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It is Up to Us • Torah.org
People
who are released from bondage or any other
type of incarceration usually find their adjustment to freedom difficult if not even
very problematic. More often than not the look
on their newly freed
faces is one of bewilderment – of being
in a dazed condition – rather
than one of pure joy.
Past unpleasant and painful experiences
are not easily forgotten, or sublimated and assigned purely to one’s
subconscious. When the Exodus from
Egypt finally occurs
in this week’s parsha, the Jewish people leave “with a high hand” but with weakness of spirit. They will despair of their future.
When Pharaoh continues to pursue them to the shores of the Yam Suf sea and throughout their forty year sojourn
in the desert
of Sinai, they
are always on the verge
of abandoning their special
mission and returning somehow to the accustomed bondage
and servitude of Egypt.
In the past
generation of our
people, many of the survivors of the Holocaust faced enormous challenges after being liberated from Nazi tyranny.
The adjustment of most of them
to freedom and to their
ability to rebuild
their lives is a testimony to the greatness and resilience of the Jewish spirit. But it was not an easy journey back to normalcy in a free society.
The Jewish people after leaving Egypt would require forty years and a new generation of Jews before they were ready and able to undertake the task of building a free Jewish society in their own
land and under
their own rule
and sovereignty. As the old paraphrase goes “You can take the Jew out of exile and bondage but it is much more difficult to remove the mentality of exile and bondage from within the Jew.”
The Torah seems
to indicate to us quite
clearly that the Lord has the ability
to save us from
bondage and destruction.
Beginning with the Exodus from Egypt throughout the generations, G-d has performed this miraculous task
for us many
times over. But it is also
clear from the Torah that once that
has been accomplished, the Lord intends
for us to take over and finish the task.
He will supply us with food and water,
physical sustenance and spiritual and temporal leadership but
what we do with those
blessings is purely
up to us. We are taught that
“when the Lord returns
the captivity of Zion we will be as dreamers.” A dreamer is in a dazed state of
being. But once
being awakened we are bidden
to act and build and accomplish – to be bold and courageous and of optimistic heart.
The great Rav of Ponivezh, Rabbi Shlomo Yosef
Kahaneman told me numerous times
that “I am a dreamer but I do not allow
myself to sleep.”
The Exodus from
Egypt is not the end of
the story of the Jewish people or of Moshe. It is only the beginning, for freedom is a never ending challenge fraught
with difficulties, naysayers and doomsday pessimists.
The Lord took
us out of Egypt forcibly for we would
have remained there
– as we say every year in the Hagada
of the Pesach Seder. But then it was up to us.
That remains the same
situation in today’s Jewish world as well.
Shabat shalom, Rabbi Berel Wein
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The Plagues: Physical and Psychological
In this week’s
parsha the narrative of the Exodus
from Egypt reaches
one of its most climactic
moments. Pharaoh finally
succumbs to the pressures of the plagues
and to the demands of Moshe
and of the G-d of Israel. The
last three plagues
that are discussed in detail in this week’s
parsha are those
of the locusts,
darkness and the
slaying of the firstborn.
These plagues represent not only physical
damages inflicted on the Egyptians but also, just as importantly, different psychological pressures that
were exerted on Pharaoh and
the Egyptians.
The plague of locusts destroyed the Egyptian economy,
or whatever was left of it after
the previous seven plagues. Economic disaster always
has far- reaching consequences.
Sometimes
those results can
be very positive, such as the recovery of the United
States from the Great
Depression. Sometimes they
are very negative, as the rise
of Nazism in Germany in the 1920s
and 1930s could
not have occurred
if it were not for the economic crisis that enveloped the Weimar Republic.
Here the economic crisis engendered by the plague
of locusts brings
Egypt to its knees, so that
it is only the unreasoning stubbornness of Pharaoh
that keeps the drama going.
The next plague of darkness is one that
affects the individual. Cooped up in one’s home,
unable to move about, blinded
by darkness unmatched in human experience, the individual Egyptian
is forced to come to terms with
his or her
participation in the enslavement of the
Jewish people.
For many people,
being alone with
one’s self is itself a type of plague. It causes one to
realize one’s mortality and to reassess
one’s behavior in life. This is not always a pleasant
experience. Most
of the time it is a very
wrenching and painful
one.
The final plague
of the death
of the firstborn Egyptians, aside from
the personal pain
and tragedy involved, spoke
to the future of Egyptian society. Without children no society can endure – and especially children such as the firstborn, who are always
meant to replace
and carry on the work of their elders
and previous generations. We all want to live
in eternity and since
we cannot do so physically we at least
wish it to happen spiritually, emotionally and psychologically.
The plague that destroyed the Egyptian firstborn destroyed the hopes
of eternity that were
so central to Egyptian society. The tombs of the leaders
of Egypt were
always equipped with food and material goods
to help these
dead survive to the future.
Even though this
was a primitive
expression of the hope for
eternity it nevertheless powerfully represents to us the Egyptian mindset regarding such eternity.
By destroying the
firstborn Egyptians, the
Lord sounded the
death knell for
all of Egyptian society for the foreseeable future. It was this psychological pressure – which
is one of the
interpretations of the phrase that
there was no house in Egypt that did not suffer from this
terrible plague
– that forced
Pharaoh and his
people to come
to terms with their unjust enslavement of Israel and to finally
succumb to the demands of Moshe and the G-d of
Israel.
We should remember
that all of these psychological pressures, even though
they do not appear in our society
as physical plagues,
are still present
and influential. The trauma of life
is never ending.
Shabat shalom Rabbi Berel Wein
Rabbi Berel Wein- Jewish historian, author and international
lecturer offers a complete selection of CDs,
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