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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