SHEMOS 1993

In the Torah portion Shmos we learn how Moshe Rabbeinu was chosen by G-d to lead the Jewish people out of Egypt.  This, at first glance, seems to be a strange choice since Moshe Rabbeinu never endured one day of slavery.  Bes ides that, he had married a non-Jewish woman and, according to the Medrash, had even agreed to raise his child as a gentile.  This, of course, should teach us all that we should never give up on any Jew, that every Jew can potentially come back and be a leader among the Jewish people.  However, there is another question that could be asked and that is, why is it that G-d gave Moshe Rabbeinu different signs to convince the Jewish people to convince Pharaoh? Finally, why did he send the ten plagues?  After all, G-d could have told Moshe Rabbeinu to just go to Egypt and that he was going to lead the Jewish people out of Egypt, that G-d would envelope the Jewish people in a cloud of protection and the Jewish people would Just walk out of Egypt and the Egyptian people would not be able to touch the Jewish people, but, instead, G-d had Moshe Rabbeinu go through a whole series of plagues that he would bring upon Egypt and that this would take a great deal of time .  Why did G-d choose LO have Moshe Rabbeinu bring all these plagues upon Egypt?  And why did He choose to have Moshe go before Pharaoh first even before the plagues and have Pharaoh increase the level of slavery upon the Jewish people by making them now gather their own straw?  

It seems to me that the main reason for this was that G-d just did not want to give the Jewish people freedom.  He also wanted to destroy the ideology of the Egyptians.  The ideology of the Egyptians was that slavery was absolutely necessary in order for there to be civilization.  This is not a unique world view of the Egyptians.  The Greeks and all the ancient people believed the same thing.  In fact, Plato and Aristotle said that slavery was absolutely essential if there was to be any civilization, and although we talk about the democracy of Greece and how we got our democracy from Athens, 95% of the people of Athens were slaves.  They did not have the ability to participate in the democracy.  The purpose of Moshe' s coming to Egypt was not only to free the  Jewish people but to destroy once and for all the ideology that slavery was necessary for civilization.  That, of course, probably explains why Moshe Rabbeinu was given the signs that he was given to give to the Jewish people and these same signs that he later used in front: of Pharaoh.  He was told to take his staff and throw it down upon the ground and it would become a writhing snake and then he would pick it up again.  Then he was also told in order to convince the people to put his hand in his bosom and then he would withdraw his hand from his bosom and his hand would be leprous and when once again he would put it in his bosom and withdraw it it would come back to its natural health.  The third sign, of course, was the sign of the blood, to take water from the Nile and to turn it into blood.  The staff of the Egyptians, the thing that they rested upon was the theology and the ideology that  slavery was absolutely necessary.  Moshe was cold to throw that down onto the ground to show that that was a false ideology, that it was nothing more than a bunch of writhing snakes that  sanctified and justified human misery.  He was given the other two signs to show how he could combat that ideology.  The first thing was that he was not to  sit with idle hands, with his hand in his bosom but he was to actively combat this idea by showing that slavery was not essential to human betterment and human development.  Finally, he was to take the water from the Nile and that any water that was taken out of the Nile turned into blood, that the way the Jewish people could achieve their own world view and eventually ban slavery from the world was by adhering closely to the words of the Torah which are compared to water, and when you try to pervert the words of the Torah you just end up increasing the bloodshed in the world.

We have recently just returned from Israel where we had the privilege of attending the Rabbinic Cabinet of Israel Bonds, my wife and myself.  There we were addressed by some of the top leadership of Israel.  The reason for that is because in the synagogues over a quarter of a billion dollars worth of bonds were sold last year and the Israeli leadership was anxious to make sure that we would continue our efforts for the sake of Israel.  I had the privilege of introducing before our group Shimon Peres, the Prime Minister of Israel.  Shimon Peres, in his talk before us, and again this was echoed by other speakers who also calked before us, Ben Eliezer, who is the Housing Minister and was once the general in charge of all the territories, and Moshe Maoz, who is an expert in Palestinian affairs, that the time to make peace with the Arabs seems to be now because the ideology of the PLO is diminishing.  He seemed to feel that ideology was not important now.  We all know that ideology is a very great force.  People do not just do things because of monetary reasons and economic reasons.  People do things out of ideology.  People will do all sorts of sacrifices because they think that they have the truth.  They think that the ideals they are fighting for are right and just.  

We all know from our history that the American Revolution was not started by poor people but by rich people.  George Washington was not poor.  John Adams was not poor.  Thomas Jefferson was not poor.  These people were imbued with the ideals of democracy.  They felt they had been mishandled by the British and they had a right to start a revolution.  Nehru was not poor in India, and neither was Lenin in Russia.  Ideology is a great force in the world, although it is also true that ideology can lose its force.  People can stop believing in the ideology and they just mouth the ideals of the ideology when they really do not believe it.  In fact, at the turn of the century this happened to a large part of the Jewish people.  They no longer really believed in the ideals of Judaism.  They no longer could believe in a personal G-d who interfered in history and in the affairs of mankind and so, therefore, they no longer felt the ability to sacrifice for their religion.  It is true that the practice of Judaism continued for some time later, for a few generations later because they were a part engrained in the habits of the people.  They were part of the folk culture of the people.   Besides that, they gave a certain amount of comfort.  They were comfortable and you used these expressions and terms even though you really did not believe in them.   Unless you really believe in them they quickly lose their ability to marshal people to sacrifice for them and they diminish, so we saw that in the last 50 years the level of Jewish observance has declined precipitously, although paradoxically now in the modern world Jewish belief has once again resurrected itself although Jewish observance is far behind, but if Jewish belief continues to resurrect itself then Jewish observance, of course, will eventually match it.  

Today the people who keep Shabbos and kosher and so forth are basically the people who really believe in it.   When ideology loses its force and it is just mouth and people no longer believe it then people are not willing to sacrifice for it and then compromise and pragmatism comes to the fore.  It seems to be the belief of Shimon Peres and of the Labor party especially that the PLO no longer believes in its nationalistic ideology.  They just mouth these phrases but they do not really mean them, just like the Communists before communism fell in Eastern Europe and Russia really did not believe in communism anymore.  They just mouthed the phrases and when they are given the opportunity they would shrug it off.  Therefore, Shimon Peres and people like him, which again is not necessarily the truth, believe that the PLO do not believe in their ideology anymore, that they are willing to settle for a part of the land of Israel.  In fact, Shimon Peres told us openly that an offer was made to them which they did reject.   The offer was that they would control 60% of the West Bank in the Gaza Scrip and the Jewish people would control 8% and 30% would be control led jointly, which would mean that there would never be a new settlement in Israel, but the Arabs rejected that and Shimon Peres seems to feel, and the others, too, was that the reason that they rejected it was because of Hamas.  Hamas is an ideological movement which still have force, and that is why the Labor government came down so hard on Hamas and expelled 415 members of Hamas.  Can you imagine what would have happened if the Shamir government would have expelled even 14 people?  As Bennie Begin told us, the world would have come down terribly hard on Shamir and so would all of the Labor people, but Bennie Begin also went on to say that he would rather have Israel harshly criticized then eloquently eulogized.  The Labor party believes that somehow they stifle the ideology of Hamas, but there, I believe, they are making a terrible mistake.  They are making a terrible mistake because the ideology of Hamas does not seem because the people are poor and frustrated.  It stems from another reason and that  is that  the people who believe in Islam believe that Islam will return, that it will resurrect itself, just like we believe, too, that Judaism will resurrect itself and that Israel is the fulfillment of this resurrection of Judaism which had been stricken and that our resurrection, though, is a spiritual resurrection.  In Islamic terms it is a physical resurrection as well as a spiritual resurrection and that, based on the Iranian experience, that triumphant Islam will once again conquer the world.  Hams just does not want Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.  It wants all the territories that were once Moslem, like Spain and France and Yugoslavia and Hungary, etc., that it believes that Islam will come to the fore again and regain Its glory of the Middle Ages and that it is unstoppable.  Most of the people who belong to it are not uneducated people or poor people.  After all, even those that were expelled were doctors and lawyers.  A large percentage of them were very highly educated people, so we see that ideology still has a force today and that if Israel can think that they can control that ideology, that they can stop that ideology by just expelling a few people, I chink personally they are mistaken.  

This ideology has crossed borders.  It has inflamed the people of Algeria where the people, Hamas, really won the election but the government and the military refused to give them the election.  It has taken over Sudan.  It is a big force in Jordan and so, therefore, Israel has to be very careful.  In fact,  Ben Eliezer told us that after the Hamas people were expelled he even got a call from some of the Palestinian delegation telling him how happy they were that the Hamas was expelled.  They would not say it openly because their lives had been threatened before, but it just seems to point out that if you are going to give the PLO the West Bank, who is going to protect the PLO from Hamas, and if you are going to say that if the Hamas threatens the PLO we will intervene and we will send armies across the border, we cannot do that in a modern age.  If an army cannot six cross the border anymore.  The UN would just have a fit, and Israel would have sanctions due upon it and Israel would have all sorts of tzores, so it does not seem practical to me how they could actually be willing to give up any of the West Bank and the Gaza to a situation where an ideologue still in control.  Ideology is very, very important and as we see in the case of Egypt, when Moshe came he was told not just to redeem the Jewish people but to destroy the ideology of the Egyptian people, to show them that they no longer could believe in the rightness of slavery.  It was a wonderful experience.  We saw youth villages.  We went and saw plants that were being built.   We had all sorts of experts that talked to us about Israel's affairs.  Teddy Kollek came and talked to us.  It was something that was really wonderful.

I am reminded of the time when I spoke to a bunch of students, 8 year olds, 9 year olds, 10 year olds, and we were discussing Torah and asking different questions.   At the end of it I said, "May the Holy One, Blessed be He, give you the understanding, young children, to understand Torah better and to become better and wiser people."  They looked at me and said, "Thank you, Rabbi, and we hope the same for you, too."  By being able to attend this conference we were given the understanding and the ability to understand the problems of Israel more clearly and carefully.  As Bennie Begin also said, in Israel the problem is not so much how you are going TO live.  It is true that the political parties argue a little bit about the priorities, how you are going to live, but the big problem in Israel is if you are going to live.  Therefore, Israel has to be very careful with her security.  Israel has to be very careful about Syria, which is rearming tremendously.  We have to be very careful of Hamas.  We have to be very careful of the PLO, who, although many of these experts say they do not believe in ideology they sure are acting as if they believe in it by sending in all sores of terror squads.  We have to be careful that Israel is not sacrificed because of some whims of some different diplomats.  We should always remember that Israel has to look out for its security first.  We are confident that Hashem Mizborach has promised the Jewish people that we will return to the land and that we will live there and that we will form a state which will be a light unto the nations.  We are confident that the question will not be if we are going to live but the question will be how we are going to live, and we are going to live in such a way as to serve as an example to the rest of the world of how to live justly and righteously so that the Mashiach will come quickly in our day.  Amen.