Shabbat Ha'Gadol: The Korban Pesach as the Great Unifier

 One of the reasons given for this Shabbat being called "Ha'Shabbat Ha'Gadol," the "Great Shabbat," is the great miracle that Hashed performed for the Jewish people this Shabbat. The Korban Pesach, sacrificial  kid lamb was tied to the bedpost in each and every Jewish home - and then, upon seeing the sacred lamb, the Egyptians, who had enslaved the Jewish people for hundreds of year, were powerless to lift a finger. In essence, this was the symbolic turning point, a dénouement, the first of many, whereby the Jewish people would vanquish their previous oppressors. 

It can be said that the vast majority of our customs and practices on the seder night are a reflection of that dramatic turning point, and the travails and victories, both major and minor, that went along with the shifting tides of the Exodus after 400 years of bondage. 

One of the major motifs of our collective experience of nationhood is the unity of each and every family - a unity founded on empathy. I'll explain. 

The great scholar, Rabbi Yom Tov ben Avraham Asevilli ( c. 1260 – 1320), the Ritva, writes that during the time of the Korban Pesach in Egypt, the Jewish people were not allowed to leave their homes to see the Egyptians smitten. Perhaps analogous to Lot's wife, the Jewish people were not to be motivated by even the slightest modicum of Schadenfreude, despite all the suffering the Jewish people suffered at the hands of their Egyptian tormentors and enslavers. 

Interestingly, as an aside, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein Z"L, shares that we have a source from the Torah that men and women are allowed to sit together at smachot and festive occasions, for whilst eating the Korban Pesach, partitions were forbidden, and nobody was allowed to leave the home, meaning that brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law invariably could have been sitting together. 

To summarize, it would seem that the Korban Pesach played a pivotal role as an emblem of both family unity, and empathy. Thus it was each family's role and responsibility to educate their young towards compassion, and a more humane appreciation of their fellow man. And thus, in a certain respect, while celebrating and commemorating the historic miracle, the greater message is the one for generations, that our coming together as a people must by founded on family unity and empathy towards our fellow man. 

Interestingly, it could perhaps be said that our people can be likened to a coral; each polyp is a living organism onto its own, and the cohesion we share, each family, strengthened and bolstered are conjoined to create a much larger and greater living organism. No family could survive on its own; nor could the nation survive without the adhesive force within each and every family. Likewise, a polyp, on its own would be swept away by the currents; by the same token, the health of the larger, magnificent corals we see is predicated on the health of each and every polyp. Thus, in a larger respect, the Jewish people create a habitat in which the other nations can thrive, similar to the ecosystem founded on reefs that are home to millions of living organisms. 

I thank my father who took my wife and me and our children to the aquarium a few weeks ago, which enlightened me as to the symbolism of Hashem's magnificent world.