The End of Genesis & The Slippery Slope of Tyranny - Tehila Gimpel: The Land of Israel Fellowship

hey guys so we're coming to the end of the book of genesis and the beginning of the book of exodus we're making that transition from being our own tribe of free people traveling in the land to a people enslaved under the rulership of egypt in the book of exodus and i want to take this opportunity to talk a little bit about the slippery slope of tyranny as i'm talking to you i'm in israel of course and all of you are out there in different places around the world but no matter where you are i imagine that unless you're in one of the few lucky places you're in some way or another feeling over the last two years and particularly i think over the last few months and weeks a growing sense that liberties that we've become accustomed to and have even taken for granted are slipping away one after another it doesn't seem quite so easy to say what you think anymore um it's harder to even remember a time that we could just go out however we want to go out it's harder and harder in many places to be allowed to make your own medical decisions or to keep your job if you do make certain types of decisions it's harder and harder to choose where you go when you go how far you can go and i want to suggest that the end of the book of genesis actually maps out for us a universal truth about how our freedom can easily slip away sometimes without us even noticing at the end of the torah portion of bayigas that we read two shabbats ago there's this seeming digression it's a little bit of a strange digression from the dramatic and exciting story of joseph being reunited with his brothers and his father to talk about his political economic management of egypt why is this important well let's go back and remember joseph understood from barrow's dreams that there would be seven years of bounty followed by seven years of famine so he has this scheme this great idea that the government will buy up or take excess grain that they make in the years of plenty and save it to keep everyone well fed during the years of famine and now we see what happens in chapter 47 starting around verse 16. there's this really detailed ongoing dialogue that actually spans over several years between joseph and the people i want to unpack these verses for a minute because they're really difficult to understand and they've bothered me for many years at first the plan seems fair enough save up the grain in the good years use it in the bad years the portion before this in meat cakes it seems to be working it says that indeed the people around the world were hungry but in egypt there was plenty of food they were even able to give food to people from other countries so there was no supply chain issue they could buy grain as needed but then comes this wrinkle in the end of our in the end of the portion of the people run out of money they can't keep on buying grain so then there's this dialogue that ensues joseph says to them well you still have cattle why don't you sell me your cattle and i'll give you grain in return they come back a year later they say well we've run out of cattle all we have left is our bodies and our land could you maybe buy our land and buy us as slaves and give us grain in return now it's really interesting here because on the one hand i'm kind of shifting uncomfortably in my chair because joseph seems to be taking advantage of their predicament and maybe that's why a few years later the egyptians weren't so sad to see to see the jews enslaved but as the meshech points out if you look carefully at the following verse joseph doesn't take them up on their offer he doesn't take them as slaves and take their land he just takes their land and he gives them grain in return you can imagine that had pharaoh been given that offer maybe he would have been like great i'll take you as slaves and so joseph actually kept them in a better position than they would have been otherwise in any event the regular people no longer have money cattle or land the priests continue to have land because they get an allotment of grain and get to keep their land but the regular people don't have land anymore and then it says that joseph moves the people to the cities so we after giving up all their stuff now they're told where they can live and then joseph backpedals a little bit at the end he says to them you know what you can have your land back you can't really have it because you're not going to own it but you can use your land i'll give you seeds you plant you work and you just have to pay a hefty tax to pharaoh but the rest of it i'll let you keep to feed your families now when when we read these verses we usually look at them from joseph's perspective was he right was he wrong was this smart was that's what was he trying to accomplish but i want to look at it from a slightly different angle i want to think about this from the perspective of the people what is their relationship to the government during a time of fear and disaster because the torah brings unusual attention to this conversation a lot of verses are given to us here about the development of the people's position even though it's not really necessary when you think about it wouldn't you have just been fined if the torah had said well joseph gave them grain in return for money livestock and land and then pharaoh had a lot of money and it was all working out well for the government there's something that hashem wants us to notice in this public dialogue between the people and their leadership that reveals some kind of eternal truth that we need to know so let's think about this you have these people they're landowners they're cattle herders they have families they live off their own property and then little by little because of this disaster in that case it was a famine but it could have been a different disaster they lose one liberty after the other they lose their money they lose their land and then they take away their ability to live on their own they have to live in the cities and you can imagine cities are much more crowded there's a lot more supervision by the government less freedom pharaoh can choose the cultural influences that will be upon their children and then in the end yosef gives them back just a smidgen of their former freedom a smidgen of their former rights you can uh you know sow your land you can cultivate your lamb it's not really yours but you can have something as long as you pay your hefty fee of course you would think they'd be angry right like really look at verse 23 joseph says to the people behold i have bought you in your farmland today for pharaoh behold you can see you have seed so sow the soil and you know then he goes on to say give a fifth of it to pharaoh but the rest of it i'll let you use to feed your children so now what used to be theirs they're now getting permission to use as long as they give a lot of their profit to pharaoh you would think they'd say what i've had this land for generations you're telling me i can use it you're going to let me use it but what are they replying verse 25 they say you have saved our lives let us find favor in my lord's eyes we will be slaves to pharaoh is this not an eerily precise map of the process of government turning to tyranny step one take away people's existing rights give them back to them slowly and they're going to be thrilled you're not allowed to go here you can't do anything stay in your house oh no now we'll let you out if you do a b c d what's so interesting these verses is that the idea of becoming slaves if you look carefully never comes from the government it comes from the people the people want safety and they say we want to be healthy we want food government joseph pharaoh please take care of us we don't want to be afraid anymore we don't want to have lack anymore they are voluntarily willing to give up every last shred of freedom not just their property but their bodies in the conversation seemingly out of nowhere they blurt out not once but twice let us be your slaves joseph never even asked them he didn't have to the people were begging he doesn't even let them but the people were begging to go into slavery it reminds me so much of the book of numbers in chapter 11 where the people in the desert say moseled if only we could go back to egypt and be slaves again just because we're so tired of not having the food that we want it's like what really would go back to slay to slavery in egypt just for watermelons now i just want to look at the pattern here it's interesting to pay attention the priests on the other hand in this joseph story got to keep their land they are totally free and happy tyranny doesn't apply equally to everyone it reminds me of a funny thing i saw on the knesset channel here in israel they were filming a meeting of the merits party in israel the merits party runs the ministry of health and they're talking and you know saying all their plans and they're on camera and then the camera guy says cut and they think that the camera is off but it was actually still running and you see them rip off their masks throw them down even though they're the ones who mandated masks and they're all sitting in this closed room and they go oh phew finally we can breathe and these are the people who are telling our six-year-old in first grade that he needs to wear a mask for seven hours a day with no break so in hashem's mapping out the pattern of tyranny he shows us there's always going to be certain freedoms that remain for certain people another thing i noticed is in verse 26 it says that the special new rules about land ownership applied adhayom the torah says meaning until today that doesn't mean that if you would go to egypt today you would see this rule still in place what it means is is that what was presented as a temporary rule oh the government needs to nationalize and centralize food distribution because of the famine well that just kept on going pretty much forever they didn't get those rights back you would think that when the famine finished egypt would say oh here you know why don't you buy back your land take back your land we don't need it anymore but the government kind of liked this new way of running things and even if it started for a reasonable good cause to protect people and to give them you know food security it's very hard to backpedal it's very hard to get back liberties once they've been taken away from you you might not even notice you might grow up in this new reality and just think that that's the nature of the world that's the way things are and then in this past parsha we see the plot thicken in many of the rab sages in the midrash say that jacob's death was the beginning of slavery which is a little weird because many years passed between jacob's death and when the jews became slaves why is his death seen by the sages as a turning point well let's look at what happens when he dies when he dies joseph goes to ask pharaoh if he could go back to the land of canaan to bury his father like he asked it's a weird question to ask i mean aren't they free people they came as honored visitors as honored guests of of joseph why would they not be able to leave if they want to leave and then faro says well once they seated to him that he has authority over that he starts setting limits he says well you can go but without your cattle without your children doesn't that sound so familiar to when moses asked pharaoh to let the israelites pray in the desert he said well you can go for three days but only if you leave your children behind and your cattle behind isn't it a foreshadowing of the slavery that's on the way i think that the torah is warning us here that there's an eternal pattern in times of fear some sort of natural disaster something will come people will prefer to voluntarily sometimes give up their freedom they will be willing to offer themselves into slavery pass up on liberty they won't only make peace with it they'll actually be thankful when the government gives them back a few of their rights they won't resist they're going to say oh thank you thank you that you're letting me have some of my former rights back it's so interesting how careful the torah is on the other hand in the torah law to combat this danger my doctoral advisor professor benny peratt pointed out that every single thing that happens here in the end of the book of genesis is balanced and counteracted in the torah laws that are later given in the book of exodus and in the other books of the torah for example he in the joseph story the priests got to keep their land what happens in the torah only the tribe of levi and the priests don't get any land you want to be spiritual leaders concentrate on spiritual leadership what about slavery in the torah there's slavery but if you look at the laws of slavery on the seventh year the slave goes free and if he refuses it's a whole big deal you have to do this whole like ear piercing ceremony and the jubilee year he goes free the torah knows there may come a time where you'll be tempted to give up your liberty and caps your ability to do that you can't be enslaved forever and the torah knows there could be times you're gonna be persuaded to give up your land you might have to give up your land for some reason perhaps financial reason perhaps because the king will take it hashem sets up the jubilee year to set things back every person always will have the ability to go back to their original piece of land and be a free person then look at the sabbatical years like we are in now here in the land of israel it's so cool because the cycle of the sabbatical years the cycles of seven years it's like it's meant to remind you of the stories of the plenty and the famine in egypt those cycles of seven years in egypt they use those seven year cycles to tyrannize in the torah the seven year cycle is to give you more freedom your debts are cancelled you can start all over and if you look in leviticus it even talks about saving grain but it's not saving grain the way the government did it in egypt look at the small huge difference it says that hashem will bless the sixth year because you can't work in the land on the seventh year so in the sixth you're gonna have enough for the sixth the seventh and the eighth but it's not the government saving your grain for you you train yourself to be careful with the abundance of the six use it wisely the torah trusts you that you will manage your resources better than any king can manage your resources which brings us to the laws of kings you can't the king can't have too many horses can't have too much gold and silver the situation that happened in egypt where the king amasses everything and the people are left with nothing that doesn't lie in the torah political system so this isn't just a side story it's setting the paradigm the end of genesis setting the paradigm of how tyranny can so easily creep up on you and then sets the stage for the torah to put up the mirror image the solution through the torah law of visually protecting freedoms and liberties resisting the danger of them being taken away so now we're starting the story in the book of exodus of slavery and eventually freedom something i noticed is that if we see that in genesis the tyranny begins with the people yearning for grain for bread what is the ultimate symbol of passover of our freedom is it not the matzah bread the grain that we use to make this bread of affliction it's this kind of awful bread it's not as good as the bread that you had in egypt when the government was tearing not tyrannizing us but providing for us at the same time it's a bad bread but it's our bread you can imagine a nation celebrating their freedom they would want to be eating food of luxury food of wealth to symbolize that now you know we're doing so much better we're not slaves anymore what do we eat we eat the poorest simplest bread to show that we're happy not because of how the bread tastes but because it's actually ours maybe if we would have given up our freedom we'd have a little bit more security we'd have a little bit better bread we'd prefer to eat the bread of affliction any day of the week but to eat it as free independent people and not to eat the bread handed to us in return for us giving up our liberty and so with that message i'm excited to open up the book of exodus and for us to start learning about freedom a little bit more deeply bye guys hi my name is jeremy gimpel a lot of people want to know exactly what the land of israel fellowship is and what members receive when they join so let me explain the land of israel fellowship is a global online community with hundreds of members from over 40 countries around the world there are live sessions and gatherings that create a direct personal connection to the land of israel and the lovers of israel from around the world there's no online gathering that i'm familiar with that is connected to the land of israel that unites and brings together such a diverse group of people backgrounds and nationalities it feels like prophecy it feels like something we need in these times like a window in to a better future on the horizon there's a divine unity we experience every week in our fellowship broadcast we heard these amazing teachings from an authentic hebrew and israel perspective and our jaws drop not only because they ring so true and are such a blessing because they are so consistent with what we believe these sunday morning gatherings are nothing less than a house of prayer for all nations cindy lowe the united states of america the land of israel fellowship is an amazing resource for learning torah the bible and the prophets unfiltered and uncensored directly from the land of israel we've been studying torah for almost 20 years but we feel we are stepping into it more than ever in seeing new depth and dimensions to scripture we're encouraged more and more every week calen ardell usa members receive access to all the archives in the library of teachings on every portion of the torah the biblical feast hebrew prayer prophecy sessions on the ancient wisdom of the prophets of israel to help us navigate through these turbulent times these sessions are so rich i re-listen to each and truly each session is the best one yet tehila is a tremendous asset and the teachings ari shares are so rich i've read the bible so many times and i've known the things you are teaching the hebrew understanding is what christians have missed for centuries sister georgian from germany the land of israel fellowship is truly unique because it's built upon personal relationships with the teachers of the fellowship myself rabbi arya bramwitz in tehillah gimpel every member has direct access to the staff 24 6 via email or direct whatsapp to ask questions to comment to connect directly to all the teachers and over the last years we've connected to some of the most beautiful people on 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