Below, please find this adaptation of Rav Weinberger's drasha from last Shabbos, parshas Bo 5779. Rav Weinberger has reviewed this write-up and any corrections are incorporated herein. Enjoy!
Rav
Moshe Weinberger
Parshas
Bo 5779
Making a Mockery
Did Hashem inflict
the ten plagues on Egypt as a prank? The passuk in this week’s parshah
says, “In order that you should relate in the ears of your son and your son’s
son that I have made a mockery of Egypt and the signs that I have placed on
them, and they shall know that I am Hashem” (Shmos 10:2). Rashi
explains that Hashem was saying, “I made a joke” of Egypt. First, can it really
be that Hashem performed all those miracles in order to play a joke on the
Egyptians? And why does Hashem care so much that “they [the Egyptians] shall
know that I am Hashem?”
The Degel Machaneh
Ephraim zy’a, taught in the name of his grandfather, the Baal Shem Tov zy’a,
that there is a little Egyptian within every Jew. He explains that because we
lived in Egypt for so long, they became almost completely immersed in the
impurity of Egypt. When the passuk says that Hashem did the plagues so
“they,” the Egyptians, would know that “I am Hashem,” this was not referring to
the Egyptians themselves. It was referring to the Egyptian aspect within each
Jew. Hashem did the plagues so that the Jewish people themselves would finally
be able to let go of their attachments to the course physicality of Egypt.
Why is this force of
impurity within a Jew called “Egypt?” According to the Mei HaShiloach, the
Torah calls Egypt the “garden of G-d” (Bereishis 13:10) because it was a
such a lush environment, filled with every blessing from G-d, where one could
enjoy all of the pleasures of the physical world. This level of physical luxury
is why the Midrash says that until the Jewish people left, a slave had never
fled Egypt (Mechilta Yisro 1). There was no constituency of Egyptians
demanding that a wall be built around the country and that the Canaanites
should pay for it. No slave had ever fled before because despite all of the
hard physical labor, those in bondage were also enslaved to the physical
desires they could only satisfy in Egypt.
Even today, we see so
many people enslaved to substances or behaviors even though they know how bad
they are. They feel they are simply unable to flee. There are those who engage
in illicit behaviors, whether online or with other people even though they know
they are, in some cases, destroying their jobs, their families, and themselves.
They cannot imagine life without their drug of choice.
We see this with
regard to the desire for wealth as well. I know people who made enough money to
live on for the rest of their lives 30 years ago, but they continue trying to
make new fortunes rather than learn in the beis medrash or use their
entrepreneurial spirit to spearhead projects that would help other people
directly. Such people also cannot imagine living without a certain type of home
or without a certain type of kitchen.
Whatever the flavor
of excessive attachment, whether to money, illicit desires, food, some
substance, or almost any other form of pleasure to which a person can become obsessed,
the intense form of pleasure forms a border around the person. It blinds him
from seeing the broader world. It makes him or her smallminded. The Hebrew word
for Egypt – מצרים – comes from the word
meaning “border” or “limit.” Being a slave to the pleasures of this world puts
blinders on a person, binding him into a tiny world where he cannot imagine
anything greater than a life filled with his indulgence of choice.
But imagine if a
person could see these silly little pleasures not as his whole world, but for
the absurd joke that they are. Anyone who reads the book of Devarim or
has read Tanach knows that the desire to worship idols used to be
overpowering, intoxicating, and almost inescapable. Yet do any of us feel drawn
to bow down to a crucifix on a Sunday morning? Even the suggestion is
laughable. Ever since Chazal nullified this desire (Yuma 69b),
the temptation for idol worship has become ridiculous in our eyes.
It was critical that
Hashem make a mockery out of their pleasure-seeking lifestyle that the Egyptian
part of ourselves felt drawn to. He knew the only way we would be able to be the
first slaves to flee Egypt was to first release the psychological stranglehold
that materialistic place had on our psyches by demonstrating its absurdity.
Similarly, when Moshiach
comes and Hashem slaughters the evil inclination (Sukkah 52a; Bava
Basra 16a), “our mouths will be filled with laughter” (Tehillim
126:2) when we look back at the years we spent working excessively or
pleasure-seeking. “How ridiculous we were. How could we have been so foolish?
How could we have fallen into an obsession with such drivel? What have we
done?!”
How did the miracles
of the ten plagues accomplish this? Hashem knew the only way we could escape
from the small-mindedness of Egypt was to expose us to true greatness. As Rav
Moshe Chaim Luzzatto zt’l, explains at the beginning of Messilas
Yesharim, “Man was only created to delight in Hashem…. This is the true
pleasure.” When a Jew tastes the pleasure of plumbing the depths of a Gemara
or experiencing that “Aha!” moment when he comprehends the profound depth
hidden in the words of a particularly difficult Tosafos, the shallow,
small material pleasures of this world feel like a joke by comparison.
This is the entire
theme of Shir HaShirm, which begins, “Your love is better than wine” (Shir
HaShirim 1:2) because “your love [is better] to me more than any wine
banquet and more than any pleasure and joy” (Rashi). The passuk
uses this expression “because He gave them His Torah and spoke to them face to
face, and that love is still more pleasant to them than any pleasure” (ibid.).
All of this is why
the Torah separates the first seven plagues into last week’s parshah and
the last three into this week’s parshah. The Torah only explains that
the purpose of the plagues is to inculcate “knowledge” beginning with the first
of the last three plagues (Shmos 10:2). This is because the first seven
plagues correspond to the 7 emotional characteristics (chessed, gevurah,
tiferes, netzach, hod, yesod, and malchus). The
last three plagues, on the other hand, correspond to the three intellectual
faculties, chochmah, binah, and daas – wisdom, insight,
and knowledge. It is only when our minds absorb the message that the
pleasure-seeking Egyptian life is a joke that we can begin to leave Egypt.
How can we, today,
rise to a level where the pleasures of the world seem silly compared to the
greatness we are capable of attaining? Rebbeinu Yona, at the beginning of Shaarei
HaAvodah, writes that, “The first step for a spiritual seeker is to know
his own value, recognizing his own strengths and the strengths of his
forefathers, as well as their greatness, esteem, anb beloved status to Hashem.
And he should work and continually strengthen himself to live up to that
standard.” By taking out time to think about the greatness Hashem placed within
us and the inner power we have inside as a birthright passed on to us from
Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, we eventually start to see the absurdity and
silliness of materials pursuits by comparison.
Rav Yaakov Weinberg zt’l,
relates a parable to help us understand how to pass this higher perspective on
to our children. In it, a boy is playing baseball with his friends in a park
that happens to be adjacent to a Jewish cemetery. In the midst of the game,
this boy is playing in the outfield when the batter hits a home run. The ball
sailed over the fence into the cemetery. The rule of the game is that the
outfielder closest to the ball must jump the fence to retrieve it so that the
game can continue. So, this boy began to put his leg over the fence to jump
over when he suddenly felt his father embrace him, saying, “No, my son, you
cannot go into the cemetery.” Not wanting to be different from others or have
restrictions placed on him, he responds, “But Dad, the outfielder always has to
get the ball. All of the other boys do it. Why am I worse than them?”
The boy’s father
responds, “No my son. You are not ‘worse’ than the other boys. On the contrary,
you are a descendant of Aharon HaKohein and you have within you an even higher
level of holiness than other Jewish people. You cannot go into a cemetery not
because you are lower than others, but because, in a certain way, you have an
even greater level of holiness within you. It is beneath you to enter a place
of impurity because you are part of something greater.”
May Hashem bless us to
recognize our own greatness and the awesome potential to conquer the emptiness
of the world’s pursuits for G-dliness. May He cause us to experience the depth,
intense pleasure, and sweetness of Yiddishkeit so that we will not have
to struggle so mightily to escape from the small-mindedness of a purely
material life and connect to Hashem and the broad-minded path of Torah!
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