For Pesach: Rise Up in Praise

Our main purpose on this earth, says the Sefat Emet (and others), is to praise God, to be witness to His existence and deeply grateful for the gifts He has bestowed on us.

That is the tachlit, the destination point, of creation and that is the tachlit, the destination point, of leaving Egypt. In both cases, the goal is reached on the 7th day. On Shabbat we stop our own creative endeavors to testify that all creative activity is really God’s and we sing, as the Psalm of the Sabbath day says – tov lehodot Lashem ulezamer lishimkha elyon. “It is good to give thanks to God and to sing to His exalted name.” That is our job on Shabbat – the end-point of creation – and that was our job on the 7th day after leaving Egypt – we stood at the Sea and sang praises to the Lord, an experience that tradition considers one of our highest points of connection to God. We stood and sang out with all our hearts and rose above ourselves as we exalted God.

All of Pesach is moving inexorably toward this height of praise. The gemara says that the seder “begins with shame and ends with praise.” We are moving towards praise: We begin with stories and words, and we conclude with Hallel and song. Hallel is the end-point of our speech in Magid, and an extended Hallel and the songs of Nirtzah are the end-points of the whole seder. They lead naturally to the Song of Songs, which is read on the Shabbat of Pesach, and some read on the night of the Seder. And then we reach the pinnacle of praise – the moment at the Sea. For this purpose were we redeemed, for this moment of praise.

What does it mean to say that our life purpose is to praise God? Isn’t there so much else that needs fixing in this world? What sense does it make to focus on thanksgiving as the main goal?

The Mussar teacher Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe teaches that the virtue of hakarat hatov, gratitude, has great powers. Hakarat hatov literally means “to recognize the good.” To see the good in another – to appreciate the letter carrier for delivering your mail even though he is paid to do so, to see this act as itself a kind of small hesed— to see all those acts of goodness in the world, to notice them, is to bring warmth and friendship and love into the world. To see God’s hand of goodness in everything around you, to understand deeply that none of it, really none of it -- not the life nor the health nor the roof – none of it is deserved or obvious but all are acts of divine kindness, to understand all that is to be in a state of Dayenu, a recognition of the neverending shefa or overflow from above. Seeing the good is not passive, but active and transformative – it awakens the good and the love that is always just beneath the surface in our universe. As Rabbi Wolbe says, by noticing the good in the world, we actually “build” a world of hesed. We often think that the ultimate good is to do good; perhaps we should add to “doing good” the role of “seeing good.”

Praise transforms the world and it also transforms ourselves. On Pesach, we move from “shame” to “praise.” Shame is self-directed; it represents the normal way we exist in this world – referring everything to ourselves through the prism of the ego – did I sound ok? Did I look good? That was so embarrassing! These are the self-directed thoughts of our ego prison. On Pesach, we are delivered from many straits, including the confines of the self. Instead of shame, we emerge into the wide world of “praise,” a place where we move out of ourselves by acknowledging the existence of a Being so much larger than ourselves. We come out of the dark narrow cave and into the open light; we are no longer a little tiny ego on its own, but, in praising God, become part of the praise of the Universe, part of the waves of Halleluyahs and Hodu Lashem ki tov’s that go on without end. We raise God up, and in doing so, raise up ourselves, draw ourselves out of the self and into the vast expanse of Sea. We are free, not floating alone and free, but deeply connected and free precisely because of our connection. To this end were we made.