Today is a special 2/1 class, which will be shared with both the Ahavat Yisrael and Daily Bitachon groups. Yetziat Mitzrayim is the source for all of our Emuna and Bitachon, and the end goal of the night of the Seder is Hakarat HaTov/Appreciation and recognition of the kindness that Hashem bestows upon us. That is why we say Dayenu as a part of Maggid . We list all of the things that Hashem does for us, and we have Hallel/the song of praise, as part of Maggid . Maggid is not over when the story is finished- it’s over with the words Ga’al Yisrael- God redeemed us. Hallel is a part of Maggid , because simply telling the story would not be a complete job. We have to tell the story and feel like we got out, to the point that we sing Hallel and we are overflowing with gratitude. That has to be the feeling of the night. What’s more, as we discussed yesterday, the entire Haggadah is based on four pesukim that come from the story of Bikurim , which is the Mitzvah of the first fruits, that we offer to Hashem and say Thank You for. With baskets in hand, we appreciate the land that God gave us. Aside from the fact that these four pesukim are the shortest version of the story of the Exodus, they were chosen because it is also the story of gratitude. That is the end goal. The rabbis tell us that if we go through the story of the night and we only come out with Emuna and bitachon/faith and reliance, that is not enough. We have to walk out with a feeling of gratitude, and ultimately, a feeling of being servants of Hashem, because we owe Him. The first commandment is Anochi Hashem Elokecha, I am Hashem your God God, Asher Hotzeti Me’Eretz Mitzrayim/That took you out of Egypt . We don’t just say that God is our God, but we add that He took us out of Egypt , because we serve God because we owe God. We have to feel that on the night of the Seder. And we shouldn’t wake up the next morning with the attitude that we can’t get up at 8am to pray because we finished late the night before. We have to feel like we want to get up even earlier, at 6:30am, to learn at 7, because God just took us out of Egypt. That has to be the feeling on the morning after the Seder. This relates to Ahavat Yisrael, man and his fellow, in that the Gemarah says, Whoever denies the goodness that his friend does, will end up denying what God does. If you don’t have gratitude to people, you will not have gratitude to God. I remember over 20 years ago, Danny Massry brought out this point when we were discussing the concept of atheism. We had been discussing why respecting your father and mother is on the right side of the Ten Commandments, which is about man and God. It should be on the other side of the Ten Commandments where it talks about man and man. The commentaries answer that respecting your parents is an issue between man and God because if you aren’t going to respect your parents, you aren’t going to respect God. If you don’t respect the physical father that you have, and the physical mother that gave birth to you and raised you, you aren’t going to respect the Father that you don’t see. Danny commented that people are not atheists because they don’t see or believe in God. He pointed out that they don’t visit their parents other than on Mothers’ Day or Fathers’ Day. They aren’t atheists, they are ingrates .The source of atheism is not really atheism. The source is a lack of gratitude. They don’t want to say thank you so they deny God. The proof of this is that the parent that they do see, they aren’t grateful to either. That is how Ahavat Yisrael (which is between man and man, and loving your friend for what he has done for you or what he is) connects to the Mitzvah of Yetziat Mitzrayim. Yetziat Mitzrayim has to cause us to come out with more perfected Middot between man and man, because Man and God, and man and man are one and the same. Rav Wolbe says that if a man’s heart is closed, and he only sees himself, and he doesn’t see out of his heart, then he doesn’t see other people and he does not see God. Once you open the window of your heart and see out, you will see God and you will see people. Paroah said, “ Who is God that I should listen to him? “ This was also the Paroah who forgot about Yosef. How could he have opressed the Jewish people if their grandfather saved his country? Where was his gratitude? Paroah did not have gratitude for people and so eventually he came to deny God. There is an important connection between gratitude and religion. That is why we have to work on the middah of HaKarat HaTov. The whole Yetziat Mitzrayim is about HaKarat HaTov to the nth degree. Rabbi Friedlander asks why it is that Moshe had to be careful not to bring a plague on the Nile (which saved him) or on the sand (which protected him). Why did he have to have HaKarat HaTov to inanimate objects? Although Hakarat HaTov is more important for the person feeling it than the person receiving it, we do see that great rabbis have thrown things, such as their hot water boilers, out on the street. Hasn’t that boiler served the rabbi for so long? How could he throw it out? The answer is, of course you can throw out a boiler, because that is not a halacha. So why did Moshe have to be so careful? Because Moshe was bringing us the lesson of Yetziat Mitzrayim, which was all about HaKarat HaTov. We have to be very careful with this Mitzvah. In Rav Chaim Kanievsky’s sefer Orchot Yosher (page 214), which we have been quoting from, there is a story about his rebbe, Rav Michel Yehuda Lefkowitz, one of the Gedolei HaDor. Rav Chaim told this story at Rav Michel Yehuda’s funeral. Rav Michel Yehuda once asked Rav Chaim to borrow a sefer . He explained that his father had been a God-fearing man, but he did not serve as a Rabbi or Rosh Yeshiva. He was a simple working man. Often, when walking together in the street, Rav Michel Yehuda explained, his father used to teach him lessons in mussar . He would say, “Do you see that man walking there? That man is a shoemaker. He is working man just like me. And yet he has a son that is a Talmid Chacham. You too can become a Talmid Chacham even though your father is not a rabbi. Don’t be afraid. Learn well, be diligent, and dedicate yourself, and you will grow and become a Talmid Chacham.” Rav Michel Yehuda then added that he’d heard that the son of a shoemaker wrote a sefer Brit Eitan . “ I heard you have a copy. I would like to learn that sefer as a gesture of gratitude to the author. I have Hakarat HaTov to him because without him even realizing it, he inspired me to learn. Because he was the son of the shoemaker and he learned, my father was encouraged that I too could become a Talmid Chacham. I got strength and inspiration from him. Rav Chaim, after recounting that story, added that he too had to learn the sefer, “ Because Rav Michel Yehuda Leftkowitz was my rebbe, If not for him I would not be who I am.” So 750,000 people came to the funeral of Rav Chaim, and Rav Chaim Kanievsky became great because of his rabbi, Rav Michel Yehuda, and it all came from a shoemaker’s son. We all owe him Hakarat HaTov. How far does Hakarat HaTov go?! The famous Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz once said that when Moshe Rabbenu came to Yitro, his daughters reported that an Egyptian man had saved them. But Moshe wasn’t Egyptian, so why did they say an Egyptian and not a Jew ? The Midrash answers that it’s because if Moshe hadn’t killed the Egyptian, he never would have become a fugitive and would not have saved them. They had to ultimately go back and be grateful to the Egyptian man that Moshe killed, which caused Moshe to be a fugitive, which is what saved them. The mashal for this, says the Midrash, is a baby that is drowning in a river. A man nearby then gets stung by a hornet and goes running into the river. He sees the baby and saves it. When the baby is returned to his mother, the mother says, “You saved my baby!“ And they says, “ No, it was not a man, it was a hornet that saved your baby.” We, the Jewish people, owe the shoemaker. That is how far Hakarat HaTov goes. We need to feel that trait between people, and ultimately to God, because it is a package deal. Have a wonderful day.