—it isn’t rabbinic. It is the whole Torah-level idea of Passover. But since it is only an idea, only the rationale of the verse, and does not find expression in the Torah-level laws of Passover, the Sages say: you know what, let’s turn the idea itself into laws, so that it will have practical expression. And then they require us throughout the whole night to recline and throughout the whole night to drink wine. Because that is the practical expression of the spirit of this festival, which is Torah-level, not rabbinic. The need to be in an atmosphere of freedom—that is the Torah-level idea of this festival. But we do not derive law from the rationale of the verse in Torah-level law, and therefore the Sages established it as rabbinic laws. That is basically the point. But clearly the idea here is a Torah idea. Therefore, in a certain sense, one can say that reclining and the four cups are Torah-level. Because the Torah expects us to be free people, and the Sages determined that being free people is done in this way. Okay?

[Speaker C] Maybe it’s similar to how they create mourning for us during the Three Weeks and on Tisha B’Av?

[Speaker B] Right, or on Chol HaMoed, for example, where it is written—

[Speaker C] The Torah handed it over to the Sages.

[Speaker B] Yes, meaning there are situations where the Torah requires us not to do labor, but it does not define what counts as labor, what labor is forbidden on Chol HaMoed. The Sages are the ones who determine which labors fall under the Torah’s prohibition. So is that Torah-level or rabbinic? In the straightforward understanding, it is Torah-level. True, the Sages determined it and could also have determined other labors, but they determined it as the character of Chol HaMoed required of us by Torah law. The Torah simply left it open so that the Sages would pour concrete content into it. The claim is that here too it’s the same thing. The Torah expects us to be free people. The entire Seder night is basically meant for that, maybe all of Passover, but certainly the Seder night. And the commandments themselves—matzah and the Passover offering and the telling of the Exodus story—are commandments like any other halakhic commandment, and we can be careful and meticulous to do them with all the details without even remembering that we are talking about freedom and that there is this whole issue of freedom here. Because we do not derive law from the rationale of the verse, and we can focus on the trees and, because of all the trees, not see the forest—we’ll deal with the trees and won’t notice that we are in a forest, that we are standing in a forest. So the Sages come and establish two rabbinic laws, reclining and the four cups, which will place the forest before our eyes too, so that we won’t drown among the trees. There is some idea here of doing this whole thing in the manner of freedom. And the practical rabbinic expressions that the Sages established for us to express this idea are the four cups and reclining. And therefore it may be that this is the reason these things appear in the Mishnah. The fact that it is rabbinic only strengthens the difficulty even more. Specifically the most marginal laws appear in the Mishnah? No—they are the laws that most express the spirit of the festival. The Sages who established them established them because they understood that this is the Torah-level spirit of the festival. Therefore these are the most fundamental laws, even though they are rabbinic.

Something like this appears, for example, at the beginning of tractate Shabbat. What does the beginning of tractate Shabbat deal with?

[Speaker C] The acts of carrying out on the Sabbath.

[Speaker B] The labor of carrying out, right? We actually happen to be dealing with this this year, right. So that’s the labor of carrying out. Now, regarding the labor of carrying out, we already saw that this is an inferior labor. Why do they open specifically with that? The Maharal, by the way, writes about this tractate. The Maharal says that every tractate opens with the law that is its most distilled expression, of its central idea. Now specifically carrying out, which is an inferior labor, would be the most distilled expression? So I spoke about this, you remember, I spoke about it in the lesson where I discussed the meaning of carrying out, and I showed there that precisely because carrying out is an inferior labor, then there are no trees, you immediately see the forest. Meaning, you see the idea of the Sabbath itself; you don’t get drawn into the details of selecting and this and that, but specifically the labor of carrying out, because as a labor it is an inferior labor, expresses the idea of the holiday better. I think he talks about this at the beginning of the commentary to the beginning of the tractate, if I remember correctly, or maybe commentators there bring him—I can check, I just don’t remember at the moment. So similarly, that’s basically what I want to say here too: that our Mishnah opens with inferior labors, with laws that are seemingly marginal, not the central laws of the holiday, but that’s not true. They are the laws that are not central precisely because they are what express the main idea of the holiday. That’s why they open with them. And the main idea of the holiday is freedom. Now let’s continue. Actually maybe Rav Chaim—well known, Rav Chaim of Brisk—Rav Chaim is famous for saying that engaging in the laws of Passover is also considered part of telling the story of the Exodus from Egypt. We know that in the Haggadah it says: whoever did not say these three things on Passover has not fulfilled his obligation—Passover offering, matzah, and bitter herbs. Passover offering, matzah, and bitter herbs are basically the summary or the framework of the laws of the Seder night. Passover offering, matzah, and bitter herbs—those are basically the foundational laws of the Seder night. Whoever did not say them—of course telling the story of the Exodus is also a Torah-level commandment—but telling the story of the Exodus is what we’re doing. There’s no need to say that whoever did not say the story of the Exodus has not fulfilled his obligation. Passover offering, matzah, and bitter herbs are part of our telling of the Exodus from Egypt. We keep telling about the Exodus, and within that we also make sure to say Passover offering, matzah, and bitter herbs. Why? To say that within the telling of the Exodus you also have to include engagement with the laws of Passover, not just the historical story of what happened in the Exodus from Egypt. And therefore they add here, beyond the story that we’re occupied with the whole time, they add Passover offering, matzah, and bitter herbs, and say that without that you have not fulfilled your obligation. The laws of Passover are part of telling the story of the Exodus. Now the claim is actually—possibly in light of what I said earlier—it may be that this isn’t so, but that it works the other way around. The commandments of the holiday and the telling of the Exodus together create some broader framework; they are specific expressions of a broader framework, which is freedom. The laws of the holiday reflect that, and the telling of the Exodus also reflects that. So the telling of the Exodus is not the infrastructure to which we attach everything else. Freedom is the infrastructure, and the telling of the Exodus is also one detail within that general framework. What is the relationship between telling the Exodus and the commandments, the engagement in the laws? Telling the Exodus is engagement with the past. We build our freedom through, first, sentiment toward the past, the attempt to connect to what was, and implementation. And that’s also what it says in the Haggadah, right? That we and our children’s children would have been enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt. Their exodus from Egypt made it possible for us today to be free people. And therefore this whole framework of freedom is tied at the navel to the axis of time. And the axis of time basically tells me that a liberation that happened then is supposed to be reenacted by today. And how does that happen? In the verse it says: “It is because of this that the Lord acted for me when I went out of Egypt.”

[Speaker C] Had he been there, he would not have been redeemed.

[Speaker B] Yes, but that’s already the homiletical reading brought in the Haggadah. But the verse says: “It is because of this that the Lord acted for me when I went out of Egypt.” So Nachmanides and Rav Kook and Beit HaLevi and many later authorities ask about this: this verse is seemingly phrased backwards. What does “because of this” mean? It means Passover offering, matzah, and bitter herbs, right, which are lying before me. Because of this the Lord acted? The Holy One, blessed be He, brought about the Exodus for me because of this—for the sake of Passover offering, matzah, and bitter herbs? It goes the other way. I eat Passover offering, matzah, and bitter herbs because of what the Holy One, blessed be He, did for me in the Exodus from Egypt, as a remembrance of what He did there. So they all say, each in his own style, that no—it’s straight, not backwards. The Exodus from Egypt was ultimately done for the sake of its consequences. The halakhic consequences are actually the goal; the Exodus is the means. It’s a bit… you can maybe see this in the verses; I spoke about it once. You can see it in the verses in the section “This month shall be for you.” The Torah says that the Holy One, blessed be He, appears to Moses our teacher on the first of Nisan: “This month shall be for you the beginning of months; it shall be for you the first of the months of the year.” Right? In the portion of Bo. Yes, so that’s the first of Nisan. And then what does it say later there? You shall make a Passover offering to the Lord, and this is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your staff in your hand, and your shoes on your feet, and you shall eat it in haste; it is a Passover offering to the Lord. All of this was said on the first of the month.

[Speaker C] The Passover of Egypt? Yes. The revelation…

[Speaker B] Yes, yes. After all, the revelation was on the first of Nisan, on the new moon of Nisan. So why haste? And the matzot? After all, the haste and the matzot were a last-minute mishap, weren’t they? Pharaoh chased after us on the night of the fourteenth there, right, between the fourteenth and the night of the fifteenth; he chased after us, our dough didn’t have time to rise, we left in great haste, and there we were left with matzot. So that was a last-minute mishap. So why, two weeks earlier, does the Holy One, blessed be He, already say to Moses our teacher: and this is how you shall eat it—you shall eat it in haste; it is a Passover offering to the Lord? By the way, “Passover,” the expression, is because the Holy One, blessed be He, passed over the houses of our ancestors. Passover means swiftness. Once again, haste is part of the essence of Passover; it’s not a mishap. It was planned in advance. It’s not that Pharaoh chased after us, boom, the dough didn’t have time to rise, and we found ourselves eating matzah. It works the other way around. The goal was that we would come to eat matzah. And the Holy One, blessed be He, arranged history in such a way that Pharaoh would chase after us and the dough would not have time to rise, and then we would come to eat matzah. So today we look at it as though we eat matzah as a remembrance of what happened there. But the verse teaches us that it goes the other way. “It is because of this that the Lord acted for me when I went out of Egypt.” History is built for the sake of the halakhic consequences that emerge from it. We, as the recipients, of course do it as a remembrance of what happened there. But the Holy One, blessed be He, who brought about what happened there, did it because in His mind, as it were from the outset, He saw that He wanted to direct us toward the halakhic consequences.

[Speaker D] The goal is that we should feel freedom?

[Speaker B] So the expression of our being free people, yes—“slaves of time are slaves of slaves; the servant of God alone is free.” The observance of Jewish law, commitment to Jewish law, is some kind of expression of freedom. And therefore what happens is that the freedom we received in Egypt, or all the events of the Exodus from Egypt, are a means to produce our freedom for the generations, our freedom today. And therefore within the framework of freedom on the Seder night we begin, we deal with the story of the Exodus, which is the past, what happened, but we conclude with “whoever did not say Passover offering, matzah, and bitter herbs has not fulfilled his obligation,” because in the end, in the end, this has to conclude with our freedom today, with the consequences, not with what happened then. And therefore the connection between the past and the present, the axis of time, is of the essence—of the essence of this freedom of Passover, this connection between the freedom that was then and what we do today. We’ll see later the expressions of this idea.

[Speaker C] But I think you can say this about every holiday, really—that it’s not only a remembrance of something that happened. On every holiday some event is reenacted… What? Sorry?

[Speaker B] Right, the ethicists write this, that every holiday somehow brings back the matter that existed at that time; it returns to us anew. Exactly. But I think that on Passover it’s much more prominent; on Passover the verse says it. “It is because of this that the Lord acted for me when I went out of Egypt.” And then what comes out is that maybe what Rav Chaim says is not that—or maybe he doesn’t mean this—but then one can suggest an alternative interpretation, or maybe this is itself exactly what he says, what he meant. Namely, that engaging in the laws of the holiday is not part of the telling of the Exodus, but rather engaging in the laws of the holiday and telling the Exodus together create the framework of freedom which is the holiday. Telling the Exodus is engagement with the past, and engaging in the laws of the holiday is engagement with the present, with the consequences for us in the present. You could say that maybe this is telling the Exodus in a broader sense, this freedom that extends to us, but this connection across the axis of time is of the essence—of the essence of the idea of freedom. Look at Maimonides: when Maimonides, at the beginning of chapter 7, which is the main chapter dealing with these subjects—so I’ll read it to you—look at the context of the laws, the order of the laws. “It is a positive commandment of the Torah to tell of the miracles and wonders that were done for our ancestors in Egypt on the night of the fifteenth of Nisan, as it says, ‘Remember this day on which you went out of Egypt,’ just as it says, ‘Remember the Sabbath day.’ And from where do we know that this is on the night of the fifteenth? The verse says, ‘And you shall tell your son on that day, saying: It is because of this’—at the time when matzah and bitter herbs are lying before you.” You have to tell the story of the Exodus at a time when matzah and bitter herbs are before you. Why? Because telling the Exodus, which deals with the past, is not supposed to trap us in the past; rather, it is supposed to provide a basis for the Passover offering, matzah, and bitter herbs that we do today, for the halakhic expressions that we do today. And therefore this connection between the past and the future is what creates this freedom that we are supposed to produce today. I no longer remember who it is—Hasidic teachers or ethical writers bring this parable about the poor man who used to be a shepherd and had a staff and a satchel, and in the end he became very rich, and he kept in some little room, maybe it’s even a rabbinic midrash, I don’t know.

[Speaker C] About King David—that’s a midrash about King David.

[Speaker B] So he kept in some little room, always on the edge of his palace, the satchel and the staff, so that he would not forget the period of

[Speaker C] his poverty, exactly.

[Speaker B] “It begins in disgrace and ends in praise”—that’s also true for us: not to forget where we came from and to connect that to what we do today. Okay, that’s basically the meaning. And now look: later in that same chapter, law 3, “One must make some change on this night so that the children will see and ask and say: Why is this night different from all other nights?—until he answers them and says to them: thus and thus happened, and thus and thus occurred.” And so—what does he answer them? The story of the past.

[Speaker C] About the past. The story of the past. Why is this night different?

[Speaker B] So he will tell them the story of the Exodus from Egypt. “And how does one make a change?” Why make a change? So that they will ask. “He distributes roasted grain and nuts to them, and removes the table from before them before they eat, and they snatch the matzah from one another”—they do all kinds of unusual things like raising the matzah, uncovering the matzot, covering the matzot—all the things we’re used to doing on Seder night are basically what is called here removing the table. And then one must ask and answer; there is a kind of order so that things will come across better. Now we continue, law 4: “One must begin with disgrace and conclude with praise. How so? He begins and tells that originally our ancestors in the days of Terach and before him were deniers and strayed after vanity and pursued idol worship, and he concludes with the true religion, that the Omnipresent brought us near to Himself and separated us from those who stray and brought us near to His unity”—that is basically our freedom today. “And so too he begins and informs that we were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and all the evil he did to us, and concludes with the miracles and wonders that were done for us and with our freedom. And he expounds ‘An Aramean sought to destroy my father’ until he finishes the entire section, and whoever adds and prolongs the exposition of this section is praiseworthy.” So far it’s only a factual description: what was and what happened until our own day. Law 5: “Whoever did not say these three things on the night of the fifteenth has not fulfilled his obligation.” What is that?

[Speaker C] A law about the present.

[Speaker B] A move from that story of the Exodus and from that whole process—whether it’s the story of the Exodus or not—from that process which concludes with Passover offering, matzah, and bitter herbs. “Passover offering”—because the Omnipresent passed over. Passover reminds me of what happened, but it’s the laws of Passover; “and you shall say: it is a Passover sacrifice to the Lord.” “Bitter herbs”—because the Egyptians embittered the lives of our ancestors in Egypt. “Matzah”—because they were redeemed. “And all these things are what are called Haggadah.” Rav Chaim explains: all these things are called the telling of the Exodus. I think not necessarily. Rather, all these things are called Haggadah, and in the Haggadah there is one part that is the telling of the Exodus, and another part that is engagement with Passover offering, matzah, and bitter herbs, with their implications for us today. And now look at law 6—really called for: “In every generation a person must present himself as if he himself has now gone out from the slavery of Egypt, as it says, ‘And He brought us out from there’—us means me, not my ancestors. And regarding this matter the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded in the Torah, ‘And you shall remember that you were a slave’—that is to say, as if you yourself had been a slave and had gone out to freedom and been redeemed.” Once again the connection between the present and the past. Meaning, it wasn’t my ancestors who left Egypt—I myself left Egypt. Now of course that’s not literally true, so what does it mean? My ancestors left Egypt in order that I today should be a free person. Here he introduces this connection between the past and the present. We’ll talk about “present himself,” “see himself”—because there are really two aspects here. Maimonides’ version is “present himself.” In the Talmud, the common reading is “see himself.” In every generation a person must see himself as if he left Egypt. Maimonides says: present himself as if he himself has now gone out from the slavery of Egypt. To see himself means to speak about himself. To present himself as if he himself left Egypt means to make the past tangible. Okay? It’s a kind of performance. Okay? Once again these two things, these two expressions, are an expression of the present and an expression of the past. Therefore—now look at law 7, one second, just so we finish the line of thought so you can see the chain. What is law 7? Immediately after that: “Therefore.” By the way, the word “therefore” is very important both in the Mishnah and in the Talmud, also at the beginning of Bava Batra; the last time we learned Bava Batra I emphasized that there. “Therefore” is always a word that draws our attention because it connects what has been described until now to what is about to come, right? Because of what I said until now, therefore now I am telling you what follows. Therefore: cause and effect. “Therefore, when a person eats on this night, he must eat and drink while reclining in the manner of freedom. And every single person, whether men or women, is obligated to drink on this night four cups. One may not reduce them, and even a poor person who is supported by charity must not be given fewer than four cups; the measure of each cup is a quarter-log.” What is this law? This is the law of our Mishnah. The collection of all the laws that appear in our Mishnah and Maimonides’ introduction: “therefore.” Meaning, all the laws in our Mishnah are actually the result of what Maimonides described up to this point. Because of what Maimonides described up to this point, therefore there are all the laws of our Mishnah. Why? Because since the whole idea of the holiday of Passover is freedom, and since freedom is created by connecting along the axis of time between what happened there and what we do here—therefore, when a person eats on this night, two things: reclining and wine. Yes, whether men or women, one is obligated to drink on this night four cups of wine. That by the way does not appear in our Mishnah. What it says is that even a poor person may not be given fewer. But Maimonides understands that the novelty is not about the poor person; the novelty is that one must drink four cups, they only say that even a poor person must drink these four cups. Therefore Maimonides writes it explicitly here. So he says, what are the two main novelties? Reclining and four cups. Because those really are the expressions of the spirit of freedom of the holiday. Therefore, after he described everything he described up to this point in Maimonides, therefore the Sages established that one must drink four cups and one must recline in the manner of freedom. And then he says, and even a poor person supported by charity must not have this reduced, because after all this is the whole idea of the holiday of Passover. Obviously a poor person also has to do this. That is just a consequence of what he said until now. It seems to me that this line of thought in Maimonides sheds a different light, or a deeper light, on the placement of this Mishnah at the beginning of the chapter. What exactly is it coming to say? By the way, look in Maimonides in chapter 8, law 2. There is something very interesting here. “He begins and recites the blessing ‘who creates the fruit of the earth,’ and takes a vegetable and dips it in haroset and eats an olive’s bulk, he and all those reclining with him, each and every one.” By the way, chapter 8 is already the description of the Seder night itself with all the details. Chapter 7 is the conceptual infrastructure of the Seder night. Chapter 8 is already the chronological description, what one has to do step by step. “After that they remove the table from before the one reciting the Haggadah alone, and they pour the second cup, and here the son asks.” Now this is the important sentence, pay attention. “And here the son asks, and the one reciting says”—not the son—“and the one reciting says: Why is this night different from all other nights? For on all other nights we do not dip…” I didn’t understand. You say these are the four questions, right? “Why is this night different” isn’t that the four questions? Yes. In Maimonides, no. “And here the son asks.” What does he ask? What’s going on here? What’s happening here? The leader of the Haggadah answers him: “Why is this night different from all other nights? For on all other nights we eat leavened bread and matzah; on this night all of it is matzah.” Basically the son asks, let’s say, “Why is this night different?” and the continuation of each of these four sections is not the continuation of the child’s question—it is the father’s or the Seder leader’s answer. Not the question. The question is not “Why is this night different from all other nights, for on all other nights we eat leavened bread and matzah.” The question is: “Why is this night different from all other nights?” period, or question mark. Answer: “For on all other nights we eat leavened bread and matzah; on this night all of it is matzah.” That is the answer. But that answer doesn’t answer the question. After all, that answer basically tells him that there is a halakhic difference. Is that the answer to your question? What do we do immediately afterward? “We were slaves.” “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt.” We begin the history. And then we go on and on until we come back and say: “Whoever did not say Passover offering, matzah, and bitter herbs has not fulfilled his obligation.” We return to the laws. Meaning, the son asks “Why is this night different?”, the father tells him what is different—these laws are what is different. You’re asking me why? Let’s go backward; I’ll tell you the whole story of the Exodus from Egypt, which concludes with saying Passover offering, matzah, and bitter herbs, which returns them to the father’s answer to the son that he had already given him. He already gave him the answer of the laws. Only after he finishes telling the historical story does he return to the laws, Passover

[Speaker A] matzah and bitter herbs

[Speaker D] which are the outgrowths of the historical story.

[Speaker B] And here the father’s answer ends.

[Speaker C] Maimonides

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] here

[Speaker F] is very

[Speaker B] consistent with the picture he described in chapter 7. Because Maimonides basically says that the answer the father gives is the collection of laws that appear in “Why is this night different?” in the four clauses of “Why is this night different?” We do not dip even once; on this night twice. We eat leavened bread and matzah; on this night all of it is matzah. We eat reclining; on this night we all recline. These are all laws. But the son asked why we do this; he sees the different laws. After all, he asks because of the different laws—but why is that? Why is this night different from all other nights? So what do I tell him? Because there is a halakhic difference. Is that an answer? That was the question—they expect an answer from you. So Maimonides says like this: the father first has to answer him that the goal is the halakhic difference. That is basically what we are supposed to do on this night. You ask me how this happened or where it came from? Come, I’ll tell you. “We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Holy One, blessed be He, took us out from there,” and this happened and that happened, until in the end what did we arrive at? At Passover offering, matzah, and bitter herbs—the very thing I told you at the beginning. But in the end, in the end, “It is because of this that the Lord acted for me when I went out of Egypt.” The main thing here is not the Exodus from Egypt; the main thing here is the Passover offering, matzah, and bitter herbs. That is the more essential answer to the son’s question.

[Speaker C] On Passover one has to fulfill the commandments of the Passover offering, matzah, and bitter herbs—that is the essence of the holiday. The history is how the essence of the holiday unfolds and is implemented specifically in these ways. Okay, so that’s regarding the general framework. That is basically the main point. Now I want to illustrate the ideas a bit. Wait, but in Maimonides the opposite story we mentioned is also expressed—that history unfolds so that we… no, no, I didn’t understand. Earlier we said that basically the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted us to feel the essence of freedom on the holiday, and therefore He rolled history along in such a way that when we understand the history and implement it, it will find expression in us. But in Maimonides you see it the other way around,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe only in the last sentence you said it a little. But why the other way around? Because you can see that he writes, “Therefore,” because of everything that happened, therefore we do these things. But because of what happened? No, not because of what happened. Not because of the description I gave you earlier. That description included both what happened and the Jewish laws. Notice Jewish law 5—that’s the laws. What happened up through Jewish law 6 in Maimonides includes both parts of the Seder night: both the story of the Exodus from Egypt and the Passover offering, matzah, and maror, which are the laws. “Therefore”—because of the transition from the Exodus from Egypt to the laws—we need to do these rabbinic laws of reclining and the four cups, since this really comes to express the idea of freedom. But earlier we said the opposite: we want to express the idea of freedom, therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, set all of history in motion and brought it about in such a way that… No, again. It’s not because of history that we recline and drink wine. That’s not it. The “therefore” here is not that. Because what appears before the “therefore” is not only history; it’s also the laws. “Therefore” means: because there is a connection between the history, which is supposed to lead us to the laws—Passover offering, matzah, and maror—because of this whole picture that I described to you up through Jewish law 6, now you can understand why the Sages established the commandment of reclining and the commandment of the four cups, which, although they are rabbinic laws, actually express the essence of the Seder night. That’s the way the commandments are done; that’s the essence. It’s not the commandments themselves—the commandments themselves already appear in Jewish law 5: the Passover offering, matzah, and maror. In Jewish law 7 he speaks only about the rabbinic laws of reclining and wine. Reclining and wine are a rabbinic addition, but you have to understand that this is because of everything I described beforehand—that’s the “therefore.” And that’s why it is placed in the first Mishnah of the chapter, because there the Mishnah is basically telling me the general idea of everything that is going to come in this chapter. Okay, now here in this Jewish law. Maimonides writes as follows: “Therefore, when a person eats on this night”—up to this point this is the introduction and the general framework; now I want to go into the details a bit, which will show us the application of that framework. Okay? But that’s really the framework I wanted to present. Now, Maimonides writes like this: “Therefore, when a person eats on this night, he must eat and drink while reclining, in the manner of free people.” At this point we are not talking about matzah, not wine, and not anything in particular. When you eat and drink on this night, including during the meal, you need to recline in the manner of freedom. “And when is reclining required? At the time of eating an olive-bulk of matzah and drinking these four cups. As for the rest of his eating and drinking, if he reclined, this is praiseworthy.” And that is also how the Shulchan Arukh rules: that there is a commandment to recline throughout the whole meal, not only for matzah and the four cups. Now, what does that really mean? So the Rabbi of Brisk says—if you saw the Griz there in the first passage, the shorter one—there the Rabbi of Brisk says that you can see from Maimonides that the commandment of reclining is an independent commandment. I’ll share the… “Therefore, when a person eats on this night, he must eat and drink while reclining, in the manner of free people. And when is reclining required? At the time of eating an olive-bulk of matzah and drinking these four cups; as for the rest of his eating and drinking, if he reclined, this is praiseworthy.” End quote. “From these words of Maimonides it is clear that the commandment of reclining is a commandment in its own right: that he should eat and drink on this night while reclining in the manner of free people.” “A commandment in its own right” means: it is not a commandment to recline when he eats matzah and drinks four cups. The commandment is to recline on this night as part of the meal. Okay? But I understand that the Mishnah didn’t write that it’s an independent commandment, because that’s the wording of the Mishnah. But Maimonides—if he really thought it was an independent commandment—first of all, he would have written that. I mean, he could have written it explicitly. It’s strange that Maimonides didn’t write it explicitly. No, Maimonides doesn’t get into conceptual analysis. Maimonides states what the laws are. But from the style in which he presents the laws, we—as later authorities, or his commentators—try to understand what the conceptual background was behind writing these laws this way. Maimonides is not a commentary on the Talmud; Maimonides is a law book. So I can learn from his wording what conceptual way he understood the Talmud, but he doesn’t write little conceptual essays here, neat little pieces of analysis. So in Maimonides’ wording, Maimonides says this: first of all, “he must eat and drink while reclining in the manner of freedom.” So that’s an independent commandment. After that, however, he adds: when did they establish reclining as required? At the time of eating an olive-bulk of matzah and drinking the four cups. So the Rabbi of Brisk says: you see that it is in any case an independent commandment, except that the Sages fixed this commandment at the time of eating the matzah and drinking the four cups. Even though it is an independent commandment, then why did they focus it specifically on eating matzah and drinking the four cups? It’s the whole night! So he says no, in any event it is an independent commandment, and not part of the laws of the commandment of matzah and the four cups. In other words, the way of reclining, the manner in which we recline, is not a detail in the definition of the commandment of four cups and the commandment of eating matzah. It is an independent commandment: that one must recline on this night in order to be free people. It’s just that the Sages focused it in the sense that it is indispensable when eating matzah and drinking the wine. But it is really an independent commandment, and that’s only the timing of when it has to be performed. Do you understand the point? One could have said that eating the matzah and drinking the wine need to be done in a reclining manner. Meaning, the commandment of reclining isn’t really a commandment at all; it is just a detail of how one fulfills the commandment of eating matzah and the commandment of drinking the four cups. That’s all. He says no, but in Maimonides you can see that it’s not so. The commandment of reclining is a commandment in its own right; the Sages merely established when to do it, or when it must be done. Everything else is an enhancement to do it. When must it be done? When one eats the matzah and drinks the wine. But not that it is a detail within the commandment of eating matzah and drinking the wine. It is a focusing of when we are obligated to perform the commandment of reclining—but there is a commandment of reclining. So there’s a practical difference here as to whether one has to repeat it if one did not recline. Now he says: “And as we see, even with the rest of his eating and drinking, if he reclined this is praiseworthy—and this means a case of fulfilling the commandment of reclining.” What does “this is praiseworthy if he reclined” mean? If this were merely… a detail in the commandment of the four cups, or in the commandment of eating matzah, then what good does it do that I recline when I’m just eating the meal, the matzah balls? What does it help that I recline there? In what sense is that praiseworthy? Rather, he says no—that is the commandment of reclining, and therefore, independently of the commandment of eating matzah and drinking wine, if you reclined during the meal, you fulfilled the commandment of reclining. Now, a non-obligatory commandment. When it comes to eating matzah and drinking wine, it is an obligatory commandment—you must recline. But still, the commandment is the commandment of reclining; it is not the commandment of eating matzah and drinking wine, with reclining merely being the mode of fulfillment. Okay? And then he says, “Thus, the act of reclining”—I’m reading here from the top line—“you see again, thus the act of reclining is a commandment in its own right and applies to the rest of his eating and drinking as well, except that he is only obligated in it at the time of eating matzah and drinking the four cups. But in its basic law it has no connection at all to the commandment of eating matzah and drinking the four cups.” And according to this—now here is the implication, the practical difference, this is the conceptual inquiry, and now the practical difference—“According to this, if one ate matzah or drank the four cups without reclining, there is no deficiency whatsoever in the commandment of eating matzah or of the four cups; rather, he simply did not fulfill the commandment of reclining, which is a completely separate commandment.” Okay? Meaning, if he ate matzah or drank the four cups without reclining, then what happened now? Did he nullify the commandment of the four cups and eating matzah, or did he nullify the commandment of reclining? That’s the practical difference. If he nullified the commandment of reclining, then he needs to recline afterward in some other context; maybe he can make up for it. But it won’t help him now to eat matzah and drink wine again, because he already fulfilled his obligation of the commandment of eating matzah and the commandment of drinking wine. He already did that without reclining. What he failed to fulfill was the commandment of reclining, not the commandment of eating matzah and drinking wine. So there is no point in going back afterward and reclining by eating and drinking again. By contrast, if this is a detail that defines the commandment of eating matzah and drinking wine, then if I did not recline, I did not fulfill my obligation of eating matzah and drinking wine. So in that case I certainly have to go back and eat matzah and drink wine while reclining. That’s the practical difference. Now he says, “And behold, in Tosafot on tractate Pesachim 108 they were uncertain whether if one forgot and did not recline, should he go back and drink again?” Does he have to go back and drink or not? Not only does he have to—but does it even help at all if he goes back and drinks? “And in the Rosh there it is explicit that if he ate the olive-bulk of matzah without reclining, he did not fulfill his obligation.” And apparently this points in the opposite direction. Because in the Rosh this is a ruling; in Tosafot it is only a doubt. So one side of Tosafot’s doubt and the ruling of the Rosh go against his inference from Maimonides. What he inferred from Maimonides—that reclining is a commandment in its own right, and therefore according to Maimonides it should follow that if he ate matzah or drank wine without reclining, he neither needs nor can go back and eat matzah and drink wine while reclining. It won’t help him. Why won’t it help him? Because he already fulfilled the commandment of eating matzah and drinking wine, even without reclining. So what is he lacking? The commandment of reclining—not the commandment of eating matzah and drinking wine. So since that is so, what would be the point of eating matzah and drinking wine again? He is not currently fulfilling the commandment of eating matzah and drinking wine, because he already fulfilled it. So what does it help that he does it again and reclines? He still did not recline at the time that he fulfilled the commandment of eating matzah and drinking wine. It doesn’t help. But the Rosh and one side of the doubt in Tosafot, who say that he does have to go back, apparently do not understand like Maimonides, and in their view reclining is a detail of eating matzah and drinking wine. A detail, and maybe even a condition, right? What? Yes, maybe also a condition. An indispensable detail, yes, a detail within eating matzah and drinking wine, and an indispensable one—without it you haven’t fulfilled it. Now notice how this fits with what I said earlier. Maimonides understands that reclining and the four cups are basically an expression of the way of freedom, and therefore Maimonides says: if so, then certainly you need to recline the whole night, not only when eating matzah and drinking wine. When eating matzah and drinking wine, there is an obligation to recline. During the rest of the night, you fulfill a commandment if you recline. If not, okay, then not. But at those moments you do have to recline. So this continues Maimonides’ conception that we saw: the commandment of reclining is the idea of the holiday. It is not a detail among the details of the four cups or eating matzah. On the contrary, the whole point of this holiday is to recline, to be free people. They focused it on the times when you are fulfilling the commandments—namely the four cups and eating matzah—and all the rest, there is a commandment upon you to recline, but if you did not recline, that is not the nullification of a positive commandment; it is a non-obligatory positive commandment. If you did not recline when you drank wine or ate matzah, then you nullified the positive commandment of reclining. But you nullified the positive commandment of reclining, not the positive commandment of eating matzah or drinking wine. I want to ask something for a moment. Women, apparently—let’s say, for example, a woman who is not considered important, okay, she is exempt from reclining. So if we said that if one does not eat while reclining, then there is a problem of not fulfilling the obligation of eating matzah, then how do women fulfill it? That’s a problem, because that is a Torah-level commandment. I’m getting there, I’m getting there. I’ll get to women at the end—here, before you at hand is the trick. I didn’t get to it in the class, but I’ll talk about it. So it seems to me from the outset that it’s not only women; there are also all kinds of others who are exempt. So it simply doesn’t make sense that they would not fulfill the eating of matzah. I’ll explain, I’ll explain in a moment. So that’s what the Rabbi of Brisk argues: that there is basically a dispute here between Maimonides and the Rosh, and Tosafot is in doubt between those two sides. Okay. The truth is, one could argue with that. For example, it could be that even according to Maimonides one would need to go back and eat matzah and drink wine if one did not recline. Why? Because there is the Rivash; in a responsum of the Rivash he brings the view of the Ra’avad—really a very novel view. The Talmud in tractate Kiddushin says that one who betroths a woman through an agent, that is less good. It is preferable to betroth her himself: “the commandment is better fulfilled by oneself than by one’s agent.” And so on—there is a commandment to betroth her himself. The Ra’avad says, as brought by the Rivash in the responsa of the Rivash in two places, that if a person betrothed through an agent, he should go back and betroth the woman again, this time without an agent. But on the face of it, that is a very strange thing. What do you mean he should go back and betroth her? She is already betrothed to him; she is already his wife. Betrothal through an agent works, and if you betrothed her through an agent, then now she is my wife. It just wasn’t the ideal way to do it. Bottom line, now she is my wife. So what sense does it make now to go back and betroth her myself, not through an agent? Can one betroth someone who is already one’s wife? This is called fulfilling the commandment again in a more enhanced manner. But the commandment was already fulfilled—I can’t fulfill it again. Something similar exists in a well-known Rabbi Chaim about the etrog. Yes, Rabbi Chaim asks—it actually already starts with the Rabbi of Beit HaLevi, Rabbi Chaim’s father—but both of them basically ask: you have two etrogim. One etrog is very beautiful, very enhanced, but there is a doubt whether it is kosher. There is something about it that may invalidate it, but it is very beautiful, very enhanced. The second etrog is definitely kosher, but not enhanced. Which one do you take first? You also want to do an enhanced commandment, or at least try to. So apparently you should take the non-enhanced one, because that one is certain—that’s the commandment—and afterward add the enhancement. But that doesn’t work. Because if you took the non-enhanced one, you already fulfilled the commandment. Afterward, if you take the enhanced etrog, you are not performing an enhanced commandment, because the commandment has already been fulfilled. So that is no longer relevant. Therefore they say: first take the enhanced etrog, which is only doubtfully kosher, and since it is doubtfully kosher, afterward take the non-enhanced one just to be safe—so that if the first etrog was not kosher, at least you will have a non-enhanced commandment, but still a commandment. The order has to be reversed. What is the assumption? The assumption is that once you have fulfilled the commandment in a non-enhanced way, there is no significance to fulfilling it again in an enhanced way, because all in all you have already discharged your obligation; it is no longer considered that you are now doing the commandment. Okay, the same thing here too—that is what the Rabbi of Brisk assumes. The grandson, yes: the Beit HaLevi is the father, Rabbi Chaim is the son, and the Griz is the grandson. Divine inspiration, as they say. So the claim of the Rabbi of Brisk is essentially that after, if you already fulfilled the obligation of eating matzah and drinking wine, there is no point in eating matzah and drinking wine again now with reclining because that is more enhanced. You need to enhance your fulfillment of the commandment. But when you eat again, you are not fulfilling a commandment here, because the commandment was already fulfilled. Same idea. But according to the Ra’avad that I mentioned earlier, and the Rivash that I mentioned earlier, that is not certain. They do not say that; they say that if you fulfilled a commandment in a non-enhanced way, it may be that you can go back and fulfill it again in an enhanced way, and then it turns out that the second fulfillment was the fulfillment, not the first. Usually this is explained as follows: the assumption is that every fulfillment of a commandment carries some implied condition. The moment I fulfill it in a non-enhanced way, even if I did not state it explicitly, there is some assumption that I stipulate that if I later manage to fulfill it in an enhanced way, then I do not intend the first one to count as the commandment; rather, my second act will be the commandment. And therefore if I now find an enhanced way to do it, then I do it in the enhanced way, and it turns out that the first fulfillment was not really a commandment-act at all—because in the condition I said that if I do it in an enhanced way, then the second act will be the commandment-act, not the first. And then the second act is the commandment-act, and I did it in an enhanced way. If that is really so, then one could also say according to Maimonides that one can go back and eat the matzah and drink the wine in a way that one reclines, because that is at least an enhancement of the eating and the drinking of the wine. And more than that. But here it is not only a matter of enhancement. Why? Because if we assume that these are two commandments, then the commandment… I said that reclining is the spirit of all the commandments of the holiday, of the whole thing. Therefore it is obvious why there is specifically an idea of reclining with the four cups and the eating of matzah. Even according to Maimonides it is written that there it is indispensable, and during the rest of the night it is not. Since in the end these commandments come to express the spirit of the holiday. It’s just that we do not derive law from the reason for the verse, and therefore the Sages established a rabbinic law to express that. But that rabbinic law is supposed to accompany the fulfillment of the Torah-level commandments, because it is the spirit of those Torah-level commandments. So therefore the more enhanced way to fulfill the Torah-level commandment is if you recline during the Torah-level commandment. But since we do not derive law from the reason for the verse, if you did not recline, you still fulfilled your obligation, because at the end of the day you ate matzah on Passover or something like that. Excuse me, Rabbi, does that mean that even if I didn’t say it and didn’t intend it, one can still rely on an implicit assumption, as it were? An implied condition—that’s what it’s called, an implied condition. That I always have in mind to do it that way, according to the Ra’avad’s view. But that’s the Ra’avad’s view—you said it’s a very novel view. The simple understanding among all the later authorities is not like that. This Ra’avad is very novel. But in other matters could there also be such a situation? It gives an explanation for the view of Rabbi Akiva, “the better matzah than this one,” he married a woman. Yes, that’s not related. In enhancement. No, someone who seeks enhancement eats, I don’t know—like Hillel, if he had something better, he would set it aside. They say that about the holy Sabbath. So what does that have to do with us? But there he saves the nicer things for the Sabbath. No, if someone set something aside for the Sabbath, that is also a kind of determination like that, and afterward he changes it—matzah or something like that. Yes, correct, but there it is not a commandment; it doesn’t work formally. I understand. What is the practical ruling? But wait, I want to go back for a second to what we discussed before. If we assume that according to what is written here in the Or HaChaim these are two commandments that are independent of one another, and not that the commandment I do… Right, and therefore his conclusion is what he concluded. But I claim that his conclusion is not necessary. Because if really, according to what I explained in Maimonides, reclining is basically the spirit of the whole holiday and all its commandments—it is not just some independent commandment. It is an independent commandment, but it actually expresses the reason for the verse behind all the other commandments and the whole holiday. So if so, when the Sages focus me and tell me: when eating the matzah and drinking the wine, you need to do it while reclining—and there it is also indispensable—what are they really telling me? That eating matzah and drinking wine in an enhanced way is only if you also recline, because then you express the spirit of those commandments. True, we do not derive law from the reason for the verse, we do not derive law from the reason for the verse. So therefore, if you did not recline, you fulfilled your obligation of eating matzah and drinking wine; it is only the commandment of reclining that you did not fulfill, because otherwise that would be deriving law from the reason for the verse. But it is still not correct to infer from that what the Rabbi of Brisk inferred—that if so, there is no point in eating matzah again and reclining. There is a point. Because if I eat matzah again and recline, then the eating of the matzah is done in an enhanced way, and according to the Ra’avad it may be that now this will be my true eating of matzah, not the previous one. Meaning this is both a commandment and a condition for another commandment—is there anything else like that? That’s exactly what I explained before: this commandment is a rabbinic commandment. Why? Because on the Torah level we do not derive law from the reason for the verse, but in essence it is the spirit of the Torah-level commandment. Therefore when the Sages establish the obligation to recline, they say: recline when you eat matzah, or recline when you drink the four cups, because that is… or the Passover offering; the four cups are also rabbinic, but when you… They are basically telling you: this is a rabbinic law that comes to express the spirit of what the Torah wants. So it makes sense to say that they mean: recline when you eat the matzah, not just recline for no reason. So true, it is an independent commandment to recline, and if you did not recline while eating the matzah, you still fulfilled your obligation. I accept that definition. I am only claiming that it does not follow from this that if you ate without reclining there is no point in going back and eating again while reclining. That already is not correct. Okay? But is there another situation where one commandment is basically a condition for…? Yes, yes, there are other things like that. I once wrote about it—I’d have to look—there are several, there are several. I wrote about it in my article on root twelve, I think. For example, tekhelet and white. Tekhelet and white—Maimonides counts them as two commandments, unlike the arm-tefillin and the head-tefillin—but they do not prevent one another. And they are two commandments. But clearly if you wear tekhelet and white together, you enhanced the commandment of the white, even though the tekhelet is an independent commandment. And your white is also less enhanced if you did not put on tekhelet. The tekhelet is an independent commandment, but in the end, when you put on tekhelet… this is Maimonides’… no, I think in the enumeration of the commandments Maimonides does not bring a commandment of white and a commandment of tekhelet. They are two separate commandments in their definition, but in essence there is the commandment of tzitzit, and if you put on tekhelet then the commandment of tzitzit is done in a more complete way. But they do not prevent one another. And what if tekhelet is a commandment in its own right? Yes. And what about the arm-tefillin and the head-tefillin? That he writes about in root eleven, Maimonides. What? What about the arm-tefillin and the head-tefillin? Because the arm and the head require one blessing or two. That is a dispute among the medieval authorities, and they really connect it to the question of whether it is two commandments or one commandment. And the arm-tefillin and the head-tefillin also do not prevent one another—that’s the same Mishnah in tractate Menachot. But still Maimonides says it is one commandment. With tzitzit, tekhelet and white—it does not prevent one another and it is two commandments. And with tefillin it is one commandment, and that is what he explains in root eleven, and I also wrote an article about that; it was once published in Hakdamot. Fine, but let’s get back to our topic. So basically this is only a comment on the conclusion that the Rabbi of Brisk derives from Maimonides. And now he says: “And behold, the source of the Rosh’s ruling”—yes, the last paragraph—“And behold, the source of the Rosh’s ruling that if one ate an olive-bulk of matzah without reclining he did not fulfill his obligation, is from what Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said, 108b: ‘The attendant who ate an olive-bulk of matzah while reclining fulfilled his obligation.’” This implies: if reclining, yes; if not reclining, no. You see that one must recline; without reclining one has not fulfilled the obligation. And from here the Rosh proves that reclining is indispensable to the commandment. Meaning that if you do not recline, you have not fulfilled your obligation. So that is a difficulty for Maimonides, right? Because Maimonides claims that reclining does not invalidate the commandment. So how will he explain the Talmud here? So the Rabbi of Brisk says: “Apparently one could have said that Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi is not speaking at all about the commandment of eating matzah, but only about the commandment of reclining. And he says that if he ate an olive-bulk of matzah while reclining, he thereby fulfilled the obligation of reclining—not the obligation of matzah—even though he did not eat his entire meal while reclining. And these are precisely the words of Maimonides, who wrote that regarding the rest of his eating and drinking, if he reclined this is praiseworthy, and if not, it is not required.” What does “it is not required” mean? It is not required to recline. Right? But with matzah, if he did not recline, then he does need to. What does he need to do? Recline—not eat matzah. He needs to recline, not eat matzah, because he did not fulfill the obligation of reclining, not because he did not fulfill the obligation of eating matzah. Okay? That is what he says, and therefore he infers from Maimonides that when Maimonides reads Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi’s words, where it says “he did not fulfill,” the meaning is that he did not fulfill the obligation of reclining, not that he did not fulfill the obligation of eating matzah. Okay? Then the Talmud here is not difficult for Maimonides. Now, okay, so that is about the dispute of Maimonides and the Rosh and Tosafot—which, again, I continue to say, follows as a continuation of that same introduction I gave in Maimonides, that the commandment of reclining is basically the spirit of this whole holiday. Next, I referred you to the Talmud there on 108b, where it says: “If one drank them undiluted, he fulfilled his obligation.” I’m not going into the details of that now because we need to move on. “If one drank them undiluted, he fulfilled his obligation. Rava said: he fulfilled the obligation of wine, but he did not fulfill the obligation of freedom.” What is that? Now here already—what does it mean, he fulfilled the obligation of wine but not the obligation of freedom? Wine, because he fulfilled the commandment of drinking, but to drink undiluted wine is not the way of free people. Correct. In other words, there are really two aspects here. That is exactly what I’ve been saying the whole time. What do I mean? The commandment of drinking wine is a commandment. Okay? Like eating matzah is a commandment, like eating the Passover offering is a commandment. But there is an idea behind all these commandments—to do it in a manner of freedom. The Talmud says that if he drinks the wine undiluted, meaning not mixed with water, then that counts as drinking wine; he fulfilled the formal commandment. But free people do not drink wine like that, and therefore he did not fulfill the spirit of the matter. So he fulfilled the obligation of wine, but he did not fulfill the obligation of freedom. Here it is almost stated explicitly what we said. “If one drank them all at once”—this, by the way, is talking about… yes, “if one drank them all at once, Rava said: he fulfilled the obligation of wine, but he did not fulfill the obligation of the four cups.” Maimonides and the Rif have the text: “he fulfilled the obligation of freedom, but he did not fulfill the obligation of the four cups.” And again, what do we see here? Let’s leave aside all the intricate analyses for the moment. Again we see these two aspects: wine and freedom. A free person drinks his wine diluted and drinks his wine slowly. Okay? Therefore—or maybe the reverse? Sorry, sorry—but he drinks his wine diluted, though he does not have to drink it slowly. The formal law of the four cups he did not fulfill—why not? Because the Sages wanted the four cups spread out over the whole Seder night. Because we said that the four cups and reclining run through the whole Seder night, because that is what gives it the character of freedom. If you drink them all at once, then you drank the wine in a manner of freedom, but you did not carry out the Seder night itself in a manner of freedom. So therefore he fulfilled the freedom aspect of the wine, but the four cups—to divide it into four cups over the course of the Seder night—that he did not do. And therefore I think that at least according to the version of Maimonides and the Rif—but also according to the other version—in Rava’s first law, it appears clearly that there are really two aspects here. One aspect is the formal commandment, and the second aspect is the commandment to do it in a way that expresses freedom. And we see here the separation—that there can be situations in which I perform the formal commandment but not in a manner of freedom, so I fulfilled the commandment but did not do the spirit of the matter, so it was not done in an enhanced way. And the claim is that spreading the wine over the course of the Seder night, and reclining—or drinking diluted wine, which is the way of free people, throughout the whole Seder and doing it while reclining—all of that, beyond the formal commandments themselves, is aimed at coloring everything we do on this holiday with this color of freedom. These are the halakhic expressions of the conceptual introduction I gave at the beginning. Now look. What is the commandment of drinking wine? What? The four cups. No, that it is not the four cups. No, it is the four cups. No, but we said that he fulfilled the obligation of wine but did not fulfill the obligation of the four cups, so what is the commandment of drinking wine? The commandment of the four cups contains two components. One component is to drink wine; the second component is to do it in the form of four separate cups. When you drank the wine all at once, you did the first component of the commandment—you drank wine—but you did not do the second component, namely that they wanted it divided into four cups. So in practice it is three components? Also wine, also four cups, and also that he should drink while reclining? And also that it be diluted. That it be diluted and while reclining. Correct—four components. Diluted, while reclining, wine, that it be diluted, that it be while reclining, and that it be split into four cups. If any one of those is not fulfilled, that is a different law. If you did not recline, that is apparently the dispute of Maimonides and the Rosh and Tosafot, right? That is if the element of reclining is missing. If the element that the wine be diluted is missing, then “he fulfilled the obligation of wine, but not the obligation of freedom.” If the element of dividing it into four cups is missing, then “he fulfilled the obligation of freedom, but not the obligation of the four cups.” And so on. Meaning, all the discussions we’ve had until now are exactly these combinations between the components of freedom and the formal components—which are the commandments of the Seder night—between the conceptual dimension and the formal dimension. And the question of when it is indispensable and when it is not indispensable is really all just expressions of that discussion. So I’m saying—earlier we said that the four cups are themselves the conceptual dimension, right? Right, their spread over the course of the Seder night comes to say that I want, by means of… after all, a free person drinks diluted wine while reclining. That is what he does. Okay? But I want you to be a free person throughout the entire Seder night, so I divided it into four cups. If you drank all four cups at once, then I am a free person because I drank diluted wine while reclining. True, I did not spread it out—I did not spread the freedom over the whole Seder night—so I did not fulfill the obligation of the four cups, but I did fulfill the obligation of freedom. But this is kind of doubled, right? Because we’re saying that all the rabbinic commandments—the commandment of the four cups—is itself the expression of freedom. Yes, but after the Sages established that one must drink four cups, there is also now a formal commandment to drink four cups. The idea was to express your being a free person, but now first of all you have a commandment to drink four cups, and that you must first fulfill formally. But it is proper to do it in the manner of a free person, and maybe according to some views that is even indispensable. But the second component is important; it is the reason for the verse, as it were, behind this rabbinic law. What the Talmud is saying is that in the commandment of wine, although it is rabbinic, there is also a formal dimension. As with Torah-level commandments: first of all the Sages established to drink four cups—you need to drink four cups. If you ask me why they established it, what they wanted to achieve—clearly they wanted thereby to express a manner of freedom and to spread it over the course of the Seder night, and therefore there is also an idea of doing it that way. But first of all there is the basic thing. There is the rabbinic law—carry it out. That is the formal aspect. The ideas, the conceptual dimension that you want to achieve—those are bonuses. Some of them are indispensable, sometimes they are not indispensable, but they are additional bonuses. Yes, there is a novelty here beyond what I said: that the four cups are also, first of all, a formal halakhic commandment beyond what they are meant to achieve. Okay, now I really need to move on because I’m not managing to get to what I wanted. The Rema writes as follows: “A woman does not need reclining.” This is in the Shulchan Arukh. “Unless she is important.” If a woman has some serious status, then she already required reclining even in their time. Gloss of the Rema: “And all our women are called important.” The women in our times all have the status of important women; this is no longer what it used to be. Notice—we’re talking about the Mordechai. The Mordechai is already the thirteenth century, okay? The thirteenth century, something like that. Meaning, the process of women’s liberation did not begin today. Already then the Mordechai argues that in his time all women are important, unlike what was in the Talmud eight hundred or nine hundred years earlier. Okay? “However, they did not adopt the practice of reclining, because they relied on the words of the Ra’avya, who wrote that nowadays one does not recline.” This is a puzzling thing. The view of the Ra’avya, one of the early Ashkenazic authorities, is that nowadays nobody reclines at all, irrespective of women. One need not recline. Why? Because in Roman times reclining was the supreme expression of being a free person. Today, even when we are the richest and freest people imaginable, we do not eat and drink while reclining. We sit at tables and chairs. Therefore today the practice of reclining does not express freedom. And since that is so, the Ra’avya says that today one need not recline. Now the Rema comes and connects these two statements of the Mordechai and the Ra’avya together in a way that is not understandable. He says this: in our times all women are called important; he rules like the Mordechai. Therefore what? Women are like men; they need to recline. Now he says yes, but they did not adopt the practice of reclining because they relied on the Ra’avya. But the Ra’avya says that men also do not need to recline. Because today reclining is not relevant; the reclining of today is not a manner of freedom. So either way—if you think, if you rule like the Mordechai that women are like men, then if reclining is required, both women and men should recline. If you rule like the Ra’avya that reclining is not required, then neither women nor men need to recline. How do you make this combination where you take the Ra’avya, who stated a general rule about reclining, and apply it only to women? If you accept that women are like men, then according to the Ra’avya you should exempt everyone from reclining. How is this combination formed, applying it only to women and not to men? So I saw various explanations, not very convincing at all—some kind of double… Basically the claim is that the Rema is uncertain. The Mordechai wrote this, but there are other views, so I am uncertain. So with regard to women it becomes a double doubt: a doubt whether they are obligated to recline or not, and even if they are obligated to recline, a doubt whether nowadays reclining is applicable at all. Therefore as for women, they are exempt. As for men, there is only one doubt. Because men perhaps need to recline and perhaps not, so out of doubt they need to be stringent—against the Ra’avya. But first of all, reclining is a rabbinic law. So why should one be stringent out of doubt? Second, there is no hint in the Rema that he is bringing this as a matter of doubts. Maybe the Ra’avya he brings as a doubt. But regarding women he presents it as a clear law, that women in our time are important. So even if the Ra’avya is a doubt, then decide what your rules about doubts are, but apply it equally to women and men. After all, you say they are the same. I want to suggest the following—and I won’t read it inside now—I referred you to the stencil of Rabbi Chaim, where he brings there from his son, yes? the Brisker Rav, the Griz. And he brings the Shulchan Arukh HaRav and the Vilna Gaon. The Shulchan Arukh HaRav writes that one should increase beautiful vessels at the meal and so on, and the Griz writes—meaning, he says that this implies that this is not merely as a remembrance, but that this is a manner of freedom stated in the commandment of reclining. Meaning, the commandment of reclining is to express my own being a free person; it is not merely a memorial to what was then. Okay? But on the other hand, one can understand that it is only a remembrance of what was there. Why? Because nowadays—that is what the Ra’avya says—because nowadays reclining is not our way; it is not an expression of being a free person nowadays. Not because this is a way of freedom, but because it is a remembrance of freedom. A remembrance of what was then. Do you see again the connection between past and present? And what I really need to do now is either do what reminds me of what was then, or alternatively, I understand the commandment of reclining not as part of a remembrance of what was then, but as my own conduct as a free person today. To that the Ra’avya says: yes, but today that no longer exists. Now look at something nice. If that is really so, I want to claim that there are two laws here. Reclining comes both to remember the past and to express the way of freedom today, my way of freedom today. Now it works like this. The Ra’avya says that today this is not a manner of reclining, so from the standpoint of a manner of freedom—not remembrance of freedom—there is no reason to recline today. But there is still the remembrance of what was then. “To see himself and to present himself,” yes? The relation to the present self and the relation to what was. So reclining has two aspects. But today, when it no longer expresses freedom, then from the standpoint of my own conduct as a free person, I do not need to recline. I do need to recline, though, in order—as part of telling the story of the Exodus from Egypt—to tell them that our ancestors were free people, and to express that or demonstrate that by reclining. Okay? Now, I want to claim there is a difference between the role of the Seder leader and the role of the participants reclining at the table. And if the participants include women, then women too. What is the difference? The Seder leader—and this answers your question, Malkiyani, who asked earlier, or Idit, I no longer remember—the Seder leader’s role is to teach: “And you shall tell your son on that day.” What is the role of the son sitting around the table? To listen. Right? So the Seder leader’s role is to tell what happened then, to tell the story of the Exodus from Egypt. But being a free person is something everyone has to do, not only the Seder leader, right? Because all of us are free people. The story is part of “and you shall tell your son”; it is like Torah study. I am supposed to teach my son. Okay? So I am the teacher, not my son. My son sits and listens. But my conduct as a free person—that also obligates the son. All of us have to conduct ourselves like free people. But that doesn’t exist today. Wait, exactly. Now I want to claim this: the woman, so long as she is not the Seder leader—and I have proofs for this, that if she leads the Seder then her law is like that of a man—but if she is not the Seder leader, let’s say the husband leads the Seder and the wife sits around the table, then the husband is the Seder leader. And he is obligated to recline by two laws: to show himself as a free person and to tell what happened then. The Ra’avya says: yes, but today that is not relevant. Right, but the man also has to show what happened then, so the man has to recline. But the woman is an important woman, and therefore in principle she has the same law as the man, and from the standpoint of conducting herself as a free person she too should conduct herself as a free person like the man. But to that the Ra’avya says: but today that law no longer exists, so the woman does not need to recline. And as for telling what happened then—that is the role of the Seder leader, not hers. So from that side too she does not need to recline. Therefore this is what women relied upon in not reclining. This is not a matter of doubts. The question is about the other men participating in the Seder. Exactly, there are several implications. If I am right, then the other men do not need to recline; only the Seder leader is obligated to recline. By the way, I have seen in quite a few places that that is in fact what people do, even without noticing it. The Seder leader is more careful to recline, while the others either do or do not. I think there is a basis for that if I explain the Rema this way. I think it’s practical reasons. A reverse practical implication is what happens when the woman leads the Seder—then she too has to recline even today. That’s the claim. Now, Chani—or I don’t remember who asked the question before—she asked: then wait, how does the poor person express his freedom if he does not recline? Okay? The poor person is considered—or not the poor person, but it doesn’t matter, anyone who is exempt from reclining—he expresses his freedom through the Seder leader, because he is subordinate to him. Therefore the Seder leader functions here as someone who conveys this to others, and in that sense he also discharged their obligation by doing so. Therefore even one who is exempt is exempt because he is secondary to the Seder leader. But the poor person—that’s what I explained earlier—the poor person is not exempt because he is secondary to someone. He himself is the Seder leader, so to whom is he secondary? He is exempt because he is not of the category able to recline? That’s why the Talmud says: “Even the poorest person in Israel should eat while reclining,” because he does not have the exemption of being secondary; he is not secondary to anyone. No one else will do the work of freedom in his place, so he is not exempt. It is not the same as a slave or a servant or a woman in their times or something like that. There the exemption is because you are secondary to the Seder leader. So this is something else. Okay? Fine, there are more implications of this, but I won’t manage to get to them now, so you can read them in the summary if you want. I think they just made every effort to exempt women, for all kinds of reasons, because practically it just was not relevant for them—the babies in their arms, the whole thing just didn’t work out. You can accept all that, but it’s irrelevant. Because through the halakhic lens—true, you can make whatever efforts you want—but if you have no justification, then she is obligated. What motivated you to exempt her—that can be what you said, maybe—but there still has to be a halakhic mechanism that grounds it legally. So I believe that really was the case, but… So I have here another practical difference between Maimonides and the Rosh. If the commandment is reclining, maybe it is a positive commandment dependent on time, and a woman is exempt. You understand? Do you hear? But it’s rabbinic. Right. No, but the point about whether the main thing is reclining or… A positive time-bound commandment on the rabbinic level—that is a dispute between Rashi and Tosafot. Yes. But in the Passover commandment a woman is obligated, because she is included in the prohibition of leaven, so also in matzah. Yes, I know. No, but the four cups are not because she is included in leaven. “For they too were part of that miracle.” Yes. I wanted to say something else—that I was really struck by the fact that they sit and talk about freedom. After all, they all wrote this in the thirteenth century, and in fact they were all in exile and under decrees and under who knows what. Today it is comfortable for us to think about freedom—our home in the Land of Israel, I don’t know—but how did they write about it and sit with it like that? That is the subject of another class I gave a few years ago—I don’t know if you were there—where I spoke about the difference between liberty and freedom. Liberty is when there are no restrictions on you. Being free is precisely when there are restrictions on you; the question is what you do with them. Or that you took them upon yourself. Yes, that too definitely… Precisely in exile it seems to me that a person yearns more for freedom. Yearns, yes, yearns, yes—but you need to be… to be free now, not just to yearn for freedom. By the way, part of being free is if you yearn for freedom; that itself expresses your being free. Yes, yes. Spartacus, who led the slave revolt, was a free person even before the revolt happened. He was the one who dreamed of freedom and acted to realize it. He was a true free person. After it began—after the revolt succeeded, let’s say, on the assumption that the revolt… The revolt did not succeed. Assuming that after the revolt had succeeded, then everyone would have become liberated. But he was the free person before the revolt. Like, say, Anatoly Sharansky, who said to his judge… Yes, exactly. Ah, okay. Fine, have a kosher and happy holiday. Thank you very much, happy holiday. Happy and kosher. Thank you very much, happy holiday. Goodbye. Thank you, happy holiday.