“Do not hate the Egyptian, because a stranger you were in his country”

How long did the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt take? Was this liberation from slavery an overnight change? Was it a multi-stage struggle from the first meeting of Moses with Pharaoh through the drowning of the Egyptian horsemen in the Reed Sea? Is it true to say that the exodus from Egypt was only completed when the last of the slave generation passed away and a new generation arose which had not felt the taste of the Egyptian oppression?

The answers lie in the definition of “slavery” and “freedom”. If slavery is the political situation of the person or of the community, meaning the lack of choice of home, work, schedule, agenda, etc., than the change was overnight: the day before the killing of the first born of the Egyptians the Israelites were still forced to work wherever and whenever the Egyptian oppressor sent them. Half a night later the Egyptian domination over the Israelites ended and in the early morning they left Egypt with “a strong arm”…

Did those who left Egypt replace one kind of slavery with another kind? Through their wandering in the desert there were no public surveys, no democracy. If a survey would have been hold at the time it would have shown that the majority preferred to return to the Egyptian slavery! The fear of the unknown in the desert, new difficulties to be faced, unexpected dangers and future enemies frightened the Israelites more then the familiar suffering of forced labor in Egypt.

The Torah says (Leviticus 25: 55): For it is to Me that the Israelites are servants: they are My servants, whom I freed from the land of Egypt”. Meaning – there was a process of replacing one governance with another. Yet, there was an essential difference between these two governances: Pharaoh’s governance was interested only by gaining the most profit from the slaves’ labor, at the same time killing the babies of our people as an effort to reduce the demographic danger posed by the number of enslaved men, who might overrun the number of the enslaving men. God’s governance over the “desert generation”, through God’s loyal messenger was meant to help the Israelites overcome the crisis of passing from the mentality of life as a slave to that of a free person, a life of responsibility and self determination. Moses was the only person worthy of ruling the Israelites, as he was the only one of them who grew up in a relative situation of freedom and independence, first in Pharaoh’s palace and later as Yitro’s shepherd in the desert. As a free man he was experienced in having doubts, taking decisions and accepting the responsibility over the decisions he took. The slaves had no experience of such things. Moses’ leadership was tough and uncompromising. He would educate an entire generation of Israelites to self-government, freedom that is not irresponsibility and promiscuity, but the freedom to accept God’s commandments as written on the Tablets. In his policy of punishment there was only one way: cutting trees on Shabbat – death, caring God’s name in vane – death, contesting his leadership in the desert – swallowed by the land of the desert. When most of the people felt unease as their leader disappeared for over a month at the top of an arid mountain, they convinced his brother to build them a golden calf. Moses enrolls the assistance of the Levy tribe and “purifies” the community, in a Stalinist way, killing thousands of his own kin.

Moses does not ignore the continuous complaints of the people. He knows many of them are based on fact: the thirst, the hunger, the biting snakes and the Amaleks hunting the weak ones, who walk behind… But he also knows that some of the complaints are the result of spiritual slavery. What is spiritual slavery? A one-sided vision, the perception of reality as black and white, good-bad. Only close to the time of his death, forty years after the exodus from Egypt, he will be able to say “You shall not abhor an Egyptian, for you were a stranger in his land” (Deuteronomy 23: 8), saying “lets put ourselves in the position of our enemies and analyze history from their point of view”. This is a way of thinking absent from the mentality of a slave, a luxury only a free person can afford. Egypt is the land of the Egyptians, there is no doubt. Our forefathers declared, when they arrived there, that they only intended to live there temporarily, until the famine in Conan will end (7 years!) and were received nicely by Pharaoh. But this temporary sojourn became permanent as they stayed and overtook the Land of Goshen. Is it any wonder that the Egyptians became suspicious? Would we have acted differently if we were in their place?

Egyptian slavery ended on the day that the Children of Israel were capable of hearing the command, “Do not hate the Egyptian in your heart because you were a stranger in his land.” (Forty years after the Exodus!)

This complex way of thinking, that sees both sides of the coin and the many faces of truth, and is open to self criticism and to seeing the positive and negative sides both of one’s self and others, even the enemy who hates you, is the advantage of the truly freed over the one whose soul is enslaved. Our Sages established the principle for Passover, “ We begin with disparagement and end with praise (Jerusalem Talmud Pesakhim 10, Mishna 4) The disparagement at the beginning of the Hagadah is not the disparagement of the Egyptians, but self criticism, “We were slaves to Pharaoh,” “In the beginning our ancestors were idol worshipers,” and even “”My father was a wandering Aramean.” (Literally, not figuratively.) These are words critical of our ancestors because their physical enslavement brought about spiritual enslavement. These words, like leaning to the left at the Seder, characterize the culture of free people.

Hatred and suffering blind a slave’s judgment and his/her world is black and white. We wonder at our Palestinian neighbors: We took our soldiers out of your cities and villages. We gave you the chance to set up self rule and improve your lives….Instead of investing your time and energy in solving the burning problems of want, health, education, infrastructure and employment, you put all your energy into creating explosives and educating your children to sacrifice their lives as suicide terrorists…According to the biblical example there is hope for change: An entire generation will pass, some 40 years, until there will be a new generation of Palestinian leaders that never sat in an Israeli prison, never were interrogated by the General Security Services, never went through a humiliating body search by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint…This future leadership will be capable of freeing itself from the thicket of fear and hatred and say as a free people: “Do not hate the Israelis…. Their ancestors as yours were strangers (foreign workers) in a land not for them….”

Recent Articles by Rabbi Gil Nativ

• Vaethannan, Shabbat and Tu B'av: Celebrating Renewal, Creation and Human Rights - August 14th, 2008
• Miqqez: Recognition & Rejection - December 7th, 2007
• Pinehas: Fanaticism and peace between man and his neighbor and between the nation and God. - July 13th, 2006
• Behar: From Slavery to Freedom - April 28th, 2006
• Gil Nativ - April 28th, 2006
• Shabbat HaGadol: Peace begins at home - April 6th, 2006
• Beha'alotekha: Critical mass and individual responsibility - June 16th, 2005

Categories: Behar, Vayyiqra-Leviticus
Tags: Bo, ease, hearing, human rights, ISM, palestinians, Passover, rest, settlers, truth, wall