Years ago, I met with one of our budding Bar-Mitzvah boys. It was September, and I knew he had just transferred from Public to Private school; so one my first questions was “How’s the new school?”
Frown.
He then proceeded to list the things he didn’t like (ambience, teachers, kids etc.); a few days in, the year ahead didn’t present a pretty picture.
Trying to be helpful, I shared my own memories of the insecurity I had felt when switching schools as a kid. He expressed his appreciation for my empathy, but preferred to get down to our business at hand: Preparation for his Bar-Mitzvah.
[As part of our preparation process for Bar/Bat Mitzvah, the youngsters study twelve selections of Jewish Wisdom: Four Scriptural, Four Talmudic and Four Chassidic.
These each convey developmentally-appropriate, Torah lessons for life; Judaic tools for their development into healthy adults.]
I asked my young friend to read the third passage, a Talmudic instruction that we each consistently view ourselves as having just gone out of [our slavery in] Egypt.
After he read it flawlessly, I asked him to read it in English.
Then I asked him a rhetorical question: Practically speaking: Why will it help me TODAY to see myself as having just left Egypt?
I then suggested the following Chassidic insight:
The Hebrew word for Egypt is “Mitzrayim”, which linguistically means ‘limitations’, ‘barriers‘, ‘constrictions‘, etc.
I asked him, “Are not first impressions an ‘Egypt’ of sorts? When you go to school tomorrow, what if you try not to be bound by your first impressions, and try to give it a fresh look? What if you allow for a fresh second impression? You may still not like it, but that won‘t be because you‘re enslaved to your first impression.”
He shrugged and said he thought he could try that.
The next day his mother came looking for me.
She told me that she’d asked her son, as he arrived home from school, how the day had been.
He replied “it was actually a bit better”
“Why?”, she asked in surprise.
“Because I left Egypt”.
Passover is coming.
Before you leave your Egypt, you need to know what it is.
Get ready.