Chag Sameach. Happy Holiday. I wanted to share with you two ideas. We did a lot of work last night at the Seder, but we really manifest that Light and can hold onto it and reveal it for ourselves and the world through the Torah today.

It is really all about consciousness. I would like to share a letter Rav Brandwein wrote to the Rav when the Rav was living in the U.S. and Rav Brandwein was living in Israel. The Rav would go to Israel, they would talk on the phone, and they would study in letters. We are blessed to have some of the letters.

This was written in Pesach, 1965. There was one previous letter written the day before Pesach that said he had to write quickly to make the preparations for Pesach and to bake the matzah.

It is a little difficult to understand. After receiving the letter, the Rav called and said, I don’t totally understand.

This letter says Rav Brandwein will explain further.

We know that when we connect to the Kabbalists’ teachings, it’s important to connect to the actual words, where the wisdom and their soul is part of the connection.

Rav Brandwein is talking about the importance of the connection. We said last night about the matzah that this is the bread they ate in Egypt. Rav Brandwein asks, if you read the story in the Bible, it says the reason the bread didn’t rise was because they were in a rush and had to grab the bread from the oven before it rose.

According to that story, they ate the unleavened bread after they left. Why did we say last night this is the bread they ate in Egypt? That they grabbed this bread that didn’t have the chance to rise.

Why do we say that they ate this bread in Egypt? Rather we should say this is the bread they ate as they left Egypt. When Rav Brandwein answered, he added a completely new level of understanding. He said: Although it is not written so in the Torah, they began eating the matzot in Egypt. Why?

Because Moses and Aaron were preparing them for the redemption. They were telling them the redemption would come so fast there would not be time to bake the bread.

Consciousness is the most important element of any connection. They could not go out of the control of Egypt unless they had prepared their consciousness. Moses and Aaron literally went door to door saying, you should know the redemption is coming, and it will be so quick you will not have time to pack or to bake bread. They said the redemption would come so fast they would not have time for the bread to rise.

They had been in exile for hundreds of years. They had lost the certainty that it was possible to get out. Therefore Moses and Aaron spent time before the redemption to awaken everybody’s consciousness. This is what they told them.

When the Israelites heard this, they knew having the understanding was not enough. They had to do something physical to awaken true certainty within them. They started eating matzah in Egypt weeks before the redemption, for the purpose of raising their certainty that redemption was possible. That’s why they were eating it, to remind themselves and to strengthen their consciousness and to elevate their certainty.

They baked the matzot in Egypt way before they left. If you look at the Biblical history, it was being eaten as they left. But that’s not the whole story. The preparation was while they were still in Egypt.

To me this is an important lesson. What is the differentiation between someone who is connected and someone who is disconnected? How can you tell if a person is connected or disconnected to the Creator? Most of us would say a person with good deeds is connected, and we have a whole list of things that qualify us or others as a righteous person. Rav Brandwein says “no.”

If you want to know the core difference, a person is disconnected if he is not certain in his own redemption, if he is not certain he can remove all the pain and suffering in his life. A person who is connected is a person who has certainty that pain and suffering will go out of his life.

This is the key of Pesach, and the key for today. I touched on this in L.A. last week. This is what Rav Brandwein is saying. If you ask what makes a connected person, there is a list of actions that most of us would say. Rav Brandwein is giving us the essence that can truly bring the redemption. It means a person is certain in his or her own redemption, certain that pain and suffering can end in our life and in the world.

This is the singular question that we have to answer today to make the connection for ourselves and the world. Do you, I, we believe that pain, suffering and even death can end in our lifetime?

(YES, and applause)

The answer most of us would answer is yes, but the truth is we have a long way to go in our certainty about that. As the Rav says, if we had certainty, it would already be there. The gift of this connection is — if we open ourselves up to this complete certainty, it can be there. But we have to be there today, in this connection. Open ourselves up and we beg and we meditate that we truly grow our certainty. Certainty is 99% of the work.

In Noach, the Zohar says if one group of people together have complete certainty, pain and suffering will be removed. We have certainty, but we are lacking in certainty. Today is not about a lesson. Today is about a certain point. As we make this connection on Pesach, there is one thing I want to awaken — true certainty within myself, and thereby within the world, that pain, suffering, and, as the Zohar says, death, can end in this world.

Freedom. The connection at Sinai was all about freedom, freedom from the Angel of Death. To the degree that we ask for it with certainty, we can end pain and suffering and maybe even death in our lifetime. If we all together awaken that certainty, there is no question about the amount of change we can bring to the world. The singular focus of the connection is to awaken certainty.

The difference of whether a person is connected or disconnected is if he has complete certainty that pain and suffering can end in the world.