 Okay, we're back, we're live at the one o'clock clock here on a given Tuesday with Rabbi Yitzchel Krasnjansky on Community Matters. We have much to report. It's a chock-a-block day for news in the Jewish community. Welcome back to the show, Rabbi. Thank you, Jay. It's a pleasure to be here, as always. Well, let's talk first about the hot copy on Israel. Today was the election day in Israel and the day in Israel would have been done. I'm not sure they fully counted yet, but what does it look like? For what I just saw, my way in, is that the right block, the right block of parties carried the day. So that means Bibi Netanyahu, he won the day. That means that it's going to be Likud, which is the right block, which is very good for the security of Israel. Well, he ran a very aggressive campaign. I know we heard about that. Well, he had to defend himself from a very aggressive effort to unrail him, to derail him. All right. We're going to hear more about that in the news tomorrow. I think we'll be all over the newspapers everywhere tomorrow. So, well, let's go to the second point. I really wanted to talk with you. So, yes, I shouldn't say yesterday. Sunday. Sunday afternoons. Sunday, what, the 7th? 7th. For your imitation, I went down to the ceremony you had at the synagogue on Atkinson to see what was going on with the two new Torahs that you have to replace the two Torahs that were stolen a year ago, and they were really good-looking Torahs, by the way. The whole thing was so good, so beautiful. And I might add that it was very touching to participate in writing the letters at the bottom you had ascribed there. He must have come from New York, maybe. Yes. He was really a fine gentleman, and he was so good at it. And so that was impressive. The food is always good, by the way, and Chabad of Hawaii, the food is always good. I know the Reviton has a lot to do with that. And finally, the sense of Stimka Stora, of happiness with the Torah was pervasive. You know, a lot of people showed up, and then the Kudugra was when you went out into Atkinson with the chuppah, the tent canopy over the two Torahs was one out there or two, I don't remember. Two out there, and the two new ones. And people were dancing up a storm, and the music and the dance, and people were so happy and involved and engaged. It was really an issue in the heart how the congregation came together from all walks, including our friend Josh Green. He was there dancing with one of the two Torahs. That was really something. But it was a beautiful thing you set up, Rabbi. I must say. Well, thank you, Jay. And, you know, Torah celebration in general strikes a very, very deep chord in the Jewish community and the Jewish community. The Torah actually is at the heart of Judaism. The Torah, by the way, is the Hebrew word for the Bible Testament, the Old Testament. And in the Jewish tradition, a Torah is a scroll, and it's written with ink and parchment with a feather. I describe. It takes about a year to write a Torah from the start to finish. And welcoming the Torah, the new Torahs, into our community was definitely a very, very special moment and a very joyous one. There's an interesting saying by one of the early Jewish commentators who lived in the 14th century, and he says that our nation, meaning the Jewish nation, is defined by the Torah. All other nations in the world are defined by their land, their borders, their culture, their language. For the Jewish people, the Jewish nation, what defines us is the Torah. Our mission is to spread the word, spread the document. Throughout our history, it was large time, most of our history, we've been exiled from out there. And yet, the Jewish people were able to keep it going only because of the Torah. The Torah is a very, very special part of Jewish life and of Jewish community. Well, you see the Torah as a very serious book. And indeed, it's the most sanctified book in the Jewish religion. It's the Old Testament, isn't it? Serious, serious, but the congregation was dancing up a storm on Sunday. I never saw so many people dancing for so long. I saw you dancing. I didn't realize you were young and sprightly like that, Rabbi. You were dancing for as long as I was there. You kept dancing. Well, there is a story in the Old Testament where King David, when they welcomed the tablets, that was before the Torah scrolls were written with different tablets, and they were going to bring it up to Jerusalem to put it into the temple. So it says in the Book of Kings that King David danced very feverishly. And his wife thought that was unbecoming of the king to behave like that in public, but she rebuked him. And he responded to her by saying that because this was glorifying God, it wasn't, you know, it was something bigger than himself than it was fully, fully appropriate. So that's the tone for all of this celebration, subsequent Torah celebration. It was really interesting to watch. It was infectious. You know, everybody was there celebrating the two new Torahs. And now they'll be placed in service now. They'll be in the ark. Every Saturday you will read from them. Looking forward to see, you know, the new energy they bring. Thank you, Dr. So let's go to Passover. Passover is coming soon. We need to discuss it. We need to know what it is. It's a very important holiday. It's a holiday of freedom, of liberation, a celebration of leaving Egypt where we were slaves. Tell us about that. Sure. So actually, so this year Passover falls out on Friday evening, April 19th. And it is an eight day celebration and it ends Saturday the 27th. And it is not only one of the three biblical holidays, because biblically what we find in the Bible is basically three holidays. Passover, when we commemorate the exodus of Egypt, the nation out of Egypt. Then there is, in Hebrew, Shavuos, which is Pentecost, 50 days later, when we commemorate the receiving of the Torah, Mount Sinai, the desert. Then you have the Feast of the Tabernacle, which is in the spring, in September usually, where we go out for seven, eight days and we rejoice. So those are the three holidays, but from the three, Passover is considered the the most important holiday and it's the first of all, the holidays. Point to Jewish calendar, as far as the holidays go, Passover is the first one. Because what happened on Passover is by our exodus of Egypt wasn't just gaining our freedom, but as we find in the Torah itself in the Bible, that we emerged as the nation in that exodus. Before that, we were family, tribe, several tribes, Jacob and his 12 children, there were tribes with a big, big family, but it was only through the crucifix of the exile of Egypt that we, the Jewish people, emerged as the nation. That's why in the Bible, in the Old Testament, the story of the exodus of Egypt and our remembering it is the most oft repeated commandment in the Torah. Even though there are a total of six or thirteen commandments, many other holidays, our exodus of Egypt is like the starting point. It's one holiday that has a clearly defined story attached to it with many, many lessons and there are so many parts of the Haggadah that are memorable, that teach us so much, that are repeated every year, if you go to Seder. I think what is really remarkable is that you go to a Seder, you learn the lesson and the lesson is reinforced every single year. So if there's one holiday, at least in my experience, that sticks in my mind and memory in terms of what it represents and what it is and what it teaches and the various ceremonies and rituals that go with the Seder, it's Passover. Passover is special in that way. And as everyone knows that on the first night of Passover, the tradition is to have what we call a Seder. A Seder is the Hebrew word for order because it's an evening that's very structured, the whole meal is very structured and the most important part of it is the whole narrative of the story of Passover and you must be telling that story and that's called the Haggadah, that is the retelling of it and that fulfills the commandment in the Bible where it says, children, you should talk with these children, tell it to your children, that's where the four sons and the Haggadah come in. And that's one of the messages that, yes, you hear the story, yes, you go through the Haggadah, you go through all the statements of what happened and you stay atheistic. I was sitting here April 19, 2019 and this ritual has been going on for the Jewish people since Egypt. So that's a lot of years every year. And so it's not just me, it's my My ancestors were hundreds of generations back. I'm in a continuum with all of this. And so Passover, the theme that Passover celebrates is the theme of freedom. And in fact, I believe that throughout history, the story of Passover, the story of Moses leading the Jewish people out of Egypt inspired many freedom movements throughout different generations. I believe even Martin Luther King referred to Moses taking the Jews into the desert as his calling to lead the people forward. How does the expression go? In every age, in every generation, a person is obligated to see himself, to see himself as gone out of Egypt. It has to be a personal experience. It's not just historical that we commemorate something that happened in the past, but we have to somehow experience it. And there's a very, very deep and fascinating insight into this whole idea of Passover. So on the very simple level, on Passover, we celebrate the freedom from oppressors. Today, thank God, for the most part, early Jews in the Western world are not oppressed. We live in freedom, and we're allowed to do the things we want to do. But oppression not only comes from without. It could come from within. When a person is enslaved to one's ego, a certain habit, in a sense, we lose our freedom. An idea of Passover is to liberate ourselves from this slavery, from the inner insolation. And actually, it's explained in Jewish mysticism that in Hebrew, Egypt is called mitzrayim. Going out of mitzrayim, mitzrayim is the Hebrew word for the nation of Egypt, country of Egypt. In Hebrew, the word mitzrayim also means limitation. And the idea is taken that on over the years, yeah. Exactly. And the idea is that we all have limitations. We all have things that hold us back from fully expressing ourselves, fully realizing our potential. Limitations could be of an intellectual nature, whether it's doubt or things like that. Or it can be on an emotional level, fear, or many other kinds of emotions. And the whole idea of Passover is to liberate oneself to transcend these limitations, to rise above these limitations. We're going to take a short break, Rabbi. Rabbi Itchel Krasnjansky of Chabad of Hawaii. We're talking about Passover. A very important holiday. It has so much significance, not only to the Jewish people that celebrate it at Stater, but to the whole world. It's about exodus. It's about abhorning slavery. And all kinds could be right there. Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, host of Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. My show is based on my book, also titled Beyond the Lines, and it's about creating a superior culture of excellence, leadership, and finding greatness. I interview guests who are successful in business, sports, and life, which is sure to inspire you in finding your greatness. Join me every Monday as we go Beyond the Lines at 11 a.m. Aloha. Aloha, this is Winston Welch. I am your host of Out and About, where every other week, Mondays at 3, we explore a variety of topics in our city, state, nation, and world, and events, organizations, the people that fuel them. It's a really interesting show. We welcome you to tune in, and we welcome your suggestions for shows. You got a lot of them out there, and we have an awesome studio here where we can get your ideas out as well. So I look forward to you tuning in every other week where we've got some great guests and great topics. You're going to learn a lot. You're going to come away inspired like I do. So I'll see you every other week here at 3 o'clock on Monday afternoon. Aloha. We're back. We're live. We're here with Rabbi Itchell Krasnijanski. He's the Rabbi of Chabad of Hawaii. And we're talking about Passover, which is coming soon. So Rabbi, let's talk a little about setting up for Passover, cleaning house, so to speak, for Passover. And I would like to talk to you about the Seder itself. Sure. So just like the basics, the 101 of Passover, during the Jewish holiday of Passover, the Torah, Jewish Old Testament, prohibits us from eating any khamet. Khamet means leavened bread. Any bread that the dough has risen and turns into bread or cake, that's prohibited to eat on Passover. This is because when the Jewish people left Egypt after God broke the will and spirit of Barrow, who was the evil king at the time who enslaved the Jewish people. Because the Jewish people, they ran out so quickly that there was no time for the breads that they were baking for their provisions on the way to rise. So they baked it and ate it as matzah, matzah meaning like a cracker. So till this day, the highlight of the observance of Passover at the Seder and throughout Passover is that instead of eating bread, we eat matzah. But it's because, for example, today, most of the foods that we eat are derivatives of all different kinds of ingredients. So pasta, for example, is also would be khamet because it is wheat, the grains are mixed with water. So all of that is put aside and on Passover, we bring out the Passover foods. But it's not only that the Torah doesn't allow us to eat bread on Passover, but we now even possess the bread on Passover. And hence, the intense Passover cleaning that goes on in all Jewish homes before Passover, where the house is thoroughly cleaned from any leavened or leavened bread or just cleaned in general. It sounds like spring cleaning in a way, yeah, exactly. And that's the setting in there for the preparations of Passover. And the reason is that we want to remember what it was like when we left Egypt on a short notice, right? And that's why the matzah is eaten. Also it's brought down, and we say it in the Haggadah, that the matzah is a poor man's bread. Therefore, we do many things on the night of Passover and the Seder night to remind us of that part of our history when we were enslaved. And at the same time, we eat reclined because that's a symbol of freedom. You slide back on your chair. Right. And so we celebrate both our freedom and remember our humble beginnings. That's why we eat matzah. That's also the reason there are many, many foods that we eat on Passover night at Seder. There are there just to remind us of the experience of our ancestors in Egypt. And that's why we eat the bitter herbs tomorrow, which reminds us of the bitterness of slavery, all kinds of symbolic foods, all to remind you of the story of Passover. Right. And also, as the commenters explained, by eating certain foods, we somehow, in a very concrete way, we take it from the abstract and history into something tangible and real. And with it, the tactile has a taste. And you can remember the taste. And the Chara said you can remember the taste of the bitter herbs. And that takes you back to your memory. It's Proustian. It takes you back to your memory, even when you were a child, thinking of the continuum I mentioned, this helps you sort of integrate the whole experience for all these generations because everyone has tasted the morar over all these years. Everyone has tasted the Chara said over all these years. And this memory, this collective memory of the Jewish people is really the heart of the living Judaism, because there is this common memory that we all share, even those of the generation like ours that did not experience it that way. Two sets of dishes, I remember that. So you have your regular, four sets of dishes, what am I saying, it's four sets of dishes. Regular Jewish household, you have dishes for the meat and the dishes for the dairy. And you don't mix them up. But on Passover, you trot out another two sets of dishes, one for the meat on Passover without any comets, and one for the dairy without any comets. So a good Jewish household, I'm sure, an Orthodox Jewish household, four sets of dishes. Correct, correct. The reason for that is because according to Jewish law, China, earthenware, it cannot be kosher because once it absorbs something, it doesn't spit it back out. You have a glass plate, actually not glass, that's the question, but if you have tin or if you have, I don't know, if you have metals, things, but metal can be kosher, but China cannot be kosher. That's why the whole, Because it absorbs the food, yeah, the whole new set of dishes. And there's, gee, there's so many parts to the Seder, I hope we can regroup on some of them and explain them. But the one, the one that I did wanna catch before we had to close the show is the one about the four children because there's a description of four sons, four profiles of sons, and they're all different and you treat them differently. Can you talk about that? Sure, that is the highlight of the Seder and that is that because the Torah says that our primary responsibility this holiday is to pass it on, to teach it to your children and in the Jewish experience, the way to teach is interactive. Not just you talking and your children listening, but the interaction between the parents and the children. So it begins with a question and answer, a dialogue and the children, there's four sons, there's the wise son, there's the wicked son, there is the simple child and then there's a child who doesn't even know what to ask. And the Torah tells us that you need to speak to each child on their level. There's no uniform message you can give to all the children. Every child is different and every child needs to be addressed directly and this is the difference between the four sons and as you just said before during the break that on a deeper level, we all embody within us the four sons. We all have a little piece of each one of the four. We're all a little wise, we're all a little rebellious and we're all a little clueless and we're all a little indifferent. And what the whole message is, is that there is no child that's beyond reach. There's no person that is beyond reach. Every person can be reached. I remember in other aspects you would go wrap up if I could share it with you. You know, when I was a kid, each time the fader went through the four children, I said, gee, I don't wanna be the wicked son. Bad idea. I don't wanna be the simple son. Oh, that's terrible. I don't wanna be the, you know, what was the other one? It doesn't even know how to ask. Right, don't even know what to ask. I wanna be the wise son. I hope I'm the wise son. I have to strive to be the wise son and I have to exclude the other three possibilities from the way I live. And I remember, you see, I wouldn't want anybody to think I was the simple son. And in fact, you know, the way it's set up is that the people at the table and the sader, you know, they rotate the readings. So somebody is assigned to read the story of the wise son, somebody, you know, the simple son, somebody, the wicked son, somebody who doesn't know that. I don't want any of the readings except the wise son. That's the one I wanna read. And you're correct. Firstly, as we all know, that the sader evening is geared towards the children, the children play the most central role, not only in the questions, but the stealing of the aficomen, which they have, so you remember. Yes, I do, but you have to tell the people what that means. Yeah, the aficomen is the last piece of matzah that's eaten before the conclusion of the sader. It's actually a Greek word, which means like dessert. And it commemorates the sacrifice that was brought during the temple on Passover. It was a paschal lamb that was sacrificed. And so the custom is to engage the children, that the children, and you have to eat that piece of aficomen in order to be able to conclude the sader. So the kids, you know, so the leader, the head of the household hides the aficomen. And any of the children that are able to find it, you know, they can ask a high ransom for that piece of matzah. That's a very... It's usually a little money involved. Yeah, a gift, you know, they ask for a gift. A little gift. The idea of one last thought in this, that on Passover, as you mentioned before, the leaven bread is prohibited and the matzah is what's eaten. That's the staple of food on Passover. In the spiritual sense, bread, though that rises, represents ego, arrogance. The matzah that just flour on water, it doesn't rise and it's needed before 18 minutes. It doesn't rise, yeah, so the dough doesn't rise, that represents humility. And ego is really the culprit and the cause of enslavement. When a person is ruled by their ego, they're in fact like a slave to their ego, a literal slave to themselves. And it says in the Torah, we know that the most famous, prominent figure in the entire Torah is Moses Moshe Rabinu. And he was the first of the Jewish leaders. He took it out of Egypt, he gave us the Torah. But there's only one single description about his character in the Torah. That is that he was the most humble man of all people. So Moshe, Moses symbolizes humility, took us out of Egypt, which is caused by arrogance, puffed up, which is personified by Pharaoh. Rabbi, we have miles to go before we finish our discussion of Passover. We talk about going out of Egypt as the Red Sea. As passing through the Red Sea, we have to know more about that. There's the four questions. We have to know more about the fear-cautious. We have to know more about that. We have to talk about the psalms. We have to have a discussion about the visit of Elijah when you open the door and sing for Elijah. There's so many things in the Seder, so many things. And we should talk about the Haggadah as a piece of literature because it's been rewritten many times because it goes in so many directions. Not only that, but it is the most singular Jewish text. It has more editions printed than any other Jewish text. There's even, there was a movie out several years ago called the Haggadah of Stereovo, the Stereovo Haggadah. It's about a person who finds a Haggadah in his attic and it's the family Haggadah passed down from parents, grandparents. And, you know, like in the typical Haggadah, there's stains here and there's wine stains. Those are the best ones. And the Haggadah serves as, you know, in this movie where this person relives or researches the family history of, you know, going back generations. Fascinating. Through the Haggadah, the stains, what have you. It's again, it's Proust, Marcel Proust. And the Petite Madalene, how you open your whole life and you can see those other generations. Well, thank you, Rabbi. Yes, one thing, I just want to invite everyone who sees this. We're going to have public status where everyone is invited to come. It's called Haggadah 808-735-8261. We also have public status all throughout the island. Everyone is invited to come or if you need any other help. We made it to Passover, please reach out to us. Celebrate freedom. Thank you so much, Rabbi. Thank you.