Redemption Realized
Adapted by Channie Koplowitz Stein
Parshat Voeyra includes the four languages of redemption. They parallel our redemption from each of our exiles until the final redemption with Moshiach, and are the source of our practice of drinking four cups of wine during the Passover Seder: “I am Hashem. I shall take you out from under the burdens of Egypt; I shall rescue you from their service; I shall redeem you with an outstretched arm…; I shall take you to Me for a people and I shall be a God to you; and you shall know that I am Hashem your God Who takes you out from under the burdens of Egypt.” [“I shall bring you to the land…” representing the Cup of Elijah, is not a subject for this discussion.] Before conveying this prophecy to Moshe Rabbenu, God introduces Himself as, “I am Hashem. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as E-l Sha-ddai, but with My Name Hashem [the four lettered Y-H-V-H], I did not make Myself known to them...”
Several questions arise from this passage. We can certainly connect “take you out,” “redeem,” and “rescue” with the Egypt experience, but how does “take you to Me” fit in? After all, Hashem “took us to Him” at Sinai, months after we had left Egypt. Further, why does Hashem repeat, “Who takes you out from under the burdens of Egypt,” at this fourth stage when He has already given us that insight at the very first stage of taking us out of Egypt?
Ben Melech, Rabbi Mintzberg explains that each of these redemptions took place on the fifteenth of Nisan, including becoming Hashem’s people. Hashem had already given us the mitzvah of korban Pesach/the Pascal sacrifice. We as a nation accepted that very first command as a precursor to accepting the entire Torah at Sinai. But even more important than the redemption from physical slavery, adds Rabbi Dunner in Mikdash Halevi, is the freedom from spiritual enslavement. Therefore, the realization of our full redemption was only achieved at Sinai upon receiving the Torah.
It seems, however, that upon being freed from enslavement in Egypt we agreed to “enslave” ourselves to God. How are we then free? Rav Soloveitchik z’ l in his Reflections offers a profound insight. While we may certainly feel ourselves to be free [especially as citizens of the USA], we are still enslaved psychologically, emotionally and spiritually by our fears for our health or even death, social expectations, and natural and accidental events. When we give ourselves over completely to God, we are free in the assurance that God is guiding our lives, even in challenging times, and that there is order and purpose in life. We free ourselves from psychological torment when we “let go and let God.” By giving ourselves up to Hashem, we are gaining so much more, writes the Sifsei Chaim. But serving Hashem is truly work, and our hard work in Egypt prepared us to be servants to Hashem. The purpose of our physical redemption was to prepare us for our full, spiritual and psychological redemption in Hashem’s service, believing that He will put everything in its proper place.
Rav Reiss breaks the terminology down for us. Hashem took out out from the physical slavery of Egypt. Then He saved us from any dominion, such as paying taxes. He redeemed us with miraculous signs for the purpose of taking us as His nation, this last being the purpose of all the preceding, the positive note that ends the entire enslavement experience.
Rav Yosef Salant z”l notices a slight difference in the Hebrew writing of what seems to be an exact repetition of, “From under the burdens of Egypt.” When Hashem “took us out from under the burdens of Egypt,” the word sivlt is written shorthand, without the “vov.” When Hashem will then take us to be His people, we will know that He has taken us out from under the sivlot, the full burden of Egypt. This difference reinforces our previous insight. The Egyptians had robbed us not only of our physical freedom, but also of our sense of self and specialness, of being God’s nation, and we were in such a state of depression, that we were unaware of our empty spiritual and psychological condition. But Hashem knew, and when He brought us to Him, we too understood how the enslavement affected our psyche and our spirit, not just our bodies, and how Hashem had redeemed us from this as well. He brought us from darkness into light.
Now we can begin to understand what the Torah meant when it states that Hashem revealed Himself to our Patriarchs with the Name E-l Sha-dai but He did not reveal to them the four lettered Name. That primal light that Hashem created on the first day of creation was the powerful light with which one could see “from one end of the earth to the other.” It was a light of complete expansiveness so the world would keep expanding, a world of Y-H-V-H, until Hashem said, “Dai/enough,” and set limits and boundaries to creation. But Hashem foresaw how the evil ones in the generation of the flood would misuse that powerful light. Therefore, He took that light and secreted it for the righteous. Who are the righteous? The Tosher Rebbe z”l in Avodat Avodah tells us that these are the righteous who study the Torah and reveal the never ending light hidden in the Torah. Our forefathers intuited the Torah on their own, even though Hashem had not revealed it to them. Now Hashem was telling Moshe that He would give Bnei Yisroel access to this light through the Torah He was gifting to us.
Golus Mitzrayim/Egyptian exile, continues the Tosher Rebbe z”l citing the Ariz”l, was an exile of darkness, of lack of knowledge because we did not yet have the Torah, and we therefore could not yet form a close relationship with Hakodosh Boruch Hu. Therefore, we could not be fully redeemed until Hashem gave us that knowledge at Sinai through His Torah. When we study Torah, we are accessing that primal light and its Creator. This knowledge of Torah is what strengthens us through each of the other three exiles we have experienced, each term of redemption alluding to one of the exiles. We are now in the fourth exile, the Roman exile. When Moshiach comes and initiates the final redemption, “The entire world will be as filled with knowledge/light of Hashem as water covering the sea bed.” But that time has not yet come, continues the Tosher Rebbe z”l citing the Zohar, and we must continue watering the holy sheep with the living waters of Torah and hasten his coming.
This too was the purpose of the plagues, explains the Siach Chaim, to teach Bnei Yisroel (and Pharaoh) of Hashem’s immanence in the world. The plagues began below the water, then plagued the surface of the water, and then into the air. The final plague was directly from the heavens. Internalizing the message of the plagues was preparation for receiving the knowledge inherent in the Torah. Therefore, in the Great Hallel, we thank Hashem for His eternal kindness both for taking us out of Egypt and for His strong hand and outstretched arm through which He performed all the plagues and let us witness His immanence on earth.
The Siach Chaim, citing Chidushei HaRim, then takes this one step further. By displaying His sovereignty over all of nature and the earth with ten plagues, Hashem was reenacting the ten utterances of creation that would then parallel the Ten Commandments through which Bnei Yisroel received the Torah.
But if all we had were the ten plagues, writes Rabbi Abramsky z”l in Letitcha Elyon, then we could fall into the trap of attributing these wonders to nature or to some form of sorcery, similar to what was practiced in Egypt. To appreciate all the wonders that Hashem does, not just in Egypt but throughout the world, one needs to view them through the lens of Torah. As a modern day example, Rebbetzin Smiles notes the numerous miracles of Palestinian missiles raining down on Israel, yet so few lives were lost – the children had not yet come to school that morning; the family had gone our for the day, etc. Was it just human error that miscalculated where or when to deploy the missiles, or was Hashem actively protecting His children? We have the clarity of Sinai. When a fetus is in the womb, it sees the entire creation, a vision he loses at birth, but can regain through Torah study.
It is human nature that when everything works out, we see only coincidence or cause and effect. We fail to attribute these “coincidences” or these people who entered our lives, whether professionals or lay people, as Hashem’s agents to help us navigate our mitzrayim/difficult straits. We must remember not only to cry out to Hashem when we need His help, but to thank Him (as well as His agents) when things turn out well for us, reminds us Rabbi Gamliel Rabinowitz in Tiv Hatorah.
When Hashem says the first time the He “took us out of the burdens of Mitzrayim,” He taught us a profound precept. No one ever leaves a situation unless he feels he has a better option. No slave ever left Egypt because their propaganda machine had convinced them that things were better in Egypt than anywhere else. Bnei Yisroel first needed to be disabused of this misinformation. This was the first step in redeeming Bnei Yisroel, writes the Lekach Vehabevuv. Hashem first took us out of the onerous weight of false Egyptian propaganda. He freed our minds so we could consider even the initial physical freedom.
Freedom begins as a state of mind. This is the difference Yosef heard in the dreams of the chief butler and chief baker of Pharaoh, writes Rabbi Frand. The chief butler was actively anticipating serving the king, squeezing the gapes, bearing the cup to the king. In contrast, the baker was passive, allowing birds to eat away at the baskets full of bread on his head. Yosef understood that the passion of the butler would earn him reinstatement, while the indifference of the baker would spell his doom. That is why four cups of wine at the Seder are associated with the butler mentioning “cup” four times in relating his dream to Yosef. As the butler was released from his prison, so were we released from our imprisonment in Egypt.
But Rabbi Frand makes an important connection for us to our situation in our current exile. We no longer have a Beit Hamikdosh to bring sacrifices to Hashem. If we want to merit redemption, we have to show our desire and passion for our service to Hashem, not just rote mouthing of words and thoughtless observance of mitzvoth. When Hashem sees our desire to return to His full service, He will redeem us once again and send Moshiach IY”H so that we can return to His full service.
Unfortunately, we tend to still be under the influence of our modern propaganda and enslaved to the physicality and materialism of this world, writes Rabbi Schorr. We need to recognize that this too is our current enslavement and pray to be liberated from our narrow, physical and material mindsets. We need to want to get out, and that first step is the hardest. For that we need the lens Torah provides for us, notes Rabbi Goldstein in Shaarei Chaim.
We raise our cups several times during the Seder to remind ourselves that it is really Hashem above Who fills that cup, “We raise the cup of salvation and call out in the Name of Hashem,” reminds us Rabbi Schwadron z”l in Techeilet Mordechai. All my salvation, not just the one over three thousand years ago, but every salvation in my personal life comes from Hashem. I too am empty until Hashem fills me. And while I may feel my first ease at physical relief, true salvation can only come through spiritual relief and a closeness to Hashem through His Torah.