By Rabbi Benny Berlin
On Pesach night, we are commanded to eat marror. The Haggadah tells us clearly why—because the Egyptians embittered the lives of our ancestors with backbreaking labor, mortar, and bricks and every kind of strenuous work in the fields. Chazal teach that if someone swallows the marror without tasting it, they have not fulfilled the mitzvah. The reason for that is that the essence of the mitzvah of marror is not just eating something bitter—but actually tasting the bitterness—chewing it and letting it sting your tongue.
Marror is Hashem’s invitation to stop numbing ourselves. It is a call to feel the bitterness of living disconnected from who we really are. Pushing that pain away with distractions, work, entertainment, and noise is easy. But the only path to redemption starts with embracing the discomfort and facing the pain honestly.
The Egyptians did not start with whips and beatings. They began with soft words, peh rach, gentle speech. Invitations and requests and slowly, without realizing, our ancestors were trapped in slavery. The tragedy was not just the labor. It was that we stopped feeling bitter. We forgot we were supposed to be free. We got used to it.
Then Pharaoh died. The Torah says, “It was during those many years that the king of Egypt died. BneiYisrael moaned on account of the work and cried out. Their pleas rose up to G-d” (Sh’mos 2:23). With Pharaoh’s death, something shifted. For the first time in years, the people paused. Without the pressure of his active rule, they were able to stop and feel. It was at that point they moaned, cried, and realized what was happening to them. The bitterness returned.
And that is when the redemption began.
The Torah says, “Hashem heard their anguished groan and Hashem remembered His covenant with Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov,” (Sh’mos 2:24).
In our generation, many of us do not feel the bitterness. We swallow the marror whole. That is the real exile. We have grown numb. We are distracted.
Even now, while the war in Israel continues, while our precious hostages are still being held, while our soldiers are putting their lives on the line every day, it is frightening how easy it is to stop feeling. To stop noticing. To become habituated to the pain of our people. But marror comes to shake us out of that. It reminds us not to look away. To let the hurt touch us again.
The beginning of geulah is tasting the marror. Realizing something is wrong. Knowing deep down that this is not how life is supposed to feel. That I am not where I should be.
That is why Seder night is full of contradictions. We lean like royalty. We drink four cups of wine. And we eat marror. Because we are both. We are still in exile, but we are royalty. We are children of kings, tasting bitterness, remembering we do not belong in slavery.
That is also why we hide the larger piece of matzah for the afikoman. Because the greater part of who we are is still hidden. We have to search for that hidden piece. But to begin searching, we have to know it is missing.
If life feels sweet all the time and nothing tastes bitter, and if we are never uncomfortable with how far we are from Hashem, we will not cry out. We will not daven with our full hearts. We will never really ask to be taken out.
But if we chew the marror, feel it deeply, and let ourselves be honest and raw, then we can scream. Then we can turn to Hashem and say, “Get us out of here.” That bitterness becomes our prayer.
Feeling and experiencing that bitterness awakens the soul. It sends the message to Hashem and to our minds that we have not given up. It means we remember that we are children of kings, and deep down, we long to return to who we truly are. That longing is the first spark of redemption. When we can still taste the bitterness of exile, we are already on the path home.
Rabbi Benny Berlin is the rabbi of BACH Jewish Center in Long Beach, New York. For more information, visit: BACHLongBeach.com.
