( For Pesach) Lehem Oni: Where the Poor Parts of You Lead

What if it is the “poorest” parts of ourselves that are the doorway to redemption?

On Pesach we eat only lehem oni, the bread of poverty and affliction.   On Pesach, we hold up this flat meager bread and say  -- this is it.  This is the portal.    

We normally honor only our “good” or rich side, the parts of us that seem acceptable in the eyes of the world.  We only show  -- and indeed, often only know -- our external identity, the poise, the confidence, the competence, the hats we wear.  Sometimes we imagine that increasing this side of us is where redemption lies; if only we could be more put together and productive and perfect -- then everything would go well; then we and the world would be moving in the right direction.

But on Pesach we say -- no.  The road to redemption is actually through lehem oni, through the places inside us that are not rich, but poor, not fully risen and perfect by external standards, but deemed imperfect and unacceptable, the parts that cause us shame and suffering and pain, the parts we hide under layers of puff that we present to the world.   On Pesach, we strip off the layers and we lift up the matzah and declare -- the road to redemption is through our vulnerability, not the covering we use to hide it.

Have you ever sat for a long time with emotional pain, or with some part of you that you dislike or consider shameful -- really stayed with it, from a place of presence, without judgment, with only curiosity and openness and a sense of honoring?   I am a client in a form of therapy called IFS, and this is part of the work -- to go deep into the parts you consider poorest and most painful, to go deep into your lehem oni with respect and care.  It is difficult to describe what happens when you open to pain in this way.  It is as if the part of you you thought was a bottomless aching empty hole -- that you’ve been trying to fix or avoid your whole life -- turns into a tunnel that leads to an endless ocean of love and compassion, that leads to God, that leads, essentially, to redemption.  All that time we spent trying to cover up the hole was only a way of distancing ourselves from finding the passageway.  

So on Pesach, we do not turn away from the oni, the poverty and the suffering, but towards it; we say -- this, this bread, this core human vulnerability -- this is what we value; redemption happens here; we mark it with a star.  

The words from Hallel express a similar idea --  min hametzar karati Yah, anani bamerhav Yah --   From the narrow straits I called out to God; God answered me with expansive divine spaciousness.    The first word, min, can be understood as “from” or “out of,” or even “through” -- it is precisely through the narrow straits of pain -- through entering them, by calling out to God from that place -- that they turn into tunnels, still narrow, but leading somewhere sacred, leading to the wide expansive spaciousness of the divine Presence.   From the narrowness, out of the narrowness, through the narrowness, through the pain, we come to experience the space; we come to know the love; we come to feel the possibility of healing and redemption.  We are born afresh, through the narrow birth canal, into a wide universe of divine holding.