Sunday, March 29, 2009

The Complementary notion of Zechira and Sipur Yetzias Mitzrayim

The Natziv in HaEmek Vavar {Devarim 16:7} writes:

וטעם זה השנוי בתכלית הספור תליא בהא דעיקר מצות הספור בזה הלילה בא לחזק אמונה בהשגחה בכל השנה מה שנוגע להליכות עולם בחיים. ומש"ה מסיים המקרא למען תזכור וגו'. וכמושהאב מספר לבנו מעשה שיש בו מוסר והספור ארוך כדי שעה. ובכל יום מזכירו ברמז קל כל הספור. ובכל שנה חוזר ומספר מחדש כי שיעשה שורש בלבבו. כך מצוה לעשות ספור ארוך בזה הלילה ובכל יום סגי בזכירה לבד

The purpose of the telling over of the story of the Exodus from Egypt on Seder night is to strengthen pour Emunah. He points out that although there is a mitzvah of remembering the Exodus twice in a 24 hour period, on a daily basis [evening and morning]; even so there is a purpose to the Seder night.
He writes, "The same way a father shares a story with a children that contains fundamentals of faith and lessons of ethical import. The story takes an hour or so in the telling. Every single day, the father would tell his children one or two lines that hint at the rest of the story; similarly mentioning the Exodus daily is a reminder of the longer story told over on Seder night.

Rav Yitzvhok Twersky zt"l, explained:

There is a reciprocal, mutually reinforcing, relatioship between the daily mitzvah of zechirah and the once a year mitzvah of sippur. The daily mitzvah provides a substratum and a context which gives greater maening to the annual preformance of sippur.
On the other hand, the cursory mention that satisfies the halachik requirement for zechira would become stale and hollow without the periodic infusion of the detailed and passionate narrative required on the night of the fifteenth of Nissan.

2 analogies:

The relationship of the formal, periodic, mitzvah of ve-samchtach bichagecha to the ongoing expectation that a Jew will live each day with a sense of simcha which derives - generally - from our abiding awareness of Hashem's immanence in our lives, and specifically from the simcha shel mitzvah which we should experience regularly. It would be unrealistic to reach for a state of u'semachtem lifnei Hashem on Yom Tov if we did not have the continuous substratum of simcha; conversely, the intense, focused, experience of simchas Yom Tov enriches our year round state of simcha.

The relationship of the once-a-year observance of the 9th of Av to the halachik requirement for year round mourning for the loss of the Beis haMikdash.

[I quote this from David Shapiro's Meifeila liOr Gadol, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik on pesach, Sefirat ha-Omer and Shavu'ot, Urim Publications, (C) 2005] Page 31


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