Hasidic Exodus

The Seder and Passover is around the corner.  So, here are some unleavened food for thought.

We all carry around packages of the past.  A rough childhood, a traumatic relationship, a chance negative encounter, an illness that took away a portion of our youth, or perhaps just a bad teacher who gave us a negative way to look at the world.

How does one relieve themselves of this burden? How does one prevent that event from tethering them to the past and hindering their real potential for future growth? How does one allow the future to be a clear canvas with endless opportunities with nothing from the past holding them back?

There are as many approaches to this question as there are therapists in the world.  Some say you need to break the past.  Some say you need to resolve it.  Get it off your chest.  Recently I was introduced to a popular approach that preaches putting it into a box and disregarding it.  I would like to present here an approach that is 200 years old.

Common Jewish thought looks at the Exodus as a process in which the Jewish people crushed the Egyptians.  They broke their past!  But as a result they had to run away from Egypt.  For breaking the past doesn’t necessarily resolve within yourself the pain or issues that you left behind and may leave their residue.  In fact when the Jews arrive at the Reed Sea they are confused, struggling between slave mentality, suicidal thoughts, warrior status and blind faithed believers.  They are not sure what to do with the residue of Egypt.

Chasidic thought approaches the Exodus differently.  Our past is actually part of our present.  Any attempt to abandon it can only meet with further frustration.  To overcome the past we need to embrace it and transform it.  When we elevate our past, when we incorporate it into our present we have truly left our Egypt, we have truly left our limitations.

(Take for example an individual who had a strict and tough parent.  A parent who never let them be a child.  Perhaps this parent was abusive as well.  Now this individual finds themselves repeating those mistakes with their own children.  Part of the person feels constant resentment to the past and to their strict parent.  This resentment is expressed in every act of strictness and discipline with their own children.  The past is very much present and it is a burden.  But instead of resolving the past it is being repeated and the excuse is the resentment towards the past.

A transforming experience is to look at the past and say I can’t change the past.  I was raised that way.  My entire past is a set up for me.  It is a set up to challenge me to be a better parent.  Right now I have an opportunity to overcome that challenge and raise my children differently.)

Some time ago my father told me, “when you realize that all that has happened to you in your life was orchestrated by G-d, then you will be healed”.  When one can look at the past and not see it as an event of the past, but rather an event that helped shape the present, that helped form you and the circumstances of the world as they are now, then this moment becomes the opportunity to change the past.  Because whatever negative or positive residue the past has left in or on you, defines the challenge of the present.  When you overcome that challenge you have used the past to propel you forward.

Fun? No! Meaningful? Absolutely!  This is the Exodus as Chasidic thought sees it.  Bring your past into the present and transform it inside of you and through your actions in the present.  Bring on the past!  Happy Exoduses.

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