Two weeks before Pesach I make schnitzel and mashed potatoes for dinner.

The problem is that instead of going to the store this week to pick the regular brands I use I order by phone to save time.

The small bag of schnitzel coating the store sends looks great and fancy but has some foreign spices in it. When I smell them during cooking I think Oh no 2 pounds of chicken cutlets down the drain. And the instant mashed potatoes I ordered the fake kind of puree you take on camping trips has a smell for some odd reason of a chicken coop.

My husband and I both make faces at each other about it the faces clearly saying: This is not going to be good.

So I warn everyone before they come to the table that “This is not going to be one of the best dinners you’ll ever have.”

I serve the first son. He tastes it and says “Mom this is great!”

The second son says “I’ve been waiting for you to make schnitzels just like these!”

“What about those potatoes?” I ask.

The third son says “They’re perfect.”

The fourth son says “The best ever.”

I start to laugh.

“You see” I say to my husband “I’m slaving away for 20 years making schnitzels and mashed potatoes using all the “right” brands and now I find the whole family except us is already acclimated to Eretz Yisrael food and I’ve been totally off base.”

I start to think. If I’m so off base about schnitzel coating and instant mashed potatoes then in what other ways has this has played out since our move to Israel? And how did we ever make it this far?

Maybe when we smile and greet people expect help in a store or crack open sunflower seeds with our hands the native Israelis must think “Oh those must be Americans.”

And I think to myself this is the Pesach story.

We don’t even know to what extent we’re slaves to particular mentalities way of acting and comforts.

After we got out of Mitzrayim we saw miracles and wonders and we still cried “We want to go back there; we miss our cucumbers melons leeks onions and garlic!”

Others cried “We miss our meat!”

We didn’t even eat the meat in Mitzrayim; we only sat next to the meat pots and smelled the fumes.

It happens a lot. We go back to not good situations because we’re used to them. They’re familiar and comfortable.

Not only familiar and comfortable — these are light terms — but ingrained into our psyches our bodies.

I remember once speaking to a woman who was a baalas teshuvah. She told me a story about riding the bus in downtown Jerusalem wearing her short sheitel with a hat covering it when suddenly an old Beatles song came on the radio. And she shared with me how from the moment the song came on she wasn’t on a bus in downtown glorious Jerusalem anymore but in the Bronx on her way home from college in an old airless subway car and sitting next to who knows who.

“And you know” she told me “for that minute I wanted to go back there to be there. Just for a minute I missed it.”

Did she really miss it or did she miss the familiarity and the comfort of the past? How do baalei teshuvah actually get out from a life full of connections and associations? How do they get purified and clean? How does any Jew?

Pesach holds the answer: “With a strong hand and with an outstretched arm … with signs and wonders.”

That’s why the first question is: “Why is this night different from every other night?” To remind us how to get free of the bonds of familiarity and comfort.