Menachem Mirski
Thoughts on Parashat Shemot
Why did the Israelites go down to Egypt and got enslaved there? The reason for it is not stated, neither does the Torah deal with the subject of God’s absence from Israel’s history for a period of four hundred years, suggesting by its silence that such was the mysterious plan of God. The human aspect of oppression is told but briefly; the main focus is on the divine aspect of redemption. Additionally, the Book of Exodus sets the scene not for a human struggle between Egypt and Israel, but for a confrontation between the “divine” ruler of Egypt and the Divine protector and savior of Israel. The people of Israel may not know their God now; they will come to gain that awareness as the drama of salvation unfolds. There is a midrashic tradition that tries to explain the divine silence, suggesting that the very fact that the people of Israel had forgotten God led to their continued enslavement, and they in fact became wicked and deserved their enslavement. However, no trace of such an idea is expressed in the biblical text.
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us. Let us deal shrewdly with them, so that they may not increase; otherwise in the event of war they may join our enemies in fighting against us and rise from the ground.” So they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor; and they built garrison cities for Pharaoh: Pithom and Raamses. But the more they were oppressed, the more they increased and spread out, so that the [Egyptians] came to dread the Israelites. The Egyptians ruthlessly imposed upon the Israelites the various labors that they made them perform. Ruthlessly they made life bitter for them with harsh labor at mortar and bricks and with all sorts of tasks in the field. (Exodus 1:8-14)[/perfectpullquote]
Egypt and the slavery experienced there is a ‘negative cornerstone’ of our entire tradition. We actively remember our deliverance from Egypt literally all the time: everyday in almost every religious service. But it still concerns the deliverance and its meaning for us, not the meaning of our slavery and misery in Egypt, let alone the Divine silence for 430 years. What may be then the meaning, the reason for this experience? Theologically speaking, God certainly could have chosen a different way or a different time frame for placing our ancestors in Micraim and then taking us from there to our Promised Land. Certainly He chose this particular way to bring glory to Himself, to show our ancestors His wisdom and might. But the second main goal, besides delivering us from slavery, was, as I believe, to experience us what it is like to forget him and live without him. The goal of the biblical narrative here is to describe how this process of forgetting the Divine takes place – slowly and innocently until all is lost – and how human life looks like after all of that is lost.
On the other hand, however, the road to recovery and freedom goes through the desert. This means that real freedom requires sacrifices and it refers to all kinds of freedom. Freedom of action requires obtaining means to be able to act effectively and achieve goals. We need to sacrifice our time and powers to obtain these means. To acquire or extend our freedom of thought we need to overcome our intellectual laziness and instead of simply employing typical patterns of thought we need to risk applying unconventional patterns, which may not work in practice. Freedom of speech – here we often risk being disliked or even ostracized because of expressing ideas that are unpopular or considered wrong at a given moment (which sometimes turn out to be true after a while). Freedom is never given once and for all. It is a constant effort and this effort is an essential part of our human experience. Only by being free can we obey the commandments. Only by being free can we make any change in the world. Giving up this effort opens a straight path for giving up our life. There is a place between life and death: this place is called Egypt. Whenever we forget about God we open a path leading there, which has many examples in the history of humankind.
Therefore, let’s not forget about God no matter what theology or philosophy we believe. All the existing theologies within Judaism (and outside it as well) have one common denominator: God is always a fundamental freedom giver. It is so even for those for whom He is merely an idea created by the human mind. Why is this happening? Because only in that kind of philosophical framework (i.e. God is the sole giver of freedom) freedom is earned through a human effort and at the same time not arbitrarily given to us by other, more powerful human beings, who could easily take it away. The idea that people can simply live without God, in a community in perfect harmony and with mutual respect for all their freedoms? We as humanity have tried it many times; it usually ended up being the opposite, if not a complete nightmare. To even come close to this great vision, we have to refer to some external power that does not have typical “human interests”. The experience of Egypt shows us how human life looks like without God: it always leads to the deification of a certain human individual (or a group), who ultimately, when given enough time (and that’s why the Torah speaks of 430 years) always becomes a tyrant, who is not a freedom giver but a freedom thief. The idea of God is therefore necessary to give human freedom a solid and eternal foundation: external and independent of the temporary social circumstances in which we live.
Shabbat shalom!
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