Last Thursday, April 11, was a very exciting day. I had been waiting for weeks. Israel was scheduled to land the Beresheet rocket on the moon. Only three other countries had successfully accomplished this feat, the U.S., Russia, and China. And now Israel, through the non-profit organization SpaceIL, funded by Jews from throughout the world, was going to join this exclusive club. We displayed the livestream of the landing on screens throughout the school as I watched together with my students. We watched as the altitude gauge went lower and lower as the rocket was descending toward the moon. And then there was confusion. I was not sure what had happened since it was time to pray the Mincha service. After Mincha, we discovered snippets of what had occurred. A selfie taken from the rocket of the Israeli flag, Am Yisrael Chai in Hebrew, and the inscription “Small Country, Big Dreams” with the surface of the moon looming large in the background. Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu was speaking. And slowly it became clear. The Beresheet moon lander had crashed. It had lost communication with mission control when it was 150 meters from the moon’s surface, less than two football fields from its destination. One of the engines had failed. Beresheet did get onto the moon but it crashed into the moon. A friend of mine texted me, saying, “That was awkward.” So what’s the message to us?
I believe the message can be found in one of my favorite parts of the Passover Seder. Toward the beginning of the Seder when we are famished after a day of Passover preparations, having not eaten chametz or matzah for many hours, we get to eat…a small potato. Or perhaps your family custom is to eat a piece of parsley or maybe an onion. Of course, I am describing the third item in the order of the seder, karpas. When we are so hungry and still have hours to go until the meal, we eat a small vegetable dipped into salt water. What’s the meaning of this karpas? The common answer given in most Haggadahs is that the reason for eating karpas is so the children should ask. Not a very satisfying answer.
There is a fascinating Rashi in the beginning of the story of Yosef in the book of Bereishit that might shed light on this. When Yosef’s father Yaakov gives him the ketonet pasim, the coat of many colors, the technicolor dreamcoat, Rashi comments on the meaning of this ketonet pasim. He connects it to a verse in Megillat Esther that describes the draperies in the king’s palace as karpas, a Persian word translated as fine linen cloth. Similarly, the ketonet pasim, like the karpas, describes a garment made of fine cloth.
Maimonides actually says that we don’t dip the karpas into salt water, we dip it into charoset, that favorite food from the Passover Seder made of a paste of nuts and fruits, meant to recall the bricks built by the slaves in Egypt, and red wine, symbolizing the Jewish blood spilled during their many years of bondage. To this day, Yemenite Jews following the Rambam dip their karpas into charoset. Dipping the karpas into charoset or even into salt water recalls the story of what Yosef’s brothers did to him when he was sent by his father Yaakov to check on their welfare. The brothers threw off Yosef’s multi-colored coat, his ketonet pasim, and then dipped the coat into blood, later telling their father Yaakov that Yosef is no longer. Tarof taraf Yosef. Yosef must have been devoured by wild beasts. He is gone.
What’s the connection between the Yosef story and the Passover Seder? Why would we evoke the story of Yosef right at the beginning of the Seder? Yosef is a great story. It’s a story with many ups and downs and an ultimately bittersweet conclusion. Yosef is a promising young man, his father’s favorite, possessing many great qualities boding well for his future leadership potential. Then his brothers throw him into a pit and he is sold into a life of bondage. He becomes a slave in Potiphar’s house, quickly rising to the position of chief steward of this important government minister’s household. Then he’s accused of a crime and he winds up in another pit, a jail cell in Egypt. In jail, he is once again beloved by the prison warden, becoming his trusted assistant. Yosef interprets the baker and butler’s dreams, asking the butler, whom he predicts will soon be released, that he should put in a good word for him with Pharaoh. Then Yosef languishes in prison for two more years. Eventually Yosef gets out of jail and becomes the prince of Egypt. The brothers arrive and he is ultimately reunited with his father Yaakov. Then even when Yosef is the prince, he can never leave Egypt. He has to beg Pharaoh even for temporary leave to bury his father Yaakov. Yosef dies in Egypt, and only years later upon the Exodus are his bones taken to the Promised Land. There are many ups and downs in the Yosef story. Great triumphs followed quickly by even greater disappointments. This is not like the story of the Exodus, which appears to be a more linear progression from bondage to redemption.
What is the message of inserting the Yosef story into the beginning of the Seder celebrating our physical and spiritual freedom? It’s the message of the rocket that landed on the moon but really crashed into the moon. It’s the message that Prime Minister Netanyahu said in English, the only words he spoke in English, after this great disappointment. “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Those were his exact words. Sometimes, even when one is trying to accomplish something great, actually not sometimes, all the time, one first must experience many setbacks.
Rav Tzadok Hakohen of Lublin describes this as a hallmark of the destiny of the Jewish people.
“But Israel falls and stands, as it says, ‘Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy! Though have fallen, I rise again.’ This is that through the act of falling, this is the reason that one rises. This is the language of Chazal, ‘Yerida l’tzorech aliya, downward motion for the sake of upward motion.’ That through the descent one can reach an even greater ascent.
Likewise it says, ‘Seven times the righteous person falls and gets up.’ That specifically through falling, he is able to get up.”
Everyone on a path to greatness experiences many setbacks. SpaceIL has already announced their beginning work on their next rocket, which they hope to successfully land on the moon. This rocket has been dubbed Beresheet 2, but many hope it will be renamed Shemot. The second book of the Torah. The book of our redemption. Maybe they will be able to redeem themselves after the crash landing on the moon. If they do, it will be because the setbacks faced were actually the way to learn for the future, to grow, just like in the Passover story. We wouldn’t have gotten to Egypt and we wouldn’t have gotten out of Egypt, and we wouldn’t have gotten the Torah on Har Sinai if the brothers hadn’t first thrown Yosef into a pit, taken his ketonet pasim, his many-colored coat, and dipped it into blood. That’s why we begin the seder by recalling the story of Yosef. When we take our karpas and dip it into salt water or maybe even into charoset, we recall the fact that every redemption, every geula, starts with a setback. A yerida l’tzorech aliya. First we have to descend to the depths so we can ultimately ascend to great heights. First we have to crash land into the moon and then hopefully we will soon soft land onto the moon.
You can read a source sheet for this article at: https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/169184.
By Rabbi Tzvi Pittinsky
Rabbi Tzvi Pittinsky is the director of educational technology at Yeshivat Frisch.
