The Miracle of Freedom – Parashat Bo

January 23, 2015 at 4:00 PM , , ,

You shall tell your son on that day, saying, “It is for this sake that G-d acted on my behalf when I went out of Egypt.” – Shemot 13:8

וְהִגַּדְתָּ לְבִנְךָ בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא לֵאמֹר בַּעֲבוּר זֶה עָשָׂה יְהֹוָה לִי בְּצֵאתִי מִמִּצְרָיִם – שמות יג, ח

The Torah tells us that in all generations one must relate to his children “that G-d acted on my behalf when I went out of Egypt.” This indicates that our freedom today is not only the result of G-d’s redemption of our ancestors, but as our Sages (Mishna, Pesachim 10:5) learned from this verse, “In every generation, one is obligated to regard himself as if he has just come out of Egypt.”

Chassidus explains that this is because the freedom from Egypt is a constant and recurring miracle, and not just the natural and automatic state-of-being ever since the Exodus three thousand years ago.

According to the Arizal (Likutei Torah, Ki Seitzei), the exile of Bnei Yisrael in Egypt is the spiritual root from which all subsequent exiles of the Jewish people are derived. With the Exodus from Egypt, however, we were freed not only from slavery in the physical land of Egypt. Rather, the Zohar (vol. 2, p. 52b) states, that the spiritual source of Egypt too was entirely vanquished, meaning that the Jewish people will never again be subjugated to another nation in a manner as extreme as the Egyptian bondage. This is the inner meaning of the verse (Shemos 14:13), “for the Egyptians whom you see today, you will never see again.” (For this reason, we continue to celebrate the holiday of Pesach even though we have subsequently been exiled and forced into captivity in other lands, because the freedom achieved through the Redemption from Egypt will never be undone.)

matzah

Our eternal and unchangeable freedom from the possibility of another “Egyptlike” exile defies nature, for by natural order there is nothing stopping such an exile from happening again. Hence, the guarantee of freedom is not a one-time miracle, but a constant and non-stop defiance of the natural possibility of enslavement. Therefore, in every generation, and indeed every single day (see Tanya Chapter 47), we can truly regard ourselves as having just been redeemed from Egypt.

—Likkutei Sichos vol. 5, pp. 175-178

 

 

 

 

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