To uncover the code hidden in the Passover story, we need to begin long before the Exodus from Egypt.
Once upon a time, in ancient Babylon, there was a cunning and tyrannical king. He ruled over our ancestors—who, of course, were not yet called our ancestors—and over everyone else as well. His name was Nimrod, and he ruled in Mesopotamia, the cradle of human civilization.
Until then, life had been relatively simple and comfortable. Nimrod symbolizes the ego that began to develop within human beings. Suddenly, people started feeling uncomfortable with each other.
In today’s terms, the neighbor’s grass suddenly seems greener. We notice that they bought a luxury car, a new refrigerator, and so on. Day by day, we stop feeling close to each other until even saying “hello” requires a great effort. Nimrod, the cunning ego, whispers all sorts of negative thoughts into our ears about other people. Its rule follows the principle of divide and conquer. It fuels friction, jealousy, resentment, and hatred among us, all so that it can dominate and subjugate everyone beneath it.
Relationships deteriorate until we no longer understand each other. In the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, the tower of ego, this is described as God “confounding their language.” Everyone speaks their own language, understanding and seeing only their personal interests.
One of Nimrod’s advisers was Terah, a highly respected man, one of the region’s religious priests. He sold idols and distributed charms. People viewed him as someone close to higher powers, someone knowledgeable, and they came to him for advice. Terah supported Nimrod’s worldview, which was simply to let the ego go wild. Competition will develop us and lead us to a better place.
But Terah had a son who began thinking differently. That son was Abraham.
Abraham understood that the ego’s growth would eventually bring about widespread ruin. He taught people that they needed to rise above the ego and build mutual connection. They should remain united above everything that separates them, like loving brothers.
Abraham’s view directly opposed Nimrod’s. After all, if people get along well with one another, they have no need for a king to organize their lives. They become harder to control, manipulate, and exploit.
Here, for the first time in human history, two distinct paths of development became clear: development according to the ego or development above it.
Egoistic development is natural. We fight, and the strongest wins, profits, and rules. It is, broadly speaking, the American Dream. Development above the ego, however, views the ego merely as a “help against us.” It develops within human nature not to separate us, but to compel us to build stronger mutual connections above it.
Every rejection we feel toward others, every desire to rise above them or exploit others for our own benefit, is an invitation to act in the exact opposite way, to strengthen connection, unity, and equality.
What do we gain from doing so?
This was precisely the question people asked Abraham. He explained that acting according to our egoistic nature leaves us at the level of an animal, driven by whatever impulses arise within us. Developing as a human being means examining those impulses, understanding why they arise, and discovering the process through which we can rise above them.
Such work leads to the discovery of the force that created and governs the ego. The aspiration to connect with others above the ego, with the aim to love, care about, and give to them, we come to know the force that animates us through egoistic desires.
This is called Abraham’s revelation of God. It is the discovery of the primordial force that sustains our nature. Incidentally, in Hebrew Gematria, “Elohim” (God) has the same numerical value as “HaTeva” (Nature), which emphasizes that they are one and the same.
Abraham publicly shared his discoveries, which naturally displeased Nimrod. Nimrod ordered him to stop, tried to force him to adopt his worldview, imprisoned him, and even cast him into a fiery furnace. Eventually, Abraham left the region with his students, and they established a separate community, as Maimonides describes in The Book of Knowledge.
In the land of Canaan, the group developed further, becoming what is known as the House of Abraham, the House of Isaac, and the House of Jacob.
Over the years, many changes took place in the group. The ego grew within each person. There were disputes, problems, and various challenges, yet they continually made efforts to overcome them.
The key was maintaining their connection, their mutual responsibility, and their commitment to support each other above the ego.
Without support from our environment, this is impossible. We need to constantly observe what arises within, how we view others, how we think, and what actually happens inside. By monitoring desires and thoughts, the heart and mind, we advance to understand life and sense its source.
We connect to the source from which the ego emerges and comes to know both the ego and its opposite. By transforming the egoistic force, we reach the force of bestowal and begin to feel a unique flow of vitality passing through us, a greater dimension of life, a spirit, a new level of existence above the ego and above the physical body with which we identify.
This is how the group developed.
During the era of Jacob’s sons, who symbolize different methods of working above the ego, the central conflict was between Joseph and his brothers. Joseph represented a more advanced method of working with the ego, one that his brothers had not yet attained, and therefore they disagreed with him.
The conflict revealed a greater ego, and correspondingly a famine appeared in the land of Canaan.
After Jacob’s sons descended into Egypt, they lived according to Joseph’s method of properly using the ego, and things went well for them. Later, Joseph died. His death symbolizes that his method had exhausted its usefulness because the ego continued growing, and Joseph’s approach could no longer manage it.
In the biblical narrative, this is described as: “A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph,” and he began to enslave the Israelites.
The new ego that emerged in them had a cruel nature. Its name was Pharaoh. The Israelites felt that it prevented them from living in mutuality. Even when they wished to positively connect, they found themselves incapable of doing so.
“It was hard for them, and the children of Israel sighed because of the labor,” as the Bible describes it.
At that point, a new force emerged among them called Moses. He explained that a special upgrade was needed in their method of working with the ego. They had to cooperate with the force, God, which continually creates new egoistic desires within them. By not doing so, they would never escape Pharaoh.
First, however, they had to feel that this ego was truly burying them alive. This realization unfolds through the process of the Ten Plagues. Then, at midnight, from a state of complete helplessness and the feeling that they cannot free themselves from the immense ego—from the hatred that swallows them like a sinking swamp—the moment of escape arrives.
Moses, the inner force within us that has already connected with God, then leads us forward. According to his instruction, we take from the Egyptians the vessels we will later use, or in other words, the egoistic desires that we will eventually correct, and then we leave Egypt.
This is the night described in the Passover Haggadah, the state of exiting the rule of the ego.
The more we aspire to connect with each other, the farther we move away from Egypt. Internally, this is not about geographical movement but about inner processes. As development continues, we approach Mount Sinai. The word “Har” (mountain) relates to “Hirhurim” (thoughts), and “Sinai” is related to “Sinah” (hatred). The ego awakens in us on a new level. Arguments, calculations, and great hatred emerge, and then we become forced to make a decision: Despite everything, are you willing to connect and become guarantors for each other? If so, you will receive the Torah, a method for continued positive development. If not, this will be your burial place.
The Israelites succeeded in rising above their divisions. They agreed to unite “as one man with one heart.” Their connection reached the level of the collective soul, within which they experienced spiritual life, the higher reality, what is also called “the world to come.”
If we conclude the Passover story, the night of the Exodus from Egypt is considered a birth into a new reality, a departure from the rule of the ego to an encounter with the eternal and perfect higher force, the qualities of which are bestowal and love.
Based on “New Life 154 – The Passover Seder, Part 1” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.