No Bone-Chomping Here - Parshat Bo

We like digging into our food. It tastes good, it is nutritious and the experience can even be enhanced by eating with friends and family. We like our food and on the whole want to choose the way we eat it - with our fingers, with a fork and knife or with chopsticks.

Yet, just as the Kosher laws limit our access to certain foods and teach us about the way we are to eat1 so too do we find restrictions about how we are to eat our Paschal lamb. In this week's parsha, Parshat Bo, the Torah is careful to tell us how we eat it. One of the restrictions is to be careful not to break any of the bones in the Paschal  lamb.2 But really – not to break the bones? Who cares? What difference does it make?

Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetsky brings an interesting analogy to explain this. When the Satmer Rebbe gave out money to the needy, he often straightened out the bills so that they look nice. When questioned about this practice, he answered: "Mitzvos must be done regally. We will not hand out rumpled bills to those who are in need.”3

This is not just an exercise in proper etiquette. This explains how we are to view ourselves as humans. We are to exercise restraint even during this most exciting event – the Paschal lamb eaten at the annual Passover Seder. The night of the Seder, we are regal. We act as people freed from bondage and now Masters of our own time and destiny.

When we view ourselves as regal, we act regally.

How do we view ourselves the rest of the year? Should we treat ourselves as less than regal? Certainly the Torah doesn’t require us to eat that way the entire year. But we are required to treat ourselves with honor and respect.4

We are to be on a path to a meaningful life.5 We have no right to treat ourselves with disdain. Every day we have a new chance to move forward, overcome challenges and build our own way to living a full life – a life with meaning. It is our choice.

And when we know that, when we know that our lives have meaning and significance, then that means we are meaningful and we are significant. And we ought to treat ourselves with the honor and respect we deserve.

Click here for another logoParsha article  on Parshat Bo

Notes

  1. Vayikra Chapter 11; Devarim Chapter 14. See also Rashi and Rabbi Hirsch op cit.
  2. Shemot 12: 2-11, 43-47
  3. Rabbi Kamenetsky wrote this in a blog you can view here
  4. See logoParsha Bereishit
  5. This is a basic concept described in detail by Viktor Frankl in his book Man's Search for Meaning

Have A Great Shabbat!laughing

For More Information On Logotherapy And How You Can Create A Fuller, More Meaningful Life, Or To Book An Online Session,

  1. Call Me At +972-54-589-3399, or in Israel 054-5893399
  2. Contact Me Thru my email at [email protected]