If you want to make a change, you must do something different. And if you want to learn something new, you must create a new experience.
These are the two lessons that combine in the singular experience of the Passover holiday. They equally apply to any other experience we have that disrupts our routine while putting us in a new situation.
(1) To Learn Something, You Must Experience It
We live in an era with no shortage of access to information. In fact, we generally have too much information.
Information often gets confused with knowledge, but they are not the same. Knowledge is not something you can look up in your notes, through a Google search, or ask Artificial Intelligence. True knowledge lives within you; it’s embodied.
The best way to learn something so that you really know it — and embody its lessons — is through experience.
Creating this experience is one of the roles of the Passover Seder.The central commandment of Passover is to tell the story of the Exodus.
We don’t just read a story about the Exodus; we reenact it through the practice of various rituals: eating matzah, bitter herbs, and vegetables dipped in salt water help us experience the bitterness of the tears.
Having this experience helps us create embodied knowledge of the Exodus that is more powerful than any simple retelling of the story.
This is one of the powers of ritual.
(2) To See Something, You Must Step Out of It
For those who fully observe it, Passover the most disruptive holiday in the Jewish calendar: an 8-day period during which we refrain from eating anything made with the five classic grains — wheat, barley, spelt, oats, and rye — as well as legumes and various other foods.
We change out all of our dishes for special Passover dishes.
Passover will shake up your routine.
That’s the point. It’s meant to uproot us from our status quo, the way the ancient Jewish people were uprooted from their lives.
If you want to truly see something, you must step outside of it and away from it.
Sometimes we can’t fully appreciate something until we don’t have it anymore.
Sometimes we don’t realize what we have been enslaved to until we break from our established routine.
By stepping away and trying new things, you may realize you no longer need certain things in your life. Or, you may realize just how much value you get from those things.
Stepping back or taking a break from an established routine can be the best way to reenergize yourself to step back in.
It can help you maintain consistency.
Unlike the Exodus, our uprooting doesn’t have to be forever.
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