The Shabbat before Pesach is called “Shabbat Hagadol” (The Great Shabbat). Our sages relate how, on the Shabbat before our ancestors left Egypt, they designated lambs for the upcoming Passover sacrifice. They told the Egyptians that they had been instructed by G-d to offer up a sacrifice because the night of the redemption was approaching. They also told them that on that night all their firstborn males would die.
Upon hearing this the Egyptians pleaded with Pharaoh to liberate the Jews, but in his stubbornness he refused. A civil war between the firstborn Egyptians and their civil forces erupted and many died in that battle. For the Jews this revolt was titled “a great miracle” and this is why it’s commemorated every year before Passover.
We would ask “what was the miracle?” The war was a natural occurrence! “What is there to celebrate?”
The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson OBM, explains that the miracle didn’t lie on the outcome of the battle, but in the battle itself. The firstborns in Egypt represented the elite of their society. Due to this war it happened to be that it was the first time in which those who were against G-d allied with G-d by being those who opposed the Jewish Exodus to aiding the Jewish Exodus.
This was the miracle, A GREAT MIRACLE, very rarely does the natural order transform itself to the point that it desires and embraces the change G-d wants.
So on this Shabbat instead of silencing the world, we celebrate it by highlighting its divine origin by recognizing that the week day was also created by G-d and Shabbat infuses it with the vitality it needs to exist.
Shabbat Shalom
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