Before you ask what the idea of the first Passover is, say what the idea of the second Passover is.

Come on now,
what does the Sabbatical year have to do with Mount Sinai?

With God’s help, 5 Elul 5778

The Torah gives two reasons for the Passover offering:

(a) Because the Lord passed over the children of Israel when He struck Egypt, as it is written: “And you shall say: It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt when He struck Egypt and saved our houses” (Exodus 12:27).

(b) As a remembrance of the Exodus from Egypt, which began on that night (when the Egyptians urged the children of Israel to leave), as it is written: “Observe the month of spring, and perform the Passover to the Lord your God, for in the month of spring the Lord your God brought you out of Egypt by night” (Deuteronomy 16:1).

The Passover offering is, therefore, a remembrance of the Holy One’s special relationship to His people, that He saved them from the fate of the Egyptians and brought them out of their land to be His treasured people.

Best regards,
S. Z. Levinger

Why did God command, “Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying: On the tenth day of this month…” and all its laws and details? What’s the point?
The usual explanations aren’t serious or well-grounded, and they aren’t satisfying.
I just wanted to know whether the Rabbi knows a serious explanation for the matter.

What appears there is not the detailed law of the Passover offering but the law of the Egypt Passover. Did you mean the first Passover as opposed to the Passover of later generations (and not as opposed to the second Passover)?
The question seems strange, because Jewish law is full of things whose point is hard to understand, especially the details (as Maimonides already wrote in the Guide that many of them are arbitrary). So why ask specifically about Passover? Did you understand the prohibition of pork? Or forbidden fat, and creeping creatures, and all the details of offering sacrifices, and so on and so on? Especially since here there is actually an obvious explanation for many of the details. “Your loins girded” means being ready for the journey (though it should be noted that this was said two weeks before Pharaoh decided to pursue them). Blood on the lintel was to mark the house for the angel or for the Holy One. All the whole commotion was to provoke the Egyptians, for slaughtering a lamb was an abomination to them. Matzah and bitter herbs were to remember the bitter labor and the freedom symbolized by matzah, and so on.
And in addition, since this was the beginning of the formation of the people and of our obligation to the commandments, maybe there is in general value in multiplying details in order to get used to acting carefully in details with halakhic precision.
It seems odd to me that דווקא here, where the details are more understandable, you chose to ask, when before you lies the whole vast realm of Jewish law whose details are usually not understandable.

With God’s help, 5 Elul 5778

The third reason emerges from the words of the men who were impure: “Why should we be diminished and not offer the Lord’s offering at its appointed time among the children of Israel?” The people of Israel are formed into a nation through public worship of God, when the whole people offers the Passover sacrifice at the same time.

From now on the children of Israel would internalize that they are not a rabble of individuals, but a nation serving its God together, within a uniform and exact framework.

Best regards,
S. Z. Levinger

Later Israel would be commanded to offer every day a communal offering expressing unity, namely the continual offering, which is also a single lamb — a minimal sacrifice expressing the fact that the Creator has no need of human gifts, and the sacrifice is meant for the person, so that he internalize that the unity of the nation is centered around serving God.

But in the Passover offering there is also expression for the cohesion of the household or group. The national framework is divided into small cells, which indeed all act together and offer the same sacrifice at the same time, yet national cohesion does not erase the uniqueness of the home and the family.

On the contrary, the primary cohesion of the family household is the guarantee of the cohesion of the national home. Atoms join into molecules, molecules into cells, cells into organs, and together a unified organism is created.

Indeed, by the first Passover offering I meant the Egypt Passover. To me that seemed obvious, and now I see that for others the word “first” is immediately associated with first/second Passover — my mistake. But on the substance, the answer is not satisfying at all:
1. According to the plain meaning, the Egypt Passover is not part of the service of God; the point is emphasized that Moses does not command it in God’s name.
2. There is no reason to think that the Egypt Passover was some kind of commandment performed without a reason. Instructions that God gives Moses are not without reason. Quite the opposite: these are instructions with the best possible reason.
3. The blood on the lintel is no reason at all. Not from God’s side, since He obviously doesn’t need a sign. And not from the side of the form of the command either; that is, if blood on the lintel were the whole point, then it would have been enough to slaughter the lamb for the blood, and there would have been no need for all the other details — taking it from the tenth, taking hyssop, and so on.
4. Provoking the Egyptians is certainly not the reason, because then they would not have done this on the night of the plague of the firstborn and on the eve of fleeing Egypt. And this point does not appear at all as a reason, not even by hint, in this whole matter.
5. The idea of getting used to keeping commandments is exactly the kind of answer that has no basis in the text, and anyway one could say it about every command they were given.
6. Even the Passover of later generations is not a remembrance of the Egypt Passover but a remembrance of the very fact that God passed over. That is what the text says. It’s just that one must keep “this service.” Which strengthens the fact that there was special importance in the details of the service itself. And not for nothing.
It seems that we are the children who are supposed to ask in wonder.

With God’s help, 5 Elul 5778

In the Egypt Passover, the people of Israel appear for the first time not as a crowd of individuals but as a consolidated community, as God commands: “And the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight.”

And this is not a momentary spontaneous union, but an organization prepared two weeks in advance, in which tens of thousands of families are commanded, each in its own home, to perform a complex act full of details and precision, constituting an open challenge to the idolatrous faith of the Egyptians, and expressing a priori faith in the words of the prophet who says that by performing this act properly, the children of Israel will be saved from the plague that will strike Egypt that night, and afterward they will leave Egypt.

Without electronic communication and “social networks,” Moses gathers all the elders of Israel on the tenth of the month, and they transmit the command to the whole people that very day, and every single person carries it out and takes a lamb that will be kept for four days until the day of the sacrifice.

The people understand that a national leadership is arising, and they respond with the gesture of honor customary toward royalty: “And the people bowed the head and prostrated themselves. And the children of Israel went and did as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did” (Exodus 12:27–28).

Best regards,
S. Z. Levinger

I think there is a methodological problem here. I suggested explanations, and you reject them because they are not written there. I didn’t claim they are written there. What I claimed is that these are plausible explanations. The question of why the Torah does not write the explanations has nothing to do with me. Any explanation you propose is not written there. You asked what the explanation is, not why the Torah doesn’t write explanations.
As for your points themselves:
1. Anything done by force of God’s command is part of the service of God. I don’t know why it matters whether it says Moses commanded in God’s name or not.
2. I don’t understand where you got that from. If He gives instructions with a reason, then here too it is with a reason. He just usually doesn’t write it, and here too He doesn’t.
3. The blood on the lintel is meant for distinction. In this case it is even explicitly written. You asked why the Holy One needs this. My answer is that it is for us (so that we live with awareness that He passes over our houses).
4. Indeed. It appears in the words of the Sages. It is also written in Genesis that every shepherd is an abomination to the Egyptians. But as I said, explanations do not need to be written in the Torah.
5. Indeed. It isn’t written, just as no explanation is written.
6. It isn’t written. So what? It is a remembrance of the Exodus, of which the Egypt Passover was one part.

That’s why I asked about knowledge, not explanation. Knowledge includes that the thing had to be this way and not otherwise. Explanations — you can invent them for anything; even if they had been commanded to stand on their heads, the explainers and reconcilers and preachers and clever talkers and imaginative pamphleteers would explain it and breathe a sigh of relief along with their audience.
And even if there had been no command of the Passover offering at all, the minds of the explainers would not have had any difficulty with that, and they would not have thought that anything was missing here.
The methodology of explanations and reconciliations is itself the problematic one, and it runs contrary to truth. Explanations can be invented for anything, given that a person is sufficiently clever and imaginative.
Just to remind you, the Passover Seder night is founded on asking causal questions — “because of what?”
And to sum up, as I understand it, the answer is the same as what I know from the sources, and basically it is: “I don’t know, but I can invent for you some plausible notions that will satisfy you (assuming your mind isn’t searching for the truth),” and I didn’t miss some important thing in my limited knowledge of the sources. 🙂

Indeed you didn’t miss anything, but the question is very strange to me from the outset. The verses are right in front of you. Where did you think I would have knowledge that is not found in the verses themselves? Did you suppose I have some hidden scroll from the Holy One with information beyond what is in the verses? What information could there be here beyond attempts to explain the verses?
Beyond that, are there explicit explanations of commandments in the verses themselves anywhere else in the Torah, that you ask me specifically about the Egypt Passover? I have to say this discussion seems bizarre to me.

🙂
There is nothing strange here. I hoped that perhaps the Rabbi had thought about the matter and arrived at a solution.
The solution should have to arise from the verses, and the verses arise from it, in a necessary and sufficient way. (That is why one should not expect the Torah to write it.)

With God’s help, Friday eve, “And you shall arise and go up,” 5778

The emphasis on the use of hyssop to sprinkle the blood on the lintel and the doorposts would be understood by the children of Israel only in the future, when they would be commanded regarding the purification of the leper, and there they would see the dipping of the living bird before it is sent away, with hyssop and the blood of the slaughtered bird. Dipping the hyssop in blood is an act of purification, as David says in Psalm 51: “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean,” and also of being sent free.

Now Israel understands retroactively that the dipping of the hyssop in blood signified their purification from the impurity of Egypt, and the sprinkling of the blood on the lintel and the doorposts of the entrance was meant not only to mark for the destroyer not to enter, but also to mark for the people that here their going out began — out through the doorway and into freedom.

These are deep divine processes, and they are not deciphered in their fullness “here and now”; rather, the more one thinks and analyzes, the more new depths are found — the point connects to the line, the line to space, and space and mind to height and depth!

With Sabbath peace,
S. Z. Levinger

It seems that Pharaoh took the preparations of the children of Israel to offer the Lord’s sacrifice in the land as surrender, as accepting his wise advice: “Go, sacrifice to your God in the land” (Exodus 8:21).

Pharaoh feels that the firm stance he took during the visit of Moses and Aaron paid off. Moses is “backing down,” giving up the plan to serve God in the wilderness, and he and his people accept submissively the restriction Pharaoh imposed on them: the children of Israel will sacrifice to their God, as he commanded, in the land.

Pharaoh’s understanding was also aided by the fact that in Moses’ speech to “all the elders of Israel” on the tenth of the month (which surely someone passed on to the “royal intelligence service” 🙂 ), the instruction from the first of the month was omitted: “And thus shall you eat it: your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand.” And Pharaoh understands that Moses is gradually backing down; he is no longer fully set on an immediate departure.

And Pharaoh goes to sleep calm, just as Moses himself is not sure there will be any departure from Egypt at all — so there is no need to get excited by his threats that a plague will come upon Egypt. And the greater his calm at the beginning of the night, the greater the shock when he rises at midnight…

Best regards,
S. Z. Levinger

S. Z. Levinger, you write things that are nice — some more grounded, some less so (depending on how many cups I drank before hearing them).
Some of them may perhaps be part of the puzzle, but they certainly do not answer the central question: “What’s the point?”

And to rephrase Copenhagen’s point: “What does the Sabbatical year have to do with Mount Sinai, and what does the Egypt Passover have to do with the Exodus from Egypt?”
Homiletics will not be warmly received.

With God’s help, 9 Elul 5778

To “Point” — greetings,

At the beginning of the portion of Va’era, God explains that liberation and the Exodus from Egypt are not only “freedom from…” but freedom for…. The purpose of rescue from the burdens of Egypt is “And I will take you to Me as a people, and I will be your God.”

Therefore there had to be an “Egypt Passover” in which the people serve God for the first time as a nation. Here it says for the first time, “And the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall slaughter it.” Here for the first time tens of thousands of families received one instruction, to carry out one complex and detailed action, at one time, in tens of thousands of separate homes.

They received the instruction and carried it out, thereby proving their maturity to be a nation serving God as one nation, with one Torah and one law. A nation that will together receive the Torah at Sinai and together enter the Land of Israel in order to establish there “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

Best regards,
S. Z. Levinger