Parshat Yitro: These are The Ten Commandments

The Ten Commandments, universal amongst the monotheistic religions, are a mere 13 verses in this week’s parsha.  And yet they have resonated and lasted throughout history, bearing meaning in many different periods.  But for so many today, they are unknown or uninspiring.  The last five – the moral commandments of the bunch – are accepted in the Western world (“thou shalt not murder…commit adultery…steal…etc.”) and therefore barely given a passing glance in a religious context.  Comparatively, the first five are almost forbidden to be mentioned in public (“I am your God…have no other gods before me…don’t make idols…don’t take God’s name in vain…keep the Sabbath”) because they are overtly religious, a very tenuous/delicate subject in public discourse today.  They therefore have somewhat of a reduced significant in today’s Western World.

Starkly contrasting this approach, our ancestors prepared for three days, purifying themselves from uncleanliness, in order to stand at the foot of Mt Sinai, in God’s presence, to receive the Ten Commandments.  And while receiving them they “witnessed the thunder and lightning, the blare of the horn and the mountain smoking” (Exodus 20:15).  And today those same verses that affected them so greatly are treated so lightly.  And I must even admit, the thirteen verses containing the Ten Commandments are certainly not the most powerful verses ever written – not even close to the most powerful (for me) within the Torah.  So why are they so important? 

I think that Reb Mimi Fiegelson captures the thoughts that many of us may have when we read the Ten Commandments and think: 

“That is is!?  That is all God said?” 

She responds to this reaction:

What God wants to say cannot be said.  We are immersed in a feeling of pleasantness, of joy, of awe.  The Torah is a written gift to mankind.  God cannot, will not, constantly soak us in His presence as He did at Mt Sinai.  We must become a vessel to receive His presence, to become as close to the Torah, to become a part of the Torah.  We are the kelim – the vessels – of God Himself.

We are told to “hold back” at Mt Sinai in order to become a kli, a vessel, for God’s Torah.  It is easier to get caught up in the moment, to want to experience faith and joy…but our purpose is not merely to bask in God’s glory but to act upon it.

The thunder and lightning our ancestors witnessed, while possibly a physical reality, was an emotional experience, an experience of the soul.  It was a moment where our souls – the kelim – connected with their source.  And we are taught that every Jewish soul was present at Mt Sinai; every Jewish soul has heard God speak to them at Mt Sinai (similar to the Passover message where we, ourselves, were slaves in Egypt).  Yet we are very far removed from that time and place, from that emotion.  We are in a world where spirituality is not readily available at every turn of a corner but must be sought after; it must be fought for.  At Mount Sinai we needed to “hold back” from the spiritual moment in order to maintain our physical reality; today we need to fight against our physical reality to find a moment in our day to “soak in His presence as we did at Mt Sinai.” 

And for that, we were given the Ten Commandments. 

Shabbat Shalom.

Parshat Beshalach: “You Hold Your Peace!”

Pharaoh and his army of chariots are bearing down on the Israelites.  Our ancestors, the former slaves, have hardly been freed, and their enslavers already have them trapped, backed up against the Red Sea, ready to once again bring them back into slavery.  The Jews cry out to God and then to Moses, and Moses tries to comfort them:

But Moses said to the people: “Have no fear!  Stand by, and witness the deliverance which the Lord will work for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you will never see again.  The Lord will battle for you; you hold your peace!” (Shemot 14:13-14)

But why were the Israelites so desperate?  And why did Moses tell them to hold their peace?  The parsha begins by telling us “Now the Israelites went up armed out of the land of Egypt” (13:18).  If the people were armed, why was there no attempt to defend themselves? 

Rabbi Yair Barkai of Bar Ilan University points out multiple explanations and interpretations of Moses’ words that are in question.  Of these the one I find most satisfying is given by Ibn Ezra:

Stand by, and witness the deliverance which the Lord will work for you – for you will not fight, but only witness the deliverance which the Lord will work for you today.   One wonders how they could see a camp of six hundred thousand pursuing them and not fight for their lives and the lives of their children?!  The answer is that the Egyptians had been the Israelites’ masters, and the generation leaving Egypt had learned from its youth to suffer the yoke of Egypt and hence their spirit was lowly; so how could they now fight against their masters?  For the Israelites would have been weak and not skilled at warfare.  After all, notice that Amalek attacked them with a small number of people, and had it not been for Moses’ prayers, Amalek would have overcome the Israelites.   But the Lord, alone, “who performs great deeds” (Job 5:9), and “by Him actions are measured” (I Sam. 2:3), caused all the males who left Egypt to die, for they did not have strength to fight the Canaanites, until successive generations, who had not known exile and who had high spirits, were born in the wilderness.

The answer is reason-based and calls us to remember the psychological state that the Israelites were trained to be in throughout their lives.  Because they were taught to revere, respect, and submit to the Egyptians they were mentally incapable of raising arms against their former master due to how severely they had been conditioned to be submissive.  Added nicely on top of this explanation, Rabbeinu Bachya adds the following explanation of Moses’ words above:

The explanation of “the Lord will battle for you” is as follows: the plague of the first-born made it evident that the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself was smiting the Egyptians, and yet the Egyptians were still pursuing them, indicating that their intention was not to attack you [the Israelites], rather to attack the Almighty.  That being the case, the battle belonged to the Almighty and you have nothing to do but remain silent. 

The Jewish people did not raise their weapons to defend themselves because of Ibn Ezra’s explanation, but Moses then tells them to “hold their peace” because it is not their battle to fight, but God’s.  It is God who Pharaoh and the Egyptians denied and mocked by ignoring the ten plagues and refusing to accept God’s will to create the Jewish people and lead them to the land of Israel.  Therefore it is God who will exact justice, not leaving it to the hand of men. 

Parshat Bo: “And all the Israelites did so”

This week’s parsha is loaded with action, from the last of the Ten Plagues to the laws of Pesach and the redemption of the firstborn.  Amongst all of this, though, something relatively small stands out to me: The Israelites’ response to God immediately after they leave Egypt.  Their response to Him in this week’s parsha stands in stark contrast to what I discussed last week (See Parshat Va’eira: “The Israelites would not listen” here).  In last week’s parsha God promises us, who are at the time mere slaves in Egypt, the Four Expressions of Redemption (Shemot 6:6-7).  They are expressions that we remember each year at our Pesach Seder and provide us comfort in knowing that God is with us no matter how lowly our situation in life may be.  With Him in our life, there is always hope.  But when the Israelites were slaves to Pharaoh, they lacked this hope.  They were so oppressed that they had lost faith in the promise that God had made to our forefathers that we would ultimately be saved from slavery and brought to Israel.  And therefore they were not comforted by God’s promises, as the Torah tells us,

…When Moses told this [God’s promises] to the Israelites, they would not listen to Moses, their spirits crushed by cruel bondage.  (6:9)

I proposed last week that the reason for this reaction by the Jews shows us that the plagues were not merely punishment against Pharaoh, but that they also served to restore the Jewish people’s faith and trust in God.  Indeed, even Moses was lacking at times, as shown through his reluctance to accept God appointing him as leader of the nation.  But after the ten plagues, as the Jewish people are leaving Egypt, Moses and Aaron again speak to the Jewish people on behalf of God.  This time the response is much different. 

The Lord said to Moses and Aaron: This is the law of the Passover offering: no foreigner shall eat of it.  But any slave a man has bought may eat of it once he has been circumcised.  No bound or hired laborer shall eat of it.  It shall be eaten in one house: you shall not take any of the flesh outside the house; nor shall you break a bone of it.  The whole community of Israel shall offer it.  If a stranger who dwells with you would offer the Passover to the Lord, all his males must be circumcised; then he shall be admitted to offer it; he shall that be as a citizen of the country.  But no uncircumcised person may eat of it.  There shall be one law for the citizen and for the stranger who dwells among you.

And the Israelites did so; as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did.  That very day the Lord freed the Israelites from the land of Egypt, troop by troop. (Shemot 12:43-51)

“And the Israelites did so.”  Through the course of the ten plagues, the Jewish people rose up from the depths of despair, from having seemingly forgotten God’s promise of salvation, to become God’s chosen people…the people that God redeemed from slavery to become His people, to enter into the covenant with Him.  From this we can see the internal transformation of the Jewish people, which stands in stark contrast to the transformation that Pharaoh undergoes due to the plagues.  Pharaoh’s transformation is only out of necessity.  Only when his life is in danger or the plagues are too much to bare does he cave in to the pressure and agree to let the Jewish people go.  But each time, his heart is hardened and he refuses to let the Jews go.  Even after the last plague, when the Jewish people are freed, Pharaoh again changes his mind and chases after the Jewish people in an attempt to return them to slavery.  The Jewish people, however, underwent a more thorough transformation, becoming people that recognized God’s hand in their lives and were responsive to his laws in a positive way.  [The Jews, too, had set backs such as the Golden Calf, but those set-backs do not necessarily imply a lack of transformation.]

And the transformation was so thorough that even to this day, we suffer through 8 days of matzah to “remember this day [the 14^th of Nissan], on which [we] went free from Egypt, the house of bondage, how the Lord freed [us] from it with a mighty hand: no leaven shall be eaten” (13:3).

Shabbat Shalom.

Parshat Va’eira: The Israelites Would Not Listen

In last week’s parsha, Moses and Aaron requested permission to take the Israelites out of Egypt to worship their God.  The request contained no threats and appears reasonable, but Pharaoh outright denies it and even increases the burden of slavery on the Jews because of their request.  Thus we are lead into the Ten Plagues that ultimately put enough pressure on Pharaoh to let the Jewish people go.  But there are two inserts in the Torah that occur before Moses and Aaron next appear before Pharaoh to demonstrate the wonders that God can produce.  The first is not an unusual or uncommon insert; it is God’s reassurances to the Jews that he will ultimately lead us to freedom.  We see similar promises from God to the patriarchs.  The second insert seems out of place; it is a listing of the twelve tribes, their leaders, and their descendants.  What is odd here is not only that it seems out of place, but that it only mentions three sons (Reuven, Shimon, and Levi) before picking up with the story of Pharaoh, Moses, and the Plagues.  But what I want to focus on this week is God’s assurances to the Jewish people.

This section of the parsha contains the Four Expressions of Redemption (6:6-7) and a reiteration of God’s promises to our forefathers (6:8):

I am the Lord.  I will free you from the labors of the Egyptians and I will deliver you from their bondage.  I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and through extraordinary chastisements.  And I will take you to be My people, and I will be your God.  And you shall know that I, the Lord, am your God who freed you from the labors of the Egyptians.  I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Avraham, Yitzchak, and Ya’akov, and I will give it to you for a possession, I the Lord.

I don’t find the actual promises that God makes to be at all unusual.  Rather they seem to fit in with the promises God makes in the book of Bereishit, albeit more catered to the specific situation the Jewish people are in in Egypt.  What is odd is the response:

But when Moses told this [God’s promise above] to the Israelites, they would not listen to Moses, their spirits crushed by cruel bondage.

Never in Bereishit (that I can recall) do any of our forefathers ignore God’s promise; there is typically not a required response…God says something as a statement of fact and then the Torah moves on.  So why is it important to specifically state here that the Israelites would not listen?  What difference would it make if they did listen?  They would still be slaves to Pharaoh and forced to work under the same circumstances as before. 

I think it might be necessary to show that the Ten Plagues were not just necessary to punish Pharaoh and the Egyptians, forcing the Jews to be freed, but that it was also necessary for the Jewish people to put their faith and trust in God.  They suffered so much that they couldn’t even hope.  God needed to restore the Jewish spirit before they were ready to be saved.  As our Sages have told us, only one-fifth of the Jewish people left Egypt.  The rest remained in Egypt, either because of a sense of security/familiarity, fear, an unwillingness to accept uncertainty…but ultimately, no matter their “reason,” it was really a lack of trust in God.  The one-fifth of the Israelites that did leave Egypt, to officially form the Jewish people at Mount Sinai, were only convinced through the Ten Plagues.  The rest were unable to look up from their daily struggles/life and see God’s hand in their life.  Today, there are so many people that live this way – some in comfort and others in discontent – that fail to look up from their daily activity and recognize God’s role.  Those of us that live this way are the eighty percent that were not saved from Egypt.  May we all merit being a part of the twenty percent, seeing God in our lives and being aware of the way He impacts us daily.