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Parashat Shemot
Rav Haim Lifshitz
Essays and Articles:
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Birth of a Leader
Translated from Hebrew by S. NAthan l'ilui nishmat Esther bat mordechai "'And as they would afflict them, so they would increase...' In everything that they put their minds to afflicting them, so did the Holy One's put His mind to increasing and multiplying them." Midrash: "It is ruah hakodesh speaking [in this text]. You say pen yirbeh, 'lest they will increase' and I say ken yirbeh, 'so they would increase.'" (Sota 1) "Then went a man from the house of Levi, and took the daughter of Levi." This description clearly intends to circumvent any personal details that would identify the characters. We know nothing of their nature, of their quality as people. Even the opening of the narrative relating the events that befall the Jewish people in Egypt seems more a hint of a new beginning. It does not seem to be a continuation of the previous story, despite its opening phrase: "And these are the names of the children of Yisrael who had come to Egypt." "And these are the names..." "And" (the letter 'vav') indicates a continuation of the previous story. The list of names gives us this impression as well. Yet immediately, it conveys an ending - a story coming to a close: "And Yosef died, and all of his brothers, and all of that generation..." "And a new king rose over Egypt" - Rashi brings the Talmudic debate: "Rav versus Shmuel: One says a really new [king], and one says that his decrees were new." The onset of a new process is being signaled, and the close of the first process. The new process will oppose and contradict everything that was achieved in the old process, as will soon become obvious. The parents of "the man Moshe", savior of Israel, are barely described. Surely they deserve some slight recognition; surely their great stature could be briefly remarked upon. Yet instead of continuing with their narrative, a new description suddenly appears, of a socio-political situation, of the development of objective conditions, which supposedly justify the deceitful and manipulative attitude of the Egyptians toward the mass of foreigners who by their astonishing rate of increase threaten the delicate balance of Egyptian society. Everything transpires by force of circumstance, as though by chance! Even the story of the saving of Moshe from the river sounds like a chance occurrence, quite wondrous it is true, but without the direct intervention of the Master of the universe, though one does find it a bit difficult to join this bizarre combination of circumstances into one organized pattern that could have reasonably occurred on its own. One detects an effort by the teller to set the story of events upon a solid foundation of values and devotion. "Paro only decreed against the males, and you decree also against the females," Miriam accuses her father when he separates from her mother in response to the misery of the times. The devoted activism of the sister-savior is strongly reflected also in her involvement with Paro's daughter. Also Moshe demonstrates amazing devotion and sensitivity to the suffering of his brethren, though he has grown up in the royal palace and has never been raised or educated among them. ...To teach you that Godly quality does not reveal itself in the world unless those involved take the initiative, even if it is only in the merit of a few exceptional individuals - in whose merit the entire group exists. However, the mighty transpiring of events no longer stands in direct relationship to the deeds of the solitary man who lives in solitary devotion outside of the common camp. The great hand of Divine Providence now guides the unfolding of events on a cosmic scale. Before our eyes, a new approach is rising and growing - and changing the bond that connects God's servant to his Possessor, and the Creator to His universe. In the old process, described in Sefer Bereshit, the bond between man and his Creator was created by virtue of the merit of an individual, who took the initiative, who exercised his free to seek the bond with God. The bond was created in the merit of the tsadik who took total responsibility for his actions, who was "the tsadik - the foundation of the world": "The tsadik decrees and the Holy One fulfills his decree". Everything that the forefathers attained, they attained in the merit of their own efforts and achievements. Now, here is a new road beginning - and it is coming from the opposite direction. The initiative of free choice is stepping aside, in favor of the initiative of Divine Providence. Itaruta d'l'eila, "The awakening on high," is now taking the initiative. It will no longer await the initiative of the tsadik before heaven will respond. Rather, heaven will take the initiative and will respond to...a human cry of distress. It is a new path in God's service and it will attain new and unprecedented heights. "And [by] my name of God I was not known to them". To your forefathers: They did not know this name of Mine. From this point onward, there will be two approaches, the old and the new, and each approach will complement the other, with the decisive role being held by supreme Providence. The new clear signs of the presence of Divine Providence will rock the foundations of the world. They will cause man some difficulty, as well, as he tries to adjust to them, for after all, "a man prefers his own measure to nine measures of his friend's." This is a basic element, rooted in human behavior. The human ability to take control and responsibility drags with it a sense of possession and mastery, imbuing man with this feeling. The higher the quality of personality one is blessed with, the harder it is to avoid taking initiative and control - the harder it is to ignore this need. Yet now, behold: Proud and powerful man encounters a crisis. He sinks to the bottom, to the lowest low. "...Forty-nine gates of impurity." "...Another little bit and he is gone." He screams out - for saving, for heaven's mercy, though really he despairs, for he has nothing left. He is cleaned out: All his material possessions are gone. All the spiritual attainments of his great ancestors are gone. Suddenly, too his surprise, he discovers his connection with heaven - at the bottom of the pit. Moshe's Humility "And Moshe the man was more humble than all humanity on the face of the earth." Humility as a positive character trait was not lacking in Avraham, who said, "for I am dust and ashes." Yitzhak and Yaakov too excelled in the trait of humility. Why does the Torah attribute this mida to Moshe exclusively? Alternatively, why does the Torah not point out all the perfect qualities of the man who attained greater intimacy with God than any other human being on earth? For Moshe does not attain mere contact with God. He is privileged to enter the inner sanctum, the private inner spaces, and to bring down the Torah from heaven. It seems the Torah wishes to describe a new path, in which activity is initiated by Divine Providence, and that this initiative offers man a connection with his Creator. This connection is not as sensitive or vulnerable as the connection that was created by human free choice. This connection is more solid; it is the simple truth that the element of human initiative has not been solid enough or reliable enough to support the heaven/earth connection. For this reason, Moshe's humility was not an indicator of personal quality, nor was it an indicator of the power of human initiative, nor of the high level of perfection attained by a human vessel in order to receive the Godly initiative. Rather, in its emphasis upon humility to such an exclusive extent as to remove any other quality, the Torah is teaching that humility is the pre-condition for receiving Divine hesed. Indeed, it is the only requirement for receiving the initiative of the hashgaha. Heaven will no doubt only take this initiative when man is in an absolute state of helplessness, when all that is left him is his sensation that he needs to be saved, and this sensation invites and pleads for rescue. Any sense of human power that might get mixed into this experience would hold back the hashra'a of Godly presence. Humility requires the absolute removal of man's sense that he has the power to help himself. Only then is he privileged to experience an actively initiated siyata dishmaya. What is humility's main element? The belief that the heavenly presence is the sole causal factor in all events. This precludes the possibility of any other causal factor. It makes unthinkable the idea of heaven's partnership, God forbid, with any other factor possessing any power at all: "We can lean on nothing other than our Father in heaven," anything else being optical illusion. This perception does away with any expectations from any natural sources. It includes the clear awareness that the laws and powers of nature play no role at all in events, nor are they able to pose any kind of existential menace, as threatening and terrifying as they may seem. Moshe incarnated this profound sensation to its fullest and purest extent, and was therefore worthy as none other to lead a situation with which - from the perspective of existential logic - nothing could compete in terms of hopelessness and despair. Was Moshe otherwise gifted? Was he blessed with human qualities and talents? Without any doubt. It suffices to point out that his qualities are never mentioned except in contexts that support our point. For this reason, whoever see Moshe as the eternal symbol of leadership is quite mistaken. Of all his qualities the only trait the Torah mentions is one that no one can deny is a defect; Moshe's speech impediment. Can one conceive of a leader who does not have the power of speech? To our amazement, the Omnipotent One does not find it necessary to heal him of this critical defect. ...In order to teach you that Moshe was suited as none other to represent the absolute power of supreme hashgaha. Any use of his own personal power by the messenger would have diminished the absolute intervention of the hashgaha. We must make a distinction between two types of humility. The sense of one's own worthlessness, a result of failure and despair, in wake of which the victim loses the last bit of trust that remains to him from the confidence he had accumulated during his successful years, is not the type of humility we speak of, but rather humility as a personal quality, as the queen of midot tovot, cream of the positive character traits: "What wisdom has made into a crown upon its head, humility has made into a heel for its sole." It was indeed this latter trait that characterized the father of all prophets. The humility that is the fruit of failure derives from the survival mechanisms of brute force. It has no place among the qualities of the inner self. It is alien to it. Whereas humility that derives from the inner qualities of "I" is a testimony to "I"'s clean hands, to "I"'s utter inner purity, cleared and removed from ego to constitute its antithesis. Such humility is the opposite of arrogance, of ga'ava. Such humility does not look to man from the outside, does not address man's selfish need to compare himself with the potential competitors who might block his progress. Inner quality's humility springs from "I"'s self-expression, as it creates hesed - kindness for another, as it searches for exactly the right moment to do the other good. Humility begets kindness, and polishes one's sensitivity to another's needs, for the purpose of doing the other good. Inner quality's humility frees "I" from the chains of selfishness, and frees "I"'s attention, to concentrate on the presence of the other, to prevent its selfish focus on itself. Thus is the path of pure hesed cleared, and the way opened; the coach is loaded with sensitivity and with the weight of the heart's goodness for another - for the needy one. It was this inner quality of humility that had scrubbed Moshe's soul to snowy whiteness - to pitying the kid goat that ran away from the flock - and it was this inner quality of humility that had so sharpened his perceptions that he could discern the miraculous phenomenon taking place in the sneh, the burning bush. What does sensitive discernment of miraculous phenomena have to do with the mida of hesed? Selfishness expresses the survival mechanism, which is a testimony to enslavement to the brute force elements of the laws of nature, which threatens to devour the inner human quality which the laws of nature consider to be an alien intruder. Sensitivity to a miracle is a testimony to openness to the dimension of height, to relating to the kingdom of heaven, and to coping with the two parallel tracks, the one below - material/brute force/ arbitrary - and the one above - that fascinates and that beckons to everything that is good and beautiful in the human image of God. It arouses all his qualities, all his abilities to rule brute-force reality, which breaks apart at the first glance he casts from above; that first glance is enough to free the human image of God from the enslaving chains of physical matter that do their best to compel him, and to transmit to him their message of inescapable necessity. We can speculate that countless caravans had passed it by, since that bush was first set aflame by a Godly fire. From the six days of creation it had been burning, and no one had stopped. No one had paused, no one had been powerfully moved by this vision of God - not until that goat pitier came along, and stopped in his tracks, in the face of a sanctity that was breaking through and halting the race of secular time, for the secular had stepped aside for the sacred, "because the place that you are standing on is sacred earth." Hesed for another is the same quality, because it means diverging completely from the selfish mechanism of survival, which sees the other as a threat and an adversary. The Humility of the Leader It appears that this leader was blessed with the humility of hesed. This is a sensitivity that invites the other to take his own - the leader's - place. It is almost as though the raison d'etre, the purpose of the existence of the leader is not to cultivate his own position at the expense of the other, but rather to lead for the sake of the other through sacrifice of his own existence, to the extent of neglecting his own obligations to his own personal life. Thus Moshe neglected his obligation to circumcise his own son - such was his devotion to the mission of redeeming his brethren. Moshe sees this conflict of interests as a flaw that can threaten the quality of his leadership. Why is he is required to invest effort, at least the tiny minimal portion of survival effort required, in order to protect his own existence? Because of the rule that "he shall live by them", and that "you shall guard very well your lives" and that "your life comes before your friend's life." Furthermore, "we do not appoint over the public a leader that does not have the qualities of a wise man, a powerful man, and a rich man, so that he will not have need of his fellow human beings," and so that he will be able to consider their situation and their distress with an objective, unbiased, and unbribed eye. If he will not protect his own status while occupying himself with their interests, who will see to his interests? To Moshe, the new type of leader, God reveals His new practice: "I have seen and truly seen the affliction of My nation in Egypt, and their scream I have heard, and I have gone down to save him." Here is an initiative by the hashgaha, Itself, and it is not waiting for the initiative of human free choice, as things used to be. Moshe hears it and cannot believe it! After all, "a man wants his own measure more than the nine measures of his friend". What will become of man's faith in himself, his faith in his own abilities and talents? What will become of his willingness to take the responsibility upon himself for his actions? Will God's servant now not be exposed to a complete loss of self-respect, to a loss of the control he once wielded - at least over himself? This is why Moshe has so little hope of acceptance. There is little hope that the Jewish people will be willing to cast off their honor and their independence, and agree to join those who eat the bread of charity, even if it is bread from the table on high. "B'nei Yisrael will not believe me," Moshe insists. Though he is in the depths of distress, man is not happy to yield up his freedom. Seen this way, it is obvious that the promise of the land will never persuade them: The need for solid ground belongs more to the survival mechanism than to heaven's mechanisms. Now, at Moshe's insistence that the Jewish people will never cooperate, the critical issue is unveiled. God reveals the decisive factor in His new approach: "This is the sign for you that I have sent you...When you take the nation out of Egypt, you will serve the Lord on this mountain [Sinai]". The Gift of Torah In the dimension of Torah, the learning and the fulfilling of the Torah will serve as the challenge through which man will find full expression for the best that is in him, full use of his maximal personal and spiritual powers, to an extent that is beyond compare with the challenge posed by his battle for mere existence. In Torah's war, human quality will find direct expression, in a way that will draw out every grain of human energy, every bit of human quality both spiritual and physical. Human emotion will march arm-in-arm with Divine intelligence, toward the goal that unites them both: Fulfillment of the Torah, which will require giving Divine meaning to the material realness of the world, and giving material realness to Divine meaning, in order to create Godly presence. No longer would precious and irretrievable resources be wasted on the battle for mere existence: "Tsadikim, their work is done by others." The tsadik is the one who willingly renounces the use of his brute-force powers in the battle for existence. The deeper the renunciation, the greater the Godly intervention in his fate, and the greater the Godly intervention on behalf of his devoted efforts to serve his Creator. A key sentence appears at the beginning of the story: "'And as they would afflict them, so they would increase.' In everything that they put their minds to afflicting them, so the Holy One put His mind to increasing them and to multiplying them." And the midrash, as mentioned: "It is ruah hakodesh speaking [in this text]. 'You say pen yirbeh, lest they will increase, and I say ken yirbeh, so would they increase.'" Meaning: As the resources of existence grow fewer and fewer, and as distress grows greater, and we might add, as man abandons his faith in the resources of existence and seeks his saving from heaven, so will the hashgaha's involvement grow greater, and more effectively deal with the issues of his survival. Renunciation as Power The new ideal gives power to the sense of helplessness. However, this only applies to the extent that this sense frees man from the sense of dependency on the survival mechanism. Only when there is the freedom that comes from awareness, which is the result of a milechatchila renunciation, as a first choice, does the sense of one's own helplessness bring power. Renunciation cannot bring power when it is the result of the despair that accompanies existential fear, and gloom, and misery. The ideal renunciation is the one that opens a window on new horizons, on new existential goals based on inner quality. This is a renunciation that comes out of gladness, out of being powerfully moved and excited by new goals and new challenges. This sort of renunciation protects man's faith in his power to cope, in his power of free choice, in his power to make decisions and reach a balanced judgment, for these remain the foundation stones upon which man's dignity and ability to take control and responsibility rest. The challenge is to create a new world from the materials of the old world. A new world rises and grows out of the ruins of the battle for survival. Seen from the high view, survival looks like a heap of smoking ruins, while a new challenge is taking its place. The new challenge is built of existence too, it is true, but it is an existence steeped in meaning and values. It builds Godly presence from the same materials used by mere existence, to transform existence rather than to replace it. The new challenge includes both elements - the old and the new. It includes the promise to the forefathers, built upon human initiative and human free choice, and it includes also the new name of God, havaya- being - which expresses the direct involvement of the hashgaha. From now, man would be charged with a duty that was made up of intrinsic contradiction. Required to cope with a condition of "have", he must nevertheless feel that he is a "have not," and from the sensation of "have not", he must feel that he does "have", at one and the same moment. From this point onward, man is required to view nature as a thin and transparent layer, barely capable of concealing the direct presence of the miracle. The miracle may be concealed, but it cannot be pushed aside by the supposed mechanical powers of nature. Henceforth, man would not inhabit a split world, divided between nature and miracle, but rather a world where miracle is natural, and where the natural is miraculous. This sensation would also, and mainly, take hold in the structure of his own personality. Henceforth there would be no split between contradictory personality tendencies, with one leaning always toward the hedonistic stimulus of materialism and the other contracting in fear, at the terrors of threatened survival. Duty and pleasure would instead complete one another in the creative challenge provided by the framework of Torah and mitsvot. Only this framework prevents the split that prevents human perfection. In this framework, only the outside world will remain an exclusive expression of miraculous hashgaha. In man's own inner world, both human initiative and the miraculous hashgaha will meet and perfect one another. Phrases such as l'fi aniut da'ati "it seems according to my paltry opinion," and Hashem ya'ir aynei "God will enlighten my eyes," express the wondering sense of the miraculous that accompanies God's servant on his journey, though it is a journey of utter toil, to the point of "'when a man shall die in the tent,'...shall cause his own dying in Torah's tent." A sense of miracle fills him despite an investment of effort that knows no limit. God's servant, toiling in the Torah, is transformed into Godly presence, becoming in his own right a walking miracle. Therefore, "'Et God your Lord you shall fear: Et, to include talmidei hachamim." "Moshe the man," "more humble than all of humanity on the face of the earth" merited becoming the symbol of Godly presence actualized in Torah. "Anyone who is suspicious of him, becomes suspicious of the shechina," which "radiated from the skin of his face." A leader who had no need for the usual brute-strength leadership abilities, who was a leader by symbolizing the perfect human being, Moshe was the tangible substance of Godly presence. Go To Top
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