Bo: Working for the liberty and dignity of others

By Rabbi Yehiel Grenimann on January 26, 2007 - ז' שבט תשס"ז

Bo: Working for the liberty and dignity of others

In this week`s parasha, Bo, the text moves from a narrative recounting of the story of the Exodus from Egypt to an halachic concern with ritual-educational praxis, for instance the commandments of Rosh Hodesh, the Passover sacrifice, the rules of matzah and bitter herbs, tefillin.

Some of this text appears also in the text of the Haggadah, which we read annually on the seder night. One of the central, if not the most important, verses is the following:

And you shall explain to your son on that day, `It (literally this) is because of what the Lord did for me when I went free from Egypt

Exodus chapter 13 verse 8

But what is meant by the word Zeh (It/This) here in the verse?

Rashi explains as follows:

Because of this/ For this: In order that I will observe these commandments: Pesach, Matzah, Maror - i.e. the main objective here is educational.

And he continues:

G-d did for me: a hinting at the answer to the wicked son when we say: G-d did for me, and not for you, were you to have been there you would not have been worthy of redemption.

In other words, we are speaking here of an educational approach which emphasizes the development of personal identification of each person with the story of the people.

There is a disagreement about this point between the commentators - Nahamanides, for instance, understands the text (this) differently, the educational praxis being the result, not the purpose according to him.

I, personally, tend to Rashi`s approach and believe that it is also relevant to our activities as a rabbinic human rights group. In brief, I would say that not the human rights activities themselves are the main objective in our work , but rather their educational impact and the degree of identification and empathy we are able to create with those whose human rights have been abused. Not only what we do is important but also how we do it and how we manage to convey to others our message that every person who works for the liberty and dignity of others should see in it also their own personal liberty and dignity, in the sense of: For this G-d took us out of Egypt !

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