Seder Night: Two Letters That Unlock Creation's Code

He stood before hundreds of tablets packed with dense characters. He stared at them again and again—his daily ritual—for hours on end, facing a language he did not understand. He wanted to understand. He wanted to decipher the language.

All he lacked was a connection—the meaning of a single pairing of two signs. But this language was built from hundreds of shapes and marks, nothing like Hebrew and its relatives. You couldn’t guess. You had to find one place—even just one—where the meaning of that pair could be proven, and then you had a connection. Once you have one connection, everywhere those two signs appear across the tablets you understand something; and at one of those points, you can find another connection, a third sign that joins the pair.

For years he tried and tested, until he finally reached the loose end. A drawing beside the script, the document’s context, the background. He found an explanation for two signs. He broke through the barrier of the hidden language—he created a connection. With that connection he kept working, until he found, elsewhere, a third sign that fit. Now he had a word. With that word, he combed the texts again and again, until, finally, he deciphered the ancient language. He could read all those hundreds of tablets and understand their meaning.

That’s how the linear script—the ancient writing of the Greeks, before they adopted the Semitic alphabet—was deciphered.

Humanity wants to read the language the world is written in. The world speaks to us in hundreds and thousands of \"letters\" that we want to know how to read, to join the letters to one another and get the words—the utterances by which the world was created.

The creation of the world was an immense burst of separation. Reality was divided into billions upon billions of tiny particles. That shattering was a shattering of the vessels—the matter that receives light from the Creator. The light itself, of course, did not shatter, but it cannot be seen without vessels. And the vessels are scattered and split apart.

The human being was created with connection. He gazed from one end of the world to the other; he understood the language the world spoke. But to remain at that level he had to obey. In that way he would become a vessel to continue receiving the light. But he broke his own vessel; he did not obey, and so the light could not be absorbed within him. He shifted from \"Adam HaRishon<\/i>\" to \"Adam Kadmon<\/i>\". He was expelled from the Garden of Eden into a dispersed and fragmented world, whose sons and descendants did not understand it—did not understand how to draw food from it without endless toil, and did not understand the Creator’s word. They slid into idolatry. The vessels in the world were scattered into endless shards. A scattered and fragmented world.

The light and the good were there all along. This world is good, and the Creator’s works are good; only the human being cannot see and connect the parts. Like a wondrous jigsaw puzzle of a heart-stirring picture, but divided into particles—only one who assembles the puzzle will see the image and be filled with joy and happiness. Like written tablets that were thrown down and shattered, with no one able to read them; only one who joins the fragments to one another will suddenly read the words and be filled with wisdom.

Then came the Exodus from Egypt. The Exodus was the joining of two letters. The people of Israel were a great vessel, but they did not see the light. They were in Egypt’s darkness, and this going out of Egypt brought them into connection with the light of the Torah<\/i>. The connection and the covenant were formed from within reality. In Egypt, Israel reached the level of empty vessels, and what brought them out was the mitzvah<\/i>, obedience. They listened to Hashem<\/i> and trusted Him, and those among them who were worthy—who were proper vessels—merited to go out and, naturally, were filled with Torah<\/i>. And those two letters cleaved together. They have meaning only together. From that point on, the Torah<\/i> has meaning only through the vessel that is the people of Israel, and the people of Israel—only through the light that is the Torah<\/i>.

And to those two letters, the Torah<\/i> and Israel, we labor to join the third letter: the Creator’s Shechinah<\/i>. The Shechinah<\/i> is His presence among us. When Israel and the Torah<\/i> cling properly to one another, the Shechinah<\/i> naturally dwells within us. But when cracks form in that filling, the vessel does not properly hold the light, and the Shechinah<\/i> also takes wing, rises, and hides.

Hashem<\/i>, the Torah<\/i>, and Israel—this is the language in which the world speaks to us, the language in which it is written, for by it the world was created, according to the plan of the Torah<\/i> that flows from the Creator’s wisdom. We are the vessel by which we read the world’s language, reality and nature. Our purpose is that nature and reality will declare not only the Creator’s existence but also His will, so that all will understand and know, and the earth will be filled with knowledge.

Therefore, the first stage of the Exodus from Egypt is so significant in the Torah<\/i> and the mitzvot<\/i>. It is the inseparable bond. This pair has been identified and has existed together from then until this very moment—the Torah<\/i> and Israel. Seder<\/i> night is the night when this connection continues, sustaining the world.