1.
The Middle East is changing before our astonished eyes. The ring of strangulation around us has been shattered, and the root of evil, the Iranian regime, is mired in internal bloodshed, as masses of its citizens, turned into slaves and handmaids in the name of Islam, demand their freedom and fight for their lives. All this as the regime of blood massacres them by the thousands and more. We pray for the safety of the courageous Iranians and hope for the intervention of the US.
As we read the news, we should remember the dual perspective taught by the Torah of Moses. Behind the many events knocking at our consciousness, beyond the harsh headlines pressing upon our awareness, a mighty undercurrent is at work, pushing the world toward its fulfilment and repair. What appears to us as an event leading to catastrophe may later be revealed as what prepared our redemption and salvation.
This dual perspective is the root of faith in our ultimate good. Do not despair. Even if "Our bones are dried up and our hope is lost; we are cut off" (Ezekiel 37:11), remember that just around the corner a positive historical turning point awaits. Armed with this vision, we were able to navigate the valley of the shadow of death throughout history, until we achieved the unimaginable and returned to our land after a long exile, to establish our independent state for the third time.
2.
This Sabbath we begin the Torah portion at the point where it seems that efforts to redeem the people have failed. True, the people initially received the tidings of liberation with enthusiasm, but this quickly dissipated in the face of Pharaoh's harsher decrees. Moses was still learning the people. He had not experienced the bondage in his own flesh and had developed a free spirit while growing up among the Egyptian masters. He returned to encourage the people, but their response was despairing: "They did not listen to Moses because of shortness of spirit and hard labor" (Exodus 6:9).
Even harder to bear are the complaints hurled at him and at his brother Aaron by the Israelite overseers: "May the Lord look upon you and judge, for you have made us odious in the eyes of Pharaoh and in the eyes of his servants, putting a sword in their hand to kill us" (Exodus 5:21).
You are giving the regime an excuse to harm us and endangering us with adventures of freedom, as if the Egyptians would give up their labor force and agree to release us. Moses returns to the One who sent him and sighs from the depths of his heart: "O Lord, why have You done evil to this people? Why did You send me? Ever since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has done evil to this people, and You have not delivered Your people at all" (Exodus 5:22–23).
3.
Before returning to inspire hope in the people, the spirit of the leader must first be strengthened: "Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh; for with a strong hand he will send them out, and with a strong hand he will drive them out of his land" (Exodus 6:1). Patience. On the surface, Egypt is tightening its grip on the Hebrews, but beneath it all, threads are being woven that will connect into a vast web that will change the fate of the people and of humanity.
What does one do when despair gnaws? One returns to first principles. When events seem to spin out of control and life becomes entangled, it is time to recalculate the route. God repeats to Moses the foundational truths for which he was sent to redeem the people. First, who is sending him? The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. For all their greatness, they were still individuals, and therefore the level of divine revelation to them was accordingly limited. Not so with Moses, who now represents a people. The Torah is given to a people, not to individuals.
Yet, the patriarchs laid the foundation upon which the current historical drama is built. That foundation is the covenant with God "to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their sojourning in which they lived" (Exodus 6:4). If there is a homeland given to us as an inheritance, there is a destination and a purpose to the liberation from the house of bondage. Along the way, at Mount Sinai, they will receive the eternal constitution, but its implementation will take place in the promised land.
4.
In the meantime, the people must be freed: "I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians enslave, and I have remembered My covenant" (Exodus 6:5). I have never abandoned you, and I hear your cries for help. Therefore, here is the plan: "I will bring you out from under the burdens of Egypt, and I will deliver you … and I will redeem you … and I will take you to Me as a people … and I will bring you to the land … and I will give it to you as a possession" (Exodus 6:6–8).
This plan continues the great vision revealed to the father of the nation in the Covenant Between the Parts: his offspring would be strangers in a land not their own, enslaved and oppressed by another nation that would be punished for it, "and afterward they shall go out with great wealth" (Genesis 15:14). Where would they go out to? "And the fourth generation shall return here" (Genesis 15:16). They will surely return here. Even if the exile is prolonged, in the end we will return home to Zion.
While we were in exile, foreigners invaded our land, but they did not succeed in establishing another sovereign entity there. The land remained largely desolate, like a mother who preserved her milk for her rightful children. If we could go back in time to Jews in Rome, Spain, Morocco and Persia, Poland and even the death camps of Nazi Germany, and ask them: to whom does the distant land once inhabited by our fathers and mothers belong? They would be astonished by the question and repeat the eternal verses that promised us the land, not only as a distant vision for the end of days, but as a promise that could soon be realized.
Indeed, in all the exiles we repeated the expressions of redemption in our portion, until it was fulfilled in us: "And I will bring you to the land … and I will give it to you" (Exodus 6:8). These are not idle tales, nor a distant legendary myth. We saw it with our own eyes.
5.
From here begins the chain of plagues, striking the enslavers and teaching them that there is a Master of the palace and that the world is not lawless. Empires of evil do not endure forever. Sooner or later they collapse into themselves, because the substance that sustained them was temporary and based on injustice and moral corruption. On their way to final collapse, wicked rulers spill innocent blood and massacre even their own people in order to preserve their rule. In vain.
In 1944, as the Nazis advanced toward their defeat and destruction, Natan Alterman published The Songs of the Plagues of Egypt. Egypt served as a universal metaphor for every empire of evil, and especially for the one of his own time, Nazi Germany. In Alterman's poem, the Egyptian father justifies the divine judgment to his firstborn son:
"My firstborn, my son, the waters turned to blood,
For pure blood, my firstborn, for blood was spilled like water.
The depths of the well grew dark, the eyes of the city reddened,
For there was blood in the city, and the city did not tremble."
6.
In the course of history, Iran under the ayatollah regime has assumed the role of global evil. The amount of blood spilled by Iran and its proxies around the world is unimaginable. Especially after October 7, when we were exposed to the dimensions of the satanic plan for Israel's destruction devised by the human beasts in Tehran.
Now this regime of blood is fighting for its life and spilling the blood of its citizens like water. Let us hope that the US president is reading the relevant chapters of the Book of Exodus, the book of bondage and redemption, and acts to bring down upon the Iranian house of bondage ten plagues suited to our era.
The good and moral part of humanity, watching in horror the bloody events in Iran, repeats Moses' eternal call to Pharaoh, and from him to the Pharaoh of our own time: "Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews: Let My people go, that they may serve Me" (Exodus 5:1).
Soon.
