The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began on the first night of Pesach 5703 (1943). The Aish Kodesh was present and presumably involved in some capacity, but no record of his teachings from that occasion has survived to reach us. Around 1930, however, he wrote a number of insights into the text of the Haggadah.
In the Haggadah, we read that in every generation a person must see himself as if he himself went out of Mitzrayim. The Aish Kodesh connects this mitzvah with the experience of Adam HaRishon after he violated the mitzvah of Hashem. When Adam realized the enormity of what he had done, he tried to hide from Hashem, and Hashem said to him, “Ayeka? Where are you?” Certainly, Hashem knew where Adam was all along, so this was actually a reprimand of Adam and a warning to him about what he had become and was becoming.
Adam’s essence had abandoned his body, so he was no longer conscious of the godliness that had inhered in him while in Gan Eden. Adam had become an empty shell of himself and was turning into an animal. Yet he answered Hashem (Bereishit 3:10), “I heard Your voice in the Garden, and I was terrified because I am naked, so I hid.” Contrary to the simple understanding of this text, the Aish Kodesh writes that this was exactly the correct answer, and it signified the beginning of Adam’s return to the proper service of Hashem in this world. As it says, “The beginning of wisdom is terror before Hashem” (Tehillim 111:10). The Hebrew word for nakedness in this pasuk, also used to describe the serpent, can also mean wisdom. Adam was saying, “Here I am, Hashem. I am wise because I fear you, but I hid because I am without merit – without mitzvot.”
When Bnei Yisrael went out of Mitzrayim, we were like Adam after he was banished from the Garden. We had our terror before Hashem; we had the wisdom of the Avot – but we had no mitzvot and no experience of the presence of Hashem in our lives or in our souls. The true servant of Hashem wants to be filled with the joy and excitement of doing Hashem’s will. Instead of being a denizen of this earth, hiding like an animal, running about without purpose, he becomes a vector for meaning in the world so that the world lives in him. This is a second meaning of the Hebrew word for generation in the Haggadah – dor, also deriving from the root meaning “to reside in.” The Aish Kodesh teaches that in every generation, each and every Jew should be filled with the inspiration and conscious sense of godliness in himself so that the world lives in his consciousness. In this way, each generation has the potential to be like the generation that went out of Mitzrayim.
We will soon see miracles and experience the might of Hashem as He liberates us from our afflictions and lays low those who torment us. Every individual who was present for the splitting of the Yam Suf, even the lowliest maidservant, saw more wondrous sights than Yechezkel the Navi. So it will be, soon in our time if we can become dwelling places for the world, when Hashem redeems us from the final galut.