Why Eat Bitter Herbs with Matzah?

In this episode Rabbi Fohrman puts the bitter herbs - maror - under a microscope. Why do we need to hold onto a reminder of our slavery, during a Passover seder that represents freedom? Drawing from a principle of teshuvah - repentance, our hosts carve out an incredible principle in human psychology and what it takes to heal from trauma.

Can't Skip the Bitter (to Get to the Sweet)

(Verse 1) In Egypt the bread held the taste of our tears 

Sourdough—you couldn't tell where it stopped 

The sourness baked into four hundred years 

Until the whole batch was bitter and locked

But God didn't hand us the honey that night

 Didn't say: forget it, here's something new 

He gave us flat bread with bitter alongside— 

Separated. Still there. Still true.

(Chorus) You can't skip the bitter to get to the sweet

 You can't leave the sorrow behind 

The only way forward is going back through it 

One morning at a time

(Verse 2) The manna came later, the honey came slow 

Forty years of daily bread 

Each day God was asking: do you believe now 

that you’re more than the tears that you’ve shed?

And every spring we sit down at the table 

Flat bread and bitter, side by side 

Not because we're still slaves—because we remember 

What it took to come back alive

(Chorus) You can't skip the bitter to get to the sweet 

You can't leave the sorrow behind 

The only way forward is going back through it

One morning at a time

(Bridge) Each day the same question falling

Like bread upon the ground:

Are you more than what was done to you?

Are you more than what you've done?

(Verse 3) Two families broken, made into one 

He said: leave the past where it lies

Build something new now, the future's begun 

But nobody asked who we were before the goodbyes

And forty years later I knocked on her door 

I said there's something I never did right

 I never once asked you to tell me the story 

Of who held your hand through the long, long night

(Chorus) Tell me about your mother 

What was it like when she was yours? 

Tell me about your mother I should have asked you this before

You can't skip the bitter to get to the sweet 

You can't leave the sorrow behind

 The only way forward is going back through it 

And that's what I'm doing this time

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