Escape from Egypt

It’s amazing what capitalism will produce! The newest franchise is called “Escape Games”. Each Escape Game is a real‑life escape room adventure for a small group. You solve puzzles, crack codes, find clues, and more in order to escape. You have one goal: escape the room.

The Baal Shem Tov taught us that everything that occurs around us is to serve as lesson in our service of Hashem. Surely, this novel idea has profound insight for us and in particular now prior to the holiday of Pesach which is Zman Cherusaynu – the time of our Redemption.

Indeed each of us are locked up in some fashion or another. For some it is a literal lock down, for others it is emotional or mental lock down. The lock down can be profound or it can be very subtle. The lock down can be from bad choices we’ve made or from circumstances imposed upon us by others. They can even be from genetic realities that we were born with. Some of the lock downs are things that are very difficult to change and others are things that we have convinced ourselves are legitimate lock downs even as deep down we know that not to be true.

The holiday of Pesach is the map of clues to help us learn how to escape. It begins with cleaning the house of Chametz – things that rise – ego, in order to have an honest humble self-analysis. It continues with hard labor of preparing for the Seder, because no journey of self-development is an easy one, it always requires hard work.

The story of the slavery and Exodus is replete with clues; plague of blood = passion for things that are holy, plague of frogs = coldness to the materialism and distractions that interfere with a meaningful relationship with holiness. All the way to the crossing of the reed sea, an opportunity to take a quantum leap forward and jump into the waters that have been so frightening for us.

This Passover, look for the clues to help you escape from the lock down. When you do you’ll really experience the Exodus, try it, it’s liberating!