1.
Once again, I must apologize to my readers for the absence of current affairs. We deal with them exhaustively, all week long: Jews accusing one another of the wrongs committed by their enemies. Precisely amid this media cacophony, it seems vital to turn to the eternity of Israel, to draw strength and consolation from the wellsprings of redemption, to moisten the dry bones of our daily life.
"These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each man with his household" (Exodus 1:1). For thousands of years we have returned to this book of exile and redemption, the prototype of the exiles to which we were later cast, and of our salvation and deliverance from the valley of the shadow of death among the nations in whose midst we were absorbed. The family of Jacob is swallowed into the Egyptian womb for a period of gestation, at whose end it emerges through terrible birth pangs as a people. Individuals are transformed into a people through a complex process.
2.
We read in the book of the enslavement of our people in the labor camps of the Egyptian empire, and in truth of our enslavement in exile, each Jewish community and the host nation into which it was cast by the circumstances of history. Like Joseph and his family, Jews were invited over the centuries by rulers to settle in their lands, to develop them economically and ensure their prosperity, in exchange for a promise to safeguard their rights.
And, like Joseph, they prospered, and like the Children of Israel they experienced the familiar turn: "A new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph" (Exodus 1:8). The new ruler did not recognize the Jews' contribution to his country, but saw them as a threat: "He said to his people, 'Behold, the people of the Children of Israel are too numerous and too mighty for us; come, let us deal wisely with them'" (Exodus 1:9–10). The burden of taxes was increased: "The Egyptians enslaved the Children of Israel with crushing labor, and embittered their lives" (Exodus 1:13–14). Decrees followed, forced conversions, plunder and pogroms, ending in expulsion.
Once again, we were forced to wander in the desert of nations, seeking temporary refuge. This is the book of our lives as a people, and as individuals, and from it we drew hope to leave exile and return home.
3.
In the Book of Exodus, the Torah continues to teach us historiosophy: to read history through a double lens: causal, and moral. History is described as a chain of events linked by cause and effect, but also as bearing meta-historical meaning, theological and moral causes that generate events. On the surface, we read the story of a people and a world; beneath the surface, a deep current propels reality toward its fulfilment and the people toward their destiny.
During World War I, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook wrote: "The present world war contains a great and profound expectation, joined to all the revolutions of the ages and the sign of the 'revealed end' of the settlement of the Land of Israel." In that war, four empires collapsed; for our purposes, the most significant was the Ottoman Empire, which lost the Middle East. A year before the war ended, on November 2, 1917, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration, recognizing the right of the Jewish people to a national home in their homeland. In April 1920, the declaration was anchored at San Remo in the mandate granted by the victorious powers to Britain, to realize the age-old dream of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel.
How did Rabbi Kook know that a horrific and seemingly senseless war would yield salvation for our people in their land? He received the historiosophical tradition of the double lens on events, as taught by Jewish scripture.
4.
On the surface, the situation deteriorates: The Children of Israel are enslaved in Egypt. Beneath the surface, however, the vision of the founder of the nation is at work in the Covenant Between the Parts: "Know surely that your offspring shall be strangers in a land not theirs, and they shall enslave them and afflict them" (Genesis 15:13). On the surface, infants are cast into the Nile; beneath the surface, an event unfolds that will change history forever:
In one Hebrew home, a beautiful child is born whom his parents cannot hide. They place him in a reed basket among the reeds of the Nile, hoping that an Egyptian woman will hear his cry and save him. Many parents in our history faced this dilemma: whether to keep a child and endanger the family, or to hand him over to a non-Jewish family and risk his being lost forever to another people. In the final reckoning, we know that this very decree led Moses to Pharaoh's palace, where Pharaoh's daughter adopted him.
In the messianic dialectic described by the book of the Zohar, evil draws nourishment from the messiah dwelling within it, yet at the same time raises up the one destined to destroy it. Thus, the Talmud places the messiah at the gates of Rome, and Midrash speaks of the messiah as hidden, concealed until the moment he is ready to redeem his people.
Thus, Moses grows up at the empire's nerve center as an heir apparent, receiving the finest education. His spirit differs from that of the slaves, a spirit of freedom, of the masters of the land. He learns the secrets of politics and state leadership, and the Hebrews accept him as their leader more readily than had he arisen from among them.
Indeed, from the depths of the 12th century, Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra wrote: "The thoughts of the Lord are deep… perhaps the Lord arranged that Moses grow up in the royal house so that his soul would be on a higher plane through learning and habit, and would not be lowly and accustomed to the house of slaves… and another matter, that had he grown up among his brothers and they had known him from youth, they would not have feared him, for they would have considered him as one of them."
On the surface, Moses kills the Egyptian taskmaster who brutalizes the Hebrew slave and is forced to flee from Pharaoh's wrath. Beneath the surface, the deep current drives him to Midian, where he learns to tend sheep and live in the wilderness. Years later, this knowledge will help him lead a nation of former slaves through the desert.
5.
"Moses grew up and went out to his brothers and saw their suffering" (Exodus 2:11). Rashi, following the Midrash, says that Moses went out to his Hebrew brothers. Ibn Ezra, however, interprets "his brothers" as the Egyptians, since Moses "was in the king's palace," meaning he went out to see how his Egyptian brothers governed the kingdom. It is not inconceivable that both readings are correct. At this stage, Moses may not yet have been certain of his national identity, and went out to examine it. Then, when he saw "an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man", he chose a side: "a Hebrew, one of his brothers" (Exodus 2:11).
Thousands of years later, in the depths of exile of "Edom" and Europe, a Viennese journalist went to cover the trial of a French Jewish officer named Alfred Dreyfus. Theodor Herzl was not then certain of his national and religious identity. But when he saw a "Frenchman beating a Hebrew," he knew where he belonged. Among his brothers. There is no hope for a multitude of slaves except in their return to their land and homeland, where they can live as free people. He performs an irreversible act: "He struck the Egyptian and hid him in the sand" (Exodus 2:12). Thus, his historical mission begins.
6.
Moses receives the mission to lead his people to freedom in the face of a rare sight: "The bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed" (Exodus 3:2). At the moment of Israel's birth from the Egyptian womb, God presents the calling card of the unique people Moses is destined to lead. As our sages explained: "Just as the bush burns with fire and is not consumed, so Egypt cannot consume Israel" (Midrash, Exodus Rabbah 2:5). Rabbi Hezekiah ben Manoah, the 13th-century French commentator known as the Hizkuni, wrote: "Just as the fire did not burn the bush, so the enemy will not be able to consume Israel."
In a single image are gathered the terrors of Jewish history and its hopes, like a phoenix consumed, then reborn from its ashes. And what is the State of Israel, if not rebirth from ashes? We have seen it with our own eyes. We need patience. And faith.
