From Bitterness to Growth: The Deeper Meaning of Suffering and Freedom at the Passover Seder

One day in 1962, a devastating event changed the lives of Dick and Judy Hoyt. After nine months of joyful anticipation for their first child, something went terribly wrong during birth. The umbilical cord wrapped around the baby’s neck and cut off the flow of oxygen to his brain. Their son Rick was born with severe brain damage and was paralyzed in all four limbs. Doctors predicted that he would remain in a vegetative state for life and advised placing him in an institution.

Dick and Judy refused. They brought Rick home, determined to give him the best life possible. Six years later, when the local school refused to accept Rick as a full student, his parents taught him the alphabet themselves.

Although Rick could not move or speak, his parents were convinced that he understood everything happening around him and was just as intelligent as his younger siblings. When Rick was eleven, they raised five thousand dollars and approached engineers at Tufts University, asking them to build a computer that would allow him to communicate using the only movement he controlled, small side to side motions of his head. The engineers initially refused, claiming that nothing was happening inside Rick’s mind.

“That’s not true,” Dick insisted. “Tell him a joke.” When one engineer told a joke, Rick burst into laughter. A few months later, the computer arrived at the Hoyt home in Massachusetts, and with a switch placed beside his head, Rick typed his first words.

At age thirteen Rick was finally admitted to a regular school. Two years later, after a student athlete became paralyzed in an accident, the school organized a five mile charity run. Rick typed on his computer, “I want to do it.” Dick was a veteran of the U.S. Air Force but was no longer in shape. Still, he agreed to push Rick’s wheelchair in the race. When they crossed the finish line, Rick smiled widely and later wrote to his father, “When I run, I feel like my disability disappears.”

Those words changed everything. Over the next three decades, Dick pushed Rick’s wheelchair through sixty five marathons and two hundred twenty four triathlons, including six Ironman competitions. During cycling segments Rick sat in a special seat attached to the front of his father’s bike, and during swimming events he lay in a small boat tied by rope to his father’s waist.

None of this came easily to Dick. Before his first triathlon he had to learn to swim. “At first I sank like a stone,” he recalled, “and I hadn’t ridden a bicycle since I was six years old.” In 1992 the father and son duo, known as Team Hoyt, ran and cycled across the United States, covering 3,735 miles in forty five days.

Whenever I watch a documentary about them, I experience two reactions. First, I am moved to tears by the greatness of a person who turned hardship into a tremendous gift. Then I ask myself whether such greatness would have emerged without the challenges that shaped his life.

Suffering as a Tool for Spiritual Growth

On Pesach we celebrate the divine liberation of our ancestors from Egyptian slavery more than three thousand years ago. Our sages ask an obvious question. If God has ultimate power, why did He place us into slavery in the first place?

The question becomes even sharper when reading Bereishit. When God promised Avraham that his descendants would inherit the Land of Israel, Avraham wondered how such a promise could be fulfilled if his children would not be worthy. God answered that Avraham’s descendants would be strangers in a foreign land and enslaved there for four hundred years.

Commentators explain that the suffering of slavery would make Avraham’s descendants worthy of inheriting the land. We often think of suffering as punishment, but this passage introduces a different perspective. Suffering can serve as a refining force that enables growth and greatness.

The Jewish Trait of Compassion

What quality did the Jewish people need to acquire through the experience of exile and oppression? The Talmud teaches that the defining trait of the Jewish people is compassion. It even goes so far as to say that if someone lacks compassion, one may question whether they belong to the Jewish people.

Jewish compassion has inspired countless movements aimed at easing the suffering of the vulnerable. This compassion was forged in the crucible of Egyptian slavery.

For this reason, the Seder table is filled with symbols of suffering. The bitter herbs, the saltwater representing tears, the charoset reminding us of the mortar, and even the matzah, which is called both the bread of freedom and the bread of affliction. Can you imagine an independence celebration filled with reminders of past pain? The emphasis on suffering at the Seder teaches that we are not only celebrating redemption but also acknowledging the hardships that led to it.

One of the four Torah obligations of the Seder is to eat maror. We are commanded not merely to look at bitterness but to internalize it. Only by confronting and absorbing the challenges we face can we reach true redemption.

Does Pain Mean Something Is Bad?

Judaism does not glorify suffering. In the High Holiday prayers we ask for forgiveness, but not through suffering or illness. We are not meant to seek hardship. Yet Judaism teaches that the purpose of life is personal and collective freedom, breaking limitations and reaching our full spiritual potential. The process of redemption often includes effort, struggle, and pain.

A common illusion is that a successful life is defined by comfort and pleasure. Therefore anything that disrupts comfort, illness, financial loss, disability, or the death of a loved one, is immediately labeled as bad. Many people define evil simply as what hurts.

In Jewish thought, however, a successful life is measured by inner growth that cultivates deep compassion. The model of comfort produces shallow lives, while the model of growth through challenge produces individuals like Dick Hoyt.

The deeper question behind the Seder is this. What is freedom? Is freedom endless comfort and avoidance of pain, or is it the courage to embrace challenges and transform them into opportunities for growth?

The word Pesach itself implies a leap or a skipping forward. Pesach invites us to shift from seeing hardship as punishment to seeing it as a chance to leap ahead spiritually.

Hardship as a Springboard

At the same time, suffering does not automatically lead to spiritual greatness. The crucial factor is how we respond to the challenges before us.

Hardship plus avoidance leads to spiritual mediocrity.
Hardship plus rejection leads to bitterness.
Hardship plus acceptance leads to spiritual growth.
Using hardship as a springboard leads to spiritual greatness.

One summer, I met a family visiting Jerusalem from Manchester, England. The father, Leon Phillips, had been a successful lawyer before suffering a nearly fatal stroke in his early forties. After years of surgeries he became wheelchair bound, his career faded, and the family faced immense financial and emotional strain. Sitting with them in a hotel lobby, I felt helpless. What could I possibly say to comfort people facing such enormous challenges?

Then an idea came to me. I suggested they visit Dr. Rachamim Melamed Cohen. Dr. Melamed Cohen suffered from ALS, was completely paralyzed, and relied on life support for many years. Despite this, he wrote nine books using only eye movements through a special computer.

They agreed to meet him. The encounter between the two men, both confined to wheelchairs, was extraordinary. Later, Leon’s wife described the visit as deeply inspiring. They felt honored to witness someone living with faith, joy, and determination despite total paralysis.

Dr. Melamed Cohen called the years since his illness began “the best years of my life.” When asked how that could be, he explained that illness forced him to confront challenges he never imagined he could overcome, allowing him to reach depths of compassion he had never known before. His life with ALS was not easy or comfortable, but it was deeply meaningful.

May we learn to transform the bitterness we receive into the sweetness of growth and connection. May the maror we encounter become the charoset that brings deeper understanding and redemption.

Have a kosher and joyful Pesach.