Bring Your Heart to Your Seder

Today more than ever information is being pushed at us.  Based on algorithms and personal habits, companies like Facebook and Instagram are pushing our personal interests back to us in the form of advertising.

Without even knowing it we move further into the cycle of consuming even more information about our interests. 

But information doesn’t make change.  We can read something over and over again, we can hear an idea over and over again, and then one day, perhaps, it clicks.  In that moment it comes to life for us; it’s bright and clear. 

The moment it clicks is not an intellectual one, it’s an emotional one.  Yes, it was accessed through the brain, but it was the heart that took it in.

It reminds me of the teaching (I don’t know the source) of the words in the Shema, “that these words that I teach you today should be on the heart”.  Not “in” the heart.  

We gather information, we study, and it all sits on the heart.  And then one day, for some reason or another, the heart opens.  And when it does all that information that has been sitting on the heart goes in, clicks and becomes alive.

We can help bring ideas to life if we open our hearts.  The Seder is about opening the heart.  The Seder is built upon storytelling, experiencing and reliving; all heart movements.  

But we need to show up with our hearts.  Seders, holidays can be challenging times.  The stress of the preparations, showing up putting our best foot forward, all of these make for potential tinder boxes.

This year let us show up to the Seder with our hearts, open to experience our story like never before. 

Open to those around us with love and acceptance.

Let us open ourselves to the story of Pesach in a way like never before.  What messages are going to go into the heart this year?  What story can I share with those around the table that will possibly enter their hearts?

May we experience with our hearts true liberation like never before.

My best wishes to you and yours for a wonderful, heart filled Pesach!

With all my love,
Rabbi Eliyahu Schusterman

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