On Pesach, our seder begins with karpas, dipping a vegetable into saltwater. Rav Kook sees karpas as part of the beginning stages of our redemption, potentiality being stirred, geulah being awoken. Our eventual redemption from Mitzrayim was not freedom for freedom’s sake, not freedom just for respite from harsh conditions. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, zt”l, lifts up the idea about yetzias Mitzrayim, that our liberation was not a freedom “from,” but a freedom “to.” To let loose the shackles of our enslavement in Mitzrayim, so that we could be free for avodas Hashem. A redemption that we are supposed to feel contemporaneously as if we were personally being redeemed from Mitzrayim.
Understanding this foundational orientation of a Jew, perhaps it makes that much more sense that Chazal in Pesachim 114b say that karpas is instituted to awaken the curiosity of the children, Rashi explaining that it’s meant k’dei sheyishalu hatinokot – to prompt the questions that open the night of sippur yetzias Mitzrayim; the story of our redemption, which ultimately led to the giving of the Torah and the formation of us as a people, a people whose ultimate purpose is to serve Hashem. The karpas initiates a curiosity about our redemption and mission in this world. This aligns with the Sefas Emes, which comments that karpas represents the first stage of avodas Hashem. May this year’s karpas develop into an avodas Hashem that leads to our ultimate redemption, im yirtzeh Hashem, next year in Yerushalayim.
