So, it's motzei the Chag, and as we're waiting for the pizza to be ready ( yes!! ), I'd like to share a profound Torah I saw over the holidays.

In Parashas Beshalach, the Jews find themselves backed into a corner. After being led out "...with an upraised hand" from Egypt after witnessing the ten plagues, they arrive at the banks of the Yam Suf ( Red Sea / Sea Of Reeds ). They turn back, only to find that the Egyptians have changed their minds about "letting" the Jews go, have cobbled together an ersatz force, and are in hot pursuit. Without anywhere to go, no apparent solution, they turn to Moshe and demand from him ( I'm not writing verbatim here... ): "were there not enough graves in Egypt that you brought us here? What have you done to us?" In a moment, they had given up hope, as they realized the gravity of the situation they were in.

Now, we know that the Jews who left Egypt numbered 600,000 in males between the ages of 20 and 60 alone. That doesn't even include the males above and below that age group, as well as the women. We know they left Egypt armed. They were facing a patchwork force of Egyptians, who were still reeling from the aftermath of the plagues. With all that in mind, we should all ask a glaringly obvious question: Why didn't the Jews hold their ground and fight?

Ibn Ezra makes a powerful observation that not only answers the question, but teaches an important lesson. In explanation of the verse ( Shemos 14:13 ) "Stand fast and see the salvation of Hashem...", Ibn Ezra reveals that all the Jews could do was "stand fast." After being brought up as the servant class for so long in Egypt ( many generations; 210 years, as a matter of fact...), the Jews couldn't shake the slave mentality that had been indoctrinated into their psyches since birth, even as free men! Despite all they had witnessed - the Egyptians' punishment as a result of their treatment of the Jews, the wonders that God performed for them, showing the world that He is omnipotent, omnipresent, and that He is involved on a constant basis with our world - they couldn't turn around and strike back at their former masters! In fact, this mentality was so ingrained in their conciousness that even though they grossly outnumbered the army of Amalek - to whom they had no slave/master relationship - without Moshe's constant prayer and uplifted arms, they would have been defeated.

But wait - it gets even more powerful...

Ibn Ezra continues, and he maintains that as a result of this "slave mentality", that generation that was brought out of Egypt had to die in the desert before the B'nei Yisrael could enter into Eretz Yisrael. They needed another generation - one born into freedom, uninhibited by the "slave mentality" that their fathers had - to lead them and conquer the Promised Land.

What a powerful message! I think that there is a multitude of lessons to be learned here, but I'll pick one: We are now coming out of the holiday of Pesach, referred to as "Zman Cheiruseinu ( The Time Of Our Freedom)" The whole theme is how God brought us out and broke our shackles of iron, and how we willingly accepted shackles of gold ( i.e. servitude of God). But I think that we need to ask ourselves - especially nowadays - what is freedom? What does it mean to be free? What does freedom entail, and how does a free person - a free Jew - display his/her freedom?

For one thing, I believe that we have to get rid of our "slave mentality". If we're all honest ( and this doesn't exclude yours truly) with ourselves, we'll see that there are things we do that conform to a slave mentality of sorts. It can be a slavery to the fashions of the time, and how it controls everything we do. It can be with the importance we put into the unimportant aspects of money. The way we percieve what is "wasted time" and what is "quality time". All these things are subjective, and when we're surrounded by a society like ours, a lot of times we adopt that society's outlook on things. We have to break out of the "mental slavery" of this Galus, and use the lessons of Pesach to truly experience freedom. As the bumper sticker says: Freedom Isn't Free. That's true, but it's definitely worth it....

"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds..." - Bob Marley

Originally posted Wednesday, 11 April 2007