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The weather hovers around 65 degrees, the trees are blossoming, and kosher brisket producers are the busiest they are all year - Passover is here!

If there's one overriding theme in the Passover experience, it's children. It is the children who begin the formal part of the Seder by asking the four questions. The 'four sons' are central to the Torah's Passover story, and we have numerous Passover traditions geared exclusively at catching the little ones' attention.

This focus on children, while serving the obvious goal of educating the next generation, is applicable and aimed at all of us, of all ages. For it is meant to bring out who we really are - to 'schlep' our true, deepest selves out into the open.

Children help us bring out a deeper part of ourselves - our true selves. When we see a small child happily strolling down the street, who can help but smile? They serve as mirrors; mirrors we wish accurately depicted our reflection back. We look at a child's face - innocent, pure, sincere, and wish our world was as sincere as they are. 

We smile when we see a child because we feel a kinship with them, much more than the kinship we feel with someone in the same career, the same neighborhood or a fan of the same sports team. For at heart, we are indeed more similar to them than to the others.

At the core of each of us is a beautiful Neshama. This shining Godly soul knows that the true reality, the true value in life, is kindness, caring, Torah study, family time, a Mitzvah or holiday. This is a recognition we are all born with.

Over time, as the years roll on from childhood onward, that yearning for goodness and kindness, that recognition of truth, can be overrun with the reality of twenty first century living. But at our core, that sincerity never leaves - it remains, above all else, who we really are.

On Passover we reach for our inner soul, for that special Neshama. We ask our children to help guide us there, to show us the way. We ask them to help bring forth in each of us that child who has never left. We ask them to help us rediscover the shining Jewish soul which yearns for nothing more than to care for others, share, lend a helping hand, do another Mitzvah or celebrate another Jewish holiday.

So this Passover, when the Haggadah tells us that 'Here the children ask the four questions', let us all say, together, 'Mah nishtana halayla hazeh mikol haleilot' - Why is this night different from all other nights'. The answer to that question lies deep inside each and every one of us.

Wishing you and yours a very happy Passover,

Rabbi Avrohom