In preparing for Pesach I asked my students to share some of their favorite divrei Torah on Pesach with the class. I would like to share some of those divrei Torah, which we compiled into a Haggada, with you:
Ilana Ambrose
11th grade
The Arizal explains that the four sons parallel the four cups of wine we drink on the seder night. The wicked son, the second one we learn about, therefore, parallels the 2nd cup, the one over which the main body of the Haggadah is recited. Most of the seder night is spent explaining the Haggadah over the 2nd cup of wine. From this we learn, that our greatest efforts must be directed to reach out to the wicked/foul son and involve him in our heritage to an even greater extent than the other sons, even the Chacham, wise son.
Jordana Blum
9th grade
The first question of the Ma Nishtana is why we eat only Matza and not Chometz the night of Pesach?
There is a very interesting thought about the difference between Chometz and Mazta. If you look at the Hebrew spelling of those two words Chometz and Mazta, chometz has a “mem” and “tzadi” and Matza also has these 2 letters, but the difference is the Chometz has the letter" Chet " and Matza has the letter "Heir".
The letters “Chet” and “Hei” in Hebrew are very similar, there is just a very slight difference between them, the letter Chet has complete 3 sides but not so the Hei which has a half side only. And that one little spot of a letter means the entire difference Chometz and one Matza!
This provides us with a very important lesson, that many times the difference between good and evil. Kosher and not Kosher depends on a very minor detail, and that tiny detail could spell the entire difference between the good and bad. For example, a forged one-hundred dollar bill and real one, it could be very hard to know which is real and which is fake, only by looking hard and notice perhaps a slight wrong detail, could lead you to figure out that one is worth money and the other is not.
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