This week’s Torah portion is Shemois, which means “names,” as it recalls the names of the Jewish people. Specifically, it refers to the Twelve Jewish Tribes, Rueven till Binyamin, who entered into Israel.
The Medrash teaches that the name of each tribe represents redemption.
The great scholar, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn asks: Why are we mentioning names that refer to redemption as the Jews are entering into exile?
We know Jewish history/destiny is (like all good stories) a three-part saga.
The first is the birth. This, of course, begins with Abraham, and to some extent, the consolidation of the Jewish people, not only as a family, but as a faith at Mount Sinai.
Its maturation is living as Jews — an Am Kodesh, “a holy nation” — with a Torah standard, which includes both spiritual and ethical behaviors, sent by G-d to be a light onto the nations. More than three millennia have passed since the giving of the Torah, and as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks observed, the world is definably Jewish in its notion of human rights — even though that concept was unheard of in tribal cultures, where the great achievement was taking over and enslaving others.
The third stage is fast approaching, when “nations will beat their swords into plowshares and will teach each other war no more” and “the world will be filled with the knowledge of G-d (goodness) as the ocean covers the seafloor.”
As they say, a Jew answers a question with a question, but getting back to the question at hand: Why are we so obsessed with the exodus from Egypt?
It is true that it is a beautiful and uplifting saga. But to consider that it is the basis of Passover and of much or our daily prayers (to the extent it is inserted in the daily Shema) there must be a fundamental redemptive reason!
Indeed.
One of our great scholars, mystics and leaders was Rabbi Yehuda Lowe of Prague (famous for his creation of the Golem.)
Rabbi Lowe explains that when G-d redeemed the Jewish people — far more than giving them an ethical and spiritual value system — He fundamentally altered their identity.
No more could they ever be enslaved, for the only slave is one who believes oneself as such.
I recall hearing a recording of a reporter from the North who went to the South to interview a slave, whose words struck at the very soul of what it means to be a human. The reporter said to the slave, “Don’t worry we (or I) will free you!” The slave responded, “You cannot free me, for I was born free.”
When a Jew is connected to the source of heaven and earth, when we know our lives are part of “His-story,” when we are aware that we are bringing light to darkness, when we can sense the destiny — the purpose — even though the fires of Egypt or Auschwitz burn, it fuels an indomitable spirit.
Like a Phoenix that can sing, “I believe in complete faith, in the coming of the Moshiach, and though he may tarry, I await daily his arrival!” even as Jews were marched to gas chambers, this is a fierce spirit.
How else would, in a short 70 years, the star once forced as a badge of shame, the symbol of the Jewish people, proudly beacon all Jews to fulfill the infinite promise? That promise is that our destiny — in our land, our light, our dream, our people, and, most importantly, our faith — is eternally present.
Rabbi Zevi Wineberg is a Rabbi at Chabad House of Overland Park and runs the website/blog www.KabbalahWisdom.org
