Weekly Dvar Torah: Experiencing Exodus
At the Seder we say:
בְּכָל דּוֹר וָדוֹר חַיָּב אָדָם לִרְאוֹת אֶת עַצְמוֹ כְּאִלּוּ הוּא יָצָא מִמִּצְרַיִם
In every generation one must see himself as is he went out from Egypt.
The Alter Rebbe in Tanya adds:
בכל דור ודור וכל יום ויום, חייב אדם לראות עצמו כאילו הוא יצא היום ממצרים
Every single day one should feel as if he exited Egypt today.
How do we experience exodus every day?
What was Egypt?
What is Exodus?
Egypt was the lowest of the low, idolatry and immorality was the rule, slavery was a sport, the Egyptians gained nothing from the work done for them by the Jews, all they intended was to slave them away to no end, just to hurt them and dehumanize them.
Exodus was the release from Egypt, the Jews were freed from their slave-masters, their humanity was restored, and they were free to do as they please to serve Hashem.
Our sages teach us; that in every generation when Passover comes around, a person should experience the freedom that was granted to us during Exodus, to feel free, to be moral, and to serve Hashem as a free person, because if not for the original Exodus, we would never be free.
Comes the Alter Rebbe and adds; that since Exodus is so central to Jewish life, it has to be a daily experience, because everything that happens in the macrocosm has application in the microcosm.
Egypt in Hebrew is מצרים = Mitzrayim, from the root of מיצר = constraints and limitations.
A person consists of a G-dly soul and an animal soul, the G-dly soul came from under G-d’s throne, it was very close to G-d and enjoyed the G-dly spirit, until it was instructed to descend into a physical body, where materialism and self-indulgence rules the day.
In the body, the soul feels constrained, the animal soul is boss, and while the soul gives life to the body, it must also join the body as it engages in all kinds of materialistic pursuits, and the soul feels completely lost, it is in exile in the body.
The primary driver of the body is the animal soul, a self-preserving instinctive soul, which like an animal, pursues pleasures without any purpose other than self-indulgence.
This is the Mitzrayim in which the G-dly soul suffers being in exile by the animal soul.
Exodus is when the G-dly soul inspires and educates the animal soul that a person is not an animal, a human being is more than just a self-preserving species without any aims or goals.
Unlike an animal which has its head and its tail on the same level, and therefore only sees what’s below, a human being stands upright, the head is on top with the ability to look upwards and see higher.
Intellectually a person realizes that there is something higher, that there is a G-d that runs the world and He gave us a moral compass, it becomes clear that there is a lot more than just materialism, one can see how to strive and grow and the sky is the limit.
Exodus is breaking out of the constraints of the animal soul and the limitations of materialism, this enables the G-dly soul to teach the animal soul to live morally and to pursue spirituality, and to stand upright like a man and not like an animal.
This is how we experience Exodus from Egypt every single day.
Have a liberating Shabbos,
Gut Shabbos
Rabbi Yosef Katzman
