From Egypt to Today: How Antisemitism Is Manufactured | The Land of Israel Fellowship

Everyone, I want to talk about a subject that I think has been really on all of our minds, and that is the rising anti-semitism that we see all over the world. When I was growing up in America, whenever it was like Holocaust Remembrance Day, we would we would ask um you know, the teachers would ask, "Could there ever be another Holocaust? Could there be a Holocaust in America?" And the answer was always like somewhere between no and really probably not. Uh, I mean because you know we had the Constitution and human rights and all these Holocaust memorial museums, so many protections and as a child growing up in America, I never experienced any hatred. It felt like something from the past. I don't think that Jews around the world respond the same way anymore. If you ask somebody in 2025, could there be another wave of violent Jew hatred? I think anybody would say no. And the answers would range somewhere between maybe and yes, right? And you know, it's it Jews I think have always and especially now found this just very very perplexing because as opposed to other, you know, let's say migrant groups or or groups of strangers, we've never terrorized the nations that we've moved to and and we don't Jews don't proitize or try to push their religion on others. Jews are not known for like major crime addiction. Wherever Jews lived, they seem to bring like science and education. So the hatred has always felt very mysterious to Jews. And some said, you know, oh maybe it's because the Jews always stayed separate and didn't integrate into their society. But then Germany kind of showed us that Jews that were more integrated than any other minority were targeted targeted just as much as Jews that were living traditional Jewish lives. At that time, you know, in Germany, Jews served in every capacity. Many of them were no longer religious. They were very modern. Some of them were intermarried. There was even a movement called Jews for Hitler, but none of that helped. So, Jews are hated when they're weak, and Jews are hated when they're strong. And where do we turn to understand this? So, as Jeremy said, the Torah isn't just a book of history. It's a road map for everything that will be. So, we turn to the Torah, and right now we're reading the stories of Joseph in Egypt. And it's really the stories of the setup that ultimately lead to the hatred that cause the enslavement and murder of the Hebrews that we're going to see in the upcoming book of Exodus, book of Schmote. And what I want to suggest is that it actually starts earlier the anti, you know, we kind of think of like the anti-Jewish, the anti-Hebrew movement starting in the book of Schmot when a new pharaoh arises. But I want to suggest that if we want to be sensitive in the story and sensitive in our own current time that we're in in history, it's important to notice that as the Torah maps this out, it kind of hints to us that the seeds of this hatred started earlier in the Joseph stories themselves. So when we tell the stories of Joseph that we're reading in these portions, usually it goes something like this. Joseph was just beloved, you know, wherever he went in Egypt. Potifar loved him. They loved him in the jail. Pharaoh loved him. He interpreted Pharaoh's dream brilliantly. And he sees his wisdom, honors him, appoints him to be second in command. And then Yseph brings his family to Egypt. They all live happily ever after. They they live in prosperity. And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, new Pharaoh, we hate the Jews. And everything turns on its head. The thing about that version is there are a few cracks in it. So first of all, when you look at the story, Joseph interprets the dream, he doesn't actually ask for this job or suggest himself as the right person for the job. It's Pharaoh who insists on appointing him. When you think about what is going to be entailed in this job of preparing for the famine, it's not really a desirable job. You have to take food from people during the times of plenty in order to sell it back to them in the famine. So Pharaoh says, "Okay, okay, you're in the second in command. I'm going to still be above you. We're in this. Like, let's do this plan together. You're going to be my helper. You're going to be my sidekick. You're my deputy. We're we're like a we're a duo. Let's do this. Let's make this happen." When the famine actually hits the people, >> Pharaoh doesn't say, "Great, open up the open up the the grain stoages. Let's feed the people." The famine hits, what does Pharaoh actually do? It says, "All the inhabitants of Egypt were starving." Meaning Pharaoh let it go to the point that the people were actually starving and the people cried out to Pharaoh for bread. And Pharaoh announced to all of Egypt, "Go to Joseph and do whatever he tells you." Because you could just kind of imagine Joseph being like, "Oh, I thought we were in this together, Pharaoh. Pharaoh distances himself. Let's Joseph be the There's no we here. Uh there's no shared plan. Yseph is the fall guy. He's the middleman. Does that sound familiar? He's the guy put in charge of the banks and the storage and he's the one who gets to tell the people. He He's the one doing out these rations. Now, this plan might be met favorably or unfavorably by the people in many and and we just see that this is like the beginning of the blueprint. Like in many exiles, in all of the stories of really of the exile, Jews were always pushed into very specific professions. They weren't allowed to work in whatever profession they wanted. They were always pushed into being bankers, tax collectors. People always say why do Jews are, you know, work in the banks? Well, for hundreds and hundreds of years, Jews weren't allowed to own land. They weren't allowed to do anything but work as money lenders or in tax collecting type of jobs. They didn't choose those roles. They just weren't allowed to do anything else. And then when financial crisis hit, it's always very convenient to blame the Jews. Joseph, now when you watch what happens when his brothers come down to meet Pharaoh, did you ever notice what Joseph says to them? He says them something that's a little bit surprising. He says, "Say that you're cattle herders." and that all of your ancestors were cattle herders. We've been cattle herders for every uh generation. Was that true? That's not actually true. We know that Isaac was a farmer. Joseph himself was dreaming of sheav of grain bowing down. But Joseph knew that if he didn't present them as outsiders, they would be dragged into similar roles in Egyptian society. If it was so great, he would want that. But he's like, "Okay, tell them that you do something that's like totally abhorentt to Egyptians." And now look what happens after that. Pharaoh says to Joseph, "Now that your father and brothers have come to you, all of Egypt is at your disposal, settle your father and your brothers in the choicest part of the land. Let them live in Gan." So now, and then later it says that he actually commanded that they be taken care of to the highest level. So now we have this story of the children of the family of Yakov being wealthy, protected, set apart. It's this perfect It's this perfect setup. Now, fast forward to Yakob's death, to Jacob's death. It looks like a na, you know, a national mourning procession. Even Egyptians are coming and mourning Jacob. But Joseph didn't just get to go and bury his father. He has to send messengers to ask Pharaoh permission to bury his father. He's the second in command. Why should he have to ask permission? He still has to ask. And Pharaoh says, "You can go, but leave your cattle and children behind." Does that sound familiar? He also sends royal guards with him to ensure that they return. So what you're seeing is that Yseph's position was never fully secure or fully integrated. Even when even when he sat down to eat and he was still in his heyday of integration into society, it says that the Egyptians wouldn't eat with Hebrews. So his position was never fully secure and he was always an outsider. And even when he dies, this is so interesting. And he tells his brothers, "Hashem will surely remember you and bring you out of here." Meaning they didn't feel that they could leave on their own. They were in this kind of like golden cage where they didn't for whatever reason feel that they could get out. And it's on that basis [snorts] that we get to the book of Schmote. What happens? It's what we see in every period of rising Jew hatred that happened throughout all of our hundreds of year, thousands of years of exile. Egypt goes into economic collapse. Pharaoh is the main beneficiary. He owns all the land. He owns all the food. He owns all the livestock. He owns all the people. Yseph may have run that plan, but Pharaoh is the one who profited. Now, the Jews, because of the way things have been set up at Parro's command, are not suffering like everyone else. And then this new Pharaoh rises who didn't know Joseph. We don't know if that means like he technically didn't know Joseph. seems more like he didn't really know the backstory of Joseph's good intentions which were to save Egypt. Now what happens there comes this economic crisis. People are living in this difficult time and they've been through they've been through a hard time. The people are not land owners anymore. They're kind of surfs to Pharaoh. We've learned this in the previous portions. And now he has this idea. He wants to ferment hatred against the Jews. What would you do if you wanted to kill a minority and you're a tyrant? Who would you go to? I would call in the army, the police, the politicians, the generals. What does Pharaoh do? He turns directly to the people. He says to the people, "Behold, the children of Israel are more numerous and stronger than us." And he says, "You know, if there were to be a war, they might turn against us. They could join our enemies." It doesn't say anywhere in the verse, and this is really interesting, that Pharaoh thought these thoughts. It doesn't say that he believed that. It just says that he said it to the people. He understood how to manipulate public opinion by planting this fear and suspicion and resentment. He was he was really a genius at this. And now here's what's interesting. He says, "Let us deal cleverly with them." Excuse me. Let us deal cleverly with them, lest they increase in the event of war. join our enemies, fight us, and go up out of the land. Now, the holy orim asks, "What is so clever about his plan?" Meaning, we know that ultimately he decides to make them slaves and try to kill them, right? That's not so clever. That's kind of like the tyrant go-to plan. Like, let's forced labor and murder is sort of like the obvious answer when you hate somebody. What's so clever about it? Uh, seems like tyranny 101. No. So, you have to read. He says you have to read the next verse in order to understand. He says they appointed draft officers over them in order to afflict them with chores and they built up uptoman Ramses the storage cities for Pharaoh. Now the orim points out that when you read the Hebrew it's not obvious who the draft officers were because the translation the English translation is not quite accurate. In the Hebrew it actually says to afflict in the singular and to afflict them with the them with chores in the plural. seeming like the ones being afflicted are not the same as the ones doing the chores because they're not written in the same grammatical format. And we already know from the previous portion that the Egyptians themselves were made to work for Pharaoh essentially in these cities. So the cleverness of Pharaoh according to the orim was not turning the Jews into slaves at the bottom of the barrel but actually making them to be the first to be enslaved as the officers over other Egyptians. So instead of people being mad at Pharaoh for having to work, they turn their hatred towards the Jews. And then what happens? It says the Egyptians enslaved the Israelites with backbreaking labor. Isn't that interesting? It doesn't anywhere say that Pharaoh actually enslaved the Jewish people. He had done his propaganda work so cleverly and placed the Jews in these fall positions and positions of unpleasant um you know disparity from other Egyptians that the Egyptians themselves turned and enslaved the Israelites. Meaning you don't need Pharaoh to enslave the Jews. The Egyptians did it themselves. And the final verse of the story is Pharaoh then gave order to all of his people. Cast every boy who was born in the Nile but you must make every girl live. He understood that the outcome of all of this delegitimization is that you can get people to turn against one another even within even people against their neighbors or people who they used to like. You don't have to believe it yourself. You just need to fan the flames of resentment and fear. So it's incredible to see how this pattern has always repeated itself over time. The Jews get comfortable in exile. They're positioned for whatever reason in jobs that put them in charge of resources sources, which is comfortable for them. But it's also very comfortable for the government to deflect responsibility from their own uh tyranny. And by the time anyone realizes what's going on, the Jews can't seem to get out of this golden cage. And there's some kind of economic crisis. They're blamed. And there are powerful forces who have the interest to turn people against their friends, against other Jews, against the Jews in the in the in the society. until the point that they're willing to kill Jews and it all deflects attention from the fact that actually these people were being tyrannized by their own government. So, it's a pattern etched into time. We see it again and again and it's one of the really most predictable patterns in Jewish history. And as Jeremy said, I think that really it I find that strengthening to know that we're not just seeing random events. We're seeing something that is a pattern etched into history from the Torah itself. But there's also another pattern and with that I want to finish. There's a cautionary story here for every Jew because there are times that there was no alternative but to be in the exile. But Hashem has remembered us just like Joseph promised and given us an alternative. [snorts] And so this is the time. But the story is also a lesson for those who don't want to fall into the trap of this brainwashing because there's the story of the daughter of Pharaoh. She did not allow any person to be dehumanized. She didn't accept the lies. She remembered that every person has value. Even more interestingly is the midwives. In the Midashic tradition, they're usually identified as Shifra and Pu as identified as Yv and Miriam. But many point out that there's no way that Pharaoh would have turned to Jewish midwives to ask them to kill the babies. So obviously some people say that they must have been non-Jewish midwives otherwise he wouldn't have trusted them. But it says they were God-fearing. God-fearing is a unique phrase in the Torah used to describe specifically Gentiles. Ara says it about aime saying, "I thought there was no fear of God here." When Joseph is pretending to be a gentile, he says to his brothers, "I'm God-fearing." So, in the plain meaning, there's room to possibly say the midwives were also able to resist this crazy campaign of hatred. And what does Hashem do for them? He makes them homes. They probably had homes. I doubt that they were homeless. He gave them this bubble of protection because even though they disobeyed Pharaoh and they were in so much danger for going against the grain of their entire society, Hashem put this bubble of protection around them. So there's not only a model of hatred in the Torah, but there's also a model for the few who will be God-fearing and moral enough to resist. And it's not a lot of people. But when we started out, you know, in this world of teaching Torah in the nations, I thought it was like a linear upward movement. people are going to all realize and you know the the importance of supporting Israel and join Israel on their mission towards redemption. Now I've moved over to thinking that it's a window in time that is rapidly closing. It is a rapid sifting process of who will merit to have God make them a home, make them this protection that they will be part of the redemptive process and it's going to be given only to those who are able to see through the lies and stay steadfast in following truth and goodness. So with that, I wish everybody a good week. Shalom. My name is Jeremy Gimpel. We started an online seminar teaching life-changing biblical wisdom revealed from the original Hebrew and straight from the mountains of Judea. 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