The Pesach offering was an opportunity for us to do something that required a great deal of faith and courage. It is well known that the lamb was one of the many gods that the Egyptians worshipped.

Imagine a little 'yiddele' who all his life was a slave to the Egyptians and now he had to confront his masters. Here he is walking home with a little lamb on his shoulders and an Egyptian stops him on the street and says to him, "What are you doing with that lamb"? And this little yid had to tell him, "I'm bringing this lamb home because in four days from now we are going to eat it as a Pesach sacrifice." He had to find all his courage and gather all his faith and publicly proclaim that he was now going to kill the god of his oppressing slave master, for now he truly believed and knew that there is only one G-d, the G-d of Israel.

Imagine hundreds of thousands of Jews walking the Streets of Pitom and Raamses, all pulling these little lambs on leashes in the face of their taskmasters. Imagine the sound of a half million lambs in the streets of Egypt. Imagine the traffic. Imagine the conversations of the Egyptians who for some reason stood at the side of the road watching their pagan god walk to the slaughter.

We didn’t cook the lamb in water, we roasted it. The barbecue like aroma of 600,000 lambs filled the streets of Egypt. We didn’t dice it, make soup out of it, make lamb chops, or in any way disguise it – we kept it whole so that all the Egyptians can see what is happening to their gods. We were tortured slaves for long enough. Now we were free!

The miracle was a twofold one. The small miracle was that the slaves were not killed on the spot. The oppressors were so overcome with fear that they did not dare to try to stop the Jews from killing their god.

The big miracle was that the slaves, the oppressed and downtrodden found their faith and their courage. They were able to stand up for their beliefs and for truth.

It was this act of faith that triggered the Geula. In recognition of this, the Shabbos before Pesach became known as Shabbat Hagadol, The Great Shabbos.

We need to stand up as one for Hashem and His people. We need to carry the sheep on our shoulders with faith and with courage. We need to walk the streets of Jerusalem and tell the world that we believe in Hashem and we won’t be terrorized. We need to walk the business districts of Chicago and Manhattan with honesty and integrity proclaiming we are Jews.

We need to trigger a whole new Geulah. May we all merit to see peace in the world and peace in Yerushalayim.

Rabbi Yaacov Haber

Rabbi Yaacov Haber is Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivas Orchos Chaim in Jerusalem http://www.orchos.org.il and President of TorahLab http://www.torahlab.org Comments and questions are very welcome: email yhaber@torahlab.org