We all want to share deep and thoughtful ideas at the Seder in order to enhance the experience. I hope this dvar Torah will aid you on your journey toward a meaningful, transformative Seder night.
Wine on the Seder Night… Really?
Pesach is a spiritual time, where we connect to some of the deepest themes of Judaism. Why then do we spend the night drinking wine? We see repeatedly that wine is a dangerous and damaging entity, connected to many infamous sins. According to one opinion, the eitz hada’at was a grape vine. Immediately after the mabul, Noach became intoxicated, repeating Adam’s original sin. Lot and his daughters erred with wine. According to one opinion, Nadav and Avihu’s sin was performing the avodah while intoxicated. If wine has so many destructive consequences, why do we spend our Seder night drinking wine?
Nothing in the physical world is objectively good or evil, rather, everything has the potential to be used for either good or evil. The choice is solely up to you! Electricity is neither good nor bad. An outlet can be used to charge your appliances, but it can also give you an electric shock. The same applies to money: It can be used to enable Torah learning, but it can also be used to fund destruction and chaos. A charismatic personality can be used to inspire others to grow, or to seduce them down a twisted path. Everything in this world is merely potential, waiting to be used. Evil, therefore, is really the misuse of potential, when we choose to use an object for something other than its true purpose. Evil is the breakdown and corruption of good. This is why the Hebrew word for evil is “ra,” which means brokenness or fragmentation.
Hashem created the world in this way so that we can have free will. We get to choose whether to use things for their true purpose, actualizing their potential, or to misuse them, getting pulled into the clutches of evil. This choice between good and evil is magnified as the power of something increases. The more power there is, the more potential there is. For example, a 220-watt outlet can either charge your phone, or give you a small electric shock. But 20,000 watts can either light up your neighborhood or electrocute you. The more power, the more potential. Of course, this results in an important principle: The value in any power is only in as much as it can be controlled. Otherwise, the more power you have, the more destruction you will have, as we often see with nuclear energy and money. Just think about giving a child the power to cross the street by himself. When do you give him such power? Only when he has the ability to control it, to know when not to cross the street.
The Vilna Gaon explains that wine is the greatest paradigm of physical potential. On the one hand, it is clearly dangerous, and its misuse often leads to utter disaster. But when used properly, it elevates you. Wine is able to open up the mind, allowing it to transcend its normal limitations. As Chazal explain, “nichnas yayin yatza sod,” when wine enters, secrets are revealed. (Both yayin and sod have the gematria of 70.) Wine opens up your consciousness to a deeper level of experience and understanding that transcends the revealed level of reality.
The spiritual nature of wine is also evident in its physical nature. Everything physical rots, withers and decays with time, such as the human body and food. Wine, however, only improves with time. Furthermore, as R’ Shlomo Zalman Aurbach explains, when it comes to most foods and drinks, the more you have, the less you want; you become full and lose your appetite. With wine, however, the opposite is true: the more you have, the more you desire.
This is why we have wine at every point of kedushah—at every point where we want to uplift the physical. It’s our way of showing that we’re taking the physical, something that has the potential for both spirituality and spiritual emptiness, and using it for the good. We therefore make Kiddush on wine on Shabbos, on Yom Tov, at a wedding, at a brit milah, and for other such holy celebrations.
We drink wine at the Seder in order to uplift the night of Pesach. We are uplifting our Seder experience, but we are tapping into a larger experience as well. The Ramban explains that the grand miracles of Pesach are meant to instill within us the understanding that not only are the open reversals of nature miraculous, but the day-to-day workings of nature are miraculous as well. Hashem performed outstanding miracles when taking us out of Mitzrayim, but the entire world of nature is a constant miracle upheld by Hashem as well. This means that every aspect of this physical world is infused with Godliness, with the potential for spirituality, and we can therefore uplift every single thing we encounter to a state of holiness. As we relive the Pesach story at the Seder, we learn about the inherent spirituality present within every facet of the physical world. What better way to do this than with wine?
Reb Shmuel Reichman is an author, educator, speaker and coach who has lectured internationally on topics of Torah, psychology and leadership. He is the founder and CEO of Self-Mastery Academy, the transformative online self-development course that is based on the principles of high-performance psychology and Torah.
After obtaining his bachelor’s degree from Yeshiva University, he received his master’s degree in Jewish Thought from the Bernard Revel Graduate School, in addition to studying at RIETS and Azrieli. He is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Chicago, and has also spent a year studying at Harvard through the Ivy Plus Exchange Scholar Program, completing graduate coursework there as part of his PhD.
To find more inspirational lectures, videos and articles from Shmuel, or to learn more about Self-Mastery Academy, visit his website, ShmuelReichman.com.
