The Passover Haggadah Part 4 - Rabbi Dovid Gottleib

in the Sheran Hotel. It's on page 16. And we have now a little a little paragraph with some Talmudic reasoning. This is giving just a little example of how talmutical reasoning goes. The verse that instructs us to have an occasion in which we recite and as I told you relive the story of the Exodus begins with a ver with a ver with the words he got to you should declare to your son. Now the comments when should I do this? when should I have this meeting and go through a recitation and reliving of the of the exodus from Egypt? Maybe I should start from the first day of the month of Nissan. No, that's wrong because the verse goes on to say on that day. So means maybe I should start on the beginning of the month and keep going. That can't be the right description because the verse says that day. So it has only one day in mind. Aha. So then it says, well maybe if there's one day in mind, maybe it would mean the 14th in the afternoon. Hm. What happened in the 14th in the afternoon? That's when the pascal sacrifice was offered. And that's very special sacrifice. It has unique rules. And you can imagine your child is there. And the child wants to know what's going on. And then the Torah will be telling you, tell them the story of the Exodus because that's why we're doing what we're doing. Well, that's a reasonable thought. Maybe you should do it on the 14th. But the the the goes on to say that that's a mistake also because it says in that verse what you're supposed to say to him is because of this Hashem took me out of Egypt because of this. Now th in English and Z in Hebrew is a demonstrative. is a word that refers to something that is present in the environment of the speaker. In English, you can't say this book unless the book is visible where you are. Another way of referring to a book which doesn't require that is that that book can be the book you mentioned 16 minutes ago. That book could be in my house but not this book. So before because of this when I say that in the verse there's got to be a this I can point to I got to be able to point to it and say because of this Hashem took me out of Egypt. So now the goes on these words for the sake of this I only said when the in the hour in which matzah and mo or matzah and the pestal sacrifice are resting before you. They're resting before you. Okay, let's review. The middle thought was the 14th in the afternoon. And the Haga says, "No, no, no. That's not that's not right. Middle the afternoon is not right. It's got to be at night on the 15th." How do I know? Because it says, "For the sake of this, Hashem took me out." It's got to be on the table. So, you can point to it and say, "For the sake of this." The obvious question is put this on the table in the afternoon and then ask and then say it and say for the point of this in the afternoon how does for the sake of this being demonstrative so you can point to the mat mean it's got to be at night and the answer is this let's see for the sake of this god took me out of Egypt let's say it's the matzah I don't know if you're aware But in many places in the world since Kaneka for months there's been non-stop baking of matzah. Matzas are shipped all over the world to various places. Some places from after sukas have been baking matzah. Right. There's a cracker industry a Jewish cracker industry shipping to the world. Now when I take my matas put them on the table and I say for the sake of this God took me out of Egypt. Do I mean for the sake of the fact that there will be bakeries all over the world and they'll be shipping them all over the world and the the world will be flooded with Jewish crackers that's why God told took me out of Egypt. Probably that's not the right answer. So when I point to the matzah and say for the sake of this God took me out of Egypt, I'm not pointing to the cracker as a cracker. I'm pointing to the mitzvah that I'm going to do with the cracker. He took me out for the sake of the mitzvah of matzah, not the existence of crackers, but the mitzvah of eating it. And the mitzvah is only at night. Can't do the mitzvah in the afternoon. So you put it on the on the table at night and then you can point to it and say, "For the sake of this, Hashem took me out of Egypt." So this is a good example of tamudic reasoning. You have a command. One of the things you want to know is when I should perform it and you think up plausible possibilities and then you look carefully into the verse and you check the vocabulary and see whether they fit the words and they don't fit the words and you come out with often clear indication that you know only one answer could be the right answer. Okay, this is all background to the M we're doing in that night. Now it says originally our ancestors were idol worshippers and now Hashem has brought us close to his service and it quotes a verse from from the book of Joshua. Yeshua said to the whole people, "This is what Hashem, the God of Israel, says, "On the other side of the river, your ancestors dwelt from old." Terak, Abraham's father, and the father of Nahor, who was Abraham's brother, and they served other gods. And I took your father Abraham from the other side of the river and I guided him to the land of Cananan which is the land of Israel and I increased his descendants and I gave him Isaac and I gave to Isaac Yakov Jacob and Esau and I gave to Esau the mount of seir as his to to inherit it. And Yakov and his children went down to Egypt. Okay. A very bland report of certain outlines of history, but but hidden in this report is great principles. First of all, the Gomorrah says that the way we tell the story of the Exodus is to go from the low part, a low point of Jewish history to a high point from that which is degra degrading and embarrassing to that which is praiseworthy. And the Gor has a difference of opinion how that should be done. One says the story should go from slavery to freedom and the other says the story should go from idol worship to receiving the Torah at Sinai. So let's think about that slavery to freedom. Yeah, that's exactly what we're celebrating. That movement from being slaves to being free took place on the night of the 15th of of Nissan, which is the night in which you make the seder. So of course that's that story has to be told. What the other position is saying is you have to expand your scope. You have to go back to Terak who's the ancestor of the Jewish people who served idols and expand your scope into the future to go to the receipt of the Torah at Sinai. Why should we do that? So someone might say, well, when you're dealing with history and you're talking about a particular event, obviously the more scope you give it, the more understanding you're going to have. So definitely if you go back to Abraham's father who served idols and you put and then project forward to receive the Torah Sinai you'll understand the the Exodus much better if you'll do that. That's true. That's definitely true. But once you have that on board where do you draw the line? How about going back to No, the flood and going forward to enter the land of Israel or how about going back to the creation and going forward to the coming of the Messiah. Where do you stop the historical frame and why? And I think the answer has to be the other one who says you got to go from Tak to Sinai is saying without understanding that the Exodus is the lynch pin of moving from idol worship to Sinai, you can't understand the Exodus at all. You have no correct understanding of the Exodus. Yes. Yes, if you went from the flood to entry to the land of Israel or from the creation to the Messiah, you'd have more understanding, deeper understanding. But if you leave this out, you haven't got it. I think the reason for that is this that I'm going to mention a philosophical point now. It's on a record. It's recorded. I have a whole she the Jewish idea of freedom and I think it's philosophical idea as well. Jewish idea of freedom is freedom is a means to doing something that's valuable. The value of your freedom is precisely the value of what you will do with your freedom. Some freedoms are more valuable, some freedoms are less valuable, and some freedoms aren't valuable at all. And for some people, freedom is negative because they do terrible things with their freedom. Freedom in and of itself has no intrinsic value. If you have just a simple difference between being free or being unfree without any further consequences, then there's no difference in value whatsoever. So here you're seeing the Jewish people going from slavery to freedom. Okay, why? What's the point of that? What's the significance of that? The answer is it's a midpoint and a transition from out of worship to serving God. That's how you understand its value and its significance. This is reflected in two famous texts. One is where Moses is at the burning bush and God says, "I want you to be my representative to go down and we'll engineer the Exodus." And Moses has a thousand questions. And one of his questions is, "What did the Jewish people do to deserve your taking them from slavery to freedom?" And God's answer very very I think um maybe a little shocking and a and very powerful. What did they do to deserve it? Nothing. They didn't do anything to deserve it. So why are you taking them out? Two reasons. Number one, I promised their ancestors. And number two, when they go out, they're going to serve me on the mountain where they receive the Torah, which means we're taking them out as an investment in their future. It's not that they've done something already to deserve it. And then it's like compensation. It's an investment in what they're going to do in the future. And that means that the idea of freedom is an investment in what you're going to do with it. That's the concept of freedom. And then whether you deserve freedom or whether other people deserve freedom or whether we deserve continuous freedom depends in part on what we do with our freedom. It's not absolute. Freedom is not absolute. Yeah. So maybe then freedom is just the wrong term then to use altogether because my understanding is that like it's more really of a management change, right? I mean we were enslaved, we were shackled to the Egyptians and then we entered a covenant with Hashem. So our shackles change obviously I think that we all prefer this side than shackled in Egypt but is there not like a is that not like a good way of putting it or it's a very good way of putting it and in fact the sources do talk about it that way and they even say that slavery in Egypt is a certain preparation for the relationship that we have to hashem which we're saying now I think is gold. It's very interesting. The word that's used in our relationship to Hashem is eid, which is exactly the same re word that's used for our relationship to our Egyptian masters. Now, your poor uh embarrassed English translators don't want to put in slave. That doesn't sound good. So, they put in servant. Ah, servant. What does that mean? Nothing. You know, it's too very vague. That's good. you know, you won't you won't the hairs on the back of your neck won't won't stand up in in in in uh in horror, but it's evid and and I think you're right. And I think the smart person, if he finds that connection to a person or a project will bring him a great benefit, will take it even if he really loses his freedom. And he's using his freedom to choose to lose his freedom. And since I've introduced the idea, I just give you a few um examples. Um you ought to play classical music. Say you play the violin. Maybe we mentioned this in previous. I forget. We can't remember what I do where I do it. So let's say you play Beethoven. Okay, first of all, there the notes on the page. You have to play the notes as they're written on the page. You can't just spontaneously play what you feel, you know, what appeals to you, what expresses your inner movements. No, no, there are notes on the page. But it's worse than that because the concert master, the first violinist will say, "Play it with an up bow and not a down bow and play it with a certain amount of vibrad and play on this string and not on that string. Where's your freedom?" Gone. What you get out of it is playing Beethoven and playing Beethoven. So there are times when you say I'm willing to give up my freedom because giving it up in this way I'll be doing something much better much better for me by giving up my freedom. There are people who have a rough adolescence and who go into the army because they know that in the army they'll learn discipline. They'll learn focus. They'll learn self-control. And sometimes they're right. They will learn that. In the army have very little freedom. Very little freedom. But they know that that kind of and people who have drug problems and who voluntarily go to a drug rehabilitation where depending upon the type of rehabilitation it is their day will be structured and the diet will be structured and of course they won't have access to the drug and so the idea that you lose your your freedom isn't something which contradicts the value of your life often. So now here the idea is now freedom I think in order not to beg any questions freedom is freedom from some kind of pressure or duress that affects your your ability to choose. It's a negative concept. Freedom from I know people talk about freedom too but I think that's inappropriate use of language and it's prejuditial. But then the question what are you going to do with your freedom? So they went from being subject to the Egyptians to being not subject to the Egyptians. Then they chose to accept as you said a change of management and that and that's something which which then it does put them in another position of servitude but they chose it that's what they used the the loss of the control of the Egyptians to be able to do. So I think that picture is is is very good. So that's the first thing here to understand what the value of freedom is in Jewish terms. That's number one. And then what about this verse from from Joshua? I know here in my text is split up into a separate paragraph. I took your father Abraham from across the river and I guided him through the land of Kanan and I increased his descendants. I gave him Isaac doesn't mention Ishmael interestingly that to Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau I gave Esau the land of seir mount of Seir and Yakov and the children went down to Egypt. Now why is Joshua telling me about the history of Esau? Like why do I care about that? Why is that in the same breath? And there are at least two reasons. Number one, we have in the modern world an unfortunate expression, the Jewish God, the Christian God, the Muslim God, and so forth and so on. If you'll ask a Muslim, who do you worship? He won't say the Muslim god. He'll say the creator of the universe. Each one of these religions sees that there is only one God. There aren't many gods. Doesn't there are gods of each kind? This is the Muslim conception of the creator. And this is the Christian the conception of the creator and yes I will say it the prejudice fashion and and and the third one ours is the truth about the creator. Um so talk about the Jewish god. So we have to understand the god that we worship runs the whole world. Doesn't just run Jewish affairs as if you know it was a private a private affairs. Not that's not true at all. But secondly our development is a playoff. Jacob and Esau were brothers. They grew up together. And part of Jacob becoming who he became is is due to and reflection of what Esau became. And there's just a hint of what's going on here. And the the contrast, Esau was given a piece of geography to inherit that belongs to him. And Jacob went into exile. That's also quite striking. This is the God of Abraham who's caring for the Jewish people and engineering the Jewish people's um uh development and to Esau he gives immediate gratification. Here's your spot of in the your place in the sun in the world and to us we were down to exile. The the implication is exile for us was as valuable for us and infinitely more valuable than having a piece of geography was for Esau. This is a story of after all starts with Terak Abraham's father and then Abraham and then Isaac and then Jacob and Esau is off to the side and then right. So then we have to understand what is the greatness of exile for the Jewish people. I will come back to that. with you together so far? Good. All of these are comments on how to do the mitzvah. Now, here's another piece of tabic reasoning. Blessed is the one who keeps present tense his promise to Israel. Blessed is he that Hashem um analyzed the ending to do according to what he said to Abraham in the covenant between the pieces. Shane, what did God say to Abraham in that covenant? He said to Ara, "You should know for sure that your descendants will be a stranger in a land that is not theirs. And your descendants shall serve the masters of that land. And the masters of that land shall oppress your descendants 400 years." Notice the pause. 400 years and also that nation whom they shall serve I will judge and afterwards they will ex exit with great possessions. That's the promise. That's the the the future that God informed Abraham of. And we are blessing Hashem who keeps his promise and analyzed the end. Now this says 400 years. As a matter of fact, the Jews were in Egypt 210 years. So that has to be understood. That has to be understood. And now I'm going to point out to you that the verse that describes what Hashem said to Arab is ambiguous. And it is what philosophers of language call syntactic ambiguity. The ambiguity is in the structure of the sentence. What modifies what what what relates to what. Let me read it to you again and then I'll tell I'll tell you the kind of structure we're talking about. You shall surely know that your descendants will be strangers in a land that doesn't belong to them. and they will serve the masses of the land and the masses of the land will oppress them 400 years. So the structure is A B C 400 years that could be read in three different ways. You could read it ABC is a process with three parts and the whole of it will take 400 years but you don't have to read it that way. You can read it. A is going to happen. Maybe it'll take a million years. I'm not talking about A. A will happen and then B and C will happen for 400 years. Or you could read it. A is going to happen on its own time and B is going to happen on its own time. pause and C will happen for 400 years. What does the 400 years modify? The whole of ABC or just B and C or just C? The text doesn't tell you. Well, if that's the case, there are at least three different ways you could understand the verse. And this gives the creator a certain flexibility because if he manages the history so that A, B and C together take 400 years, the verse came true. If he manages the verse so that A is separate and B and C take 400 years, the verse came true. And he manages that A and B are separate and C took C took 400 years, the verse comes true. The verse could come true in three different ways which give the creator choices as to how to manage the history so as to make the verse true. Now it's time for a little quiz. Which of the three possible ways of reading it would make the total historical period shortest? KBC is 400 years. Sorry, ABC would be 400 years, right? If all three together are 400 years, that's the shortest possible uh uh per um length of the historical period. If A is separate and there's no limit to how long it could be, then the whole thing could be much much longer. Now, the the the description of A, B, and C doesn't all refer to slavery. It doesn't even all refer to being in Egypt. So here's how the the tradition takes it based on other verses that calculated the the the u the the events when Abraham has his son Isaac from that time on until the Exodus is 400 years. Did Abraham have possession of the land of Kanan in which he was living? No, he did not. proof. When Sorah dies, he has to buy her a burial plot. Hello. If the whole land belongs to him, he wouldn't have to buy it. Has to buy it and pay with for it with good currency. See, he's already living in a land that doesn't belong to him. But the verse says, "Your children, your descendants will be a stranger." Okay. So then once Isaac is born that pl that time can be triggered and then they move from one land that doesn't belong to them namely Kenan to another land that doesn't belong to them namely Egypt and then the oppression starts and the and the slavery starts all of that takes 400 years the 210 is the time they spent in Egypt but that's not the whole of the ABC the whole of the ABC is 400 years and that way there's No one. Now this what says he analyzed the end because analysis means that means but it backs up in this case a choice of alternatives. How shall I manage it? And our sources tell us that if another day had gone by in Egypt the whole the whole process would have been lost. Our assimilation and loss of Jewish identity and Jewish values and Jewish focus was so profound that had we been there another day the whole experiment would have been over. So realized the mean the interpretation of the verse that makes the period of time the shortest so as to be able to take us take us out in time so as to be able to save us. That's what it means that he calculated the end. And by the way, the numerical value of Kates is 190. And so 400 minus 190 is 210, which is the number of years that we were there. So that's what is where is that? The second line. Oh, oh, there it is. Okay. Gad is 190. And that's just a hint that you know, he used Kates. He took took off the 190 and and are being there for 210 years is then um is then uh fulfilled. Okay. Now the next piece is also a bit subtle and this is what stood for our ancestors and for us for not only one historically stood up against us to destroy us to annihilate us. Rather in every generation there are those who stand up against us to annihilate us and saves us from their hand. Okay. Now if you if you learned in you know they're very very careful about this. If there's a pronoun they'll ask you what does it refer to? If it says he which he then what time was it there? What place was it? They force you to identify the references of the pronouns. Here you start with a pronoun and this is what has stood for our ancestors for us. What's the this? I think the obvious answer is well you see historically we've had a lot of oppression and a lot of attempts to annihilate us and I'll tell you what stood for us what saved us from all those dangers is the fact that saved us from their hand that's what stood for us the fact that he saved us that is one way you can read those words but there's another way you can read the words and that is that this refers to both the oppression and the saving Both the oppression and the saving is what has stood for us throughout the centuries. Because typically the oppression comes to the Jewish people as a whole or a large body of the Jewish people because of their growing failures to grasp and to be committed to and to realize and live the way the Torah wants them to live. And because of that, when they're losing their identity, then the uh the oppression reminds them of who they are. They're allowed to simply slip out under the table. There are those who have pointed out that the final solution of the Nazis Shimam came from the country in which the Jews were most assimilated, Germany in Europe. That was the maximally assimilated country. They are the ones who so there is that. So, so then you can read that this is what has stood for our our ancestors in two ways. didn't have to have both of them in mind. Okay, everybody together fine. Next say go out and learn. What did love on the Aramean try to do to Jacob our our father? For Pharaoh only decreed against the males at a certain point in the oppression. and he decreed that the newborn male baby should be drowned. Lavan endeavored to uproot everything as it says. Now this verse can be translated in two ways but this is what what the um intense army an aramian someone from Aram oate tried to annihilate a my father and he my father went down to Egypt and dwelt there with a very small number of people and there it became a great powerful and numerous nation. Well, um, if you read Arami Oi as an Aramian wanted to destroy my father, would you know that it was Love? You have to go back and check the sequences with love and to see where he plotted against Jacob and where he wanted to destroy him. Furthermore, that's not the only way to read it. In fact, reading this way is a little in need of supplementation. Really, the word is destroys, not wanted to destroy. And you have to put that in. It could be read Aramei oved a wandering Aramite because oade can mean also wandering lost was my father. My father was a wandering person from Ira and he went down to Egypt. You could read it that way then it wouldn't refer to at all. Okay, let's go back to the beginning of the paragraph. say or not. Go out and learn. That's a very atypical invitation in our literature. Very atypical. In the Babylonian Talmud, the invitation to a an analysis or a group discussion is toshma. Come and hear. Come not go out and hear not learn. In the Jerusalem Talbud and in the Zohar the introdu the introduction the invitation is or which means come and see. This is utterly different. It's not come it's go out and it's not see or hear it's learn. I did find this phrase once else in the but it's very very rare. What does it mean? Well, to go out means at least to leave where you are. So, you're in a place and where you are, you're not going to get it. You're blinded. You're prejudiced. You're not going to get it. You got to exit that place. And after you exit the place, the point that we're making is one which can be understood and appreciated if you learn it. If you learn it. So obviously there's something subtle here about what's going on and could be missed. If you go back through the sequence with Lavan, I'm not going to do it now. It would take too long. But go back to the sequence of Lavan. Um he's the kind of person who is careful to make his surface appearance appropriate but he is totally self-centered totally materialistic and totally antagonistic to Jacob's goal of living a certain type of life. So let me rehearse just a few of the details. Jacob is running because his brother Issa wants to kill him and his mother found an excuse. Go to my family. Loving is her brother. Uh go to my family in love in in Aram and there you'll take refuge until Asa Isa doesn't want to kill you anymore. So he comes and loan takes him in his family. Um and then after 30 days love says listen you and I are family why should you serve me for nothing why should you serve me for nothing what's he talking about what he's talking about is the very first day he took him in he put him to work you want to you want to sleep here you want to eat here work no freeloading here oh we're family yeah after a month. He says, "Connie, we are family. You shouldn't have to serve me for nothing." Nothing. No, I'll pay you. Tell me what you want as as wages. What does that sound like? Number one, no one stays here free. Not family or no family. Nobody stays here free. That doesn't sound like a person who's invested in family and is kind and generous and and outgoing and and sensitive and, you know, giving. Okay. So, Jacob says, "I'll serve you seven years for your younger daughter, Rachel." He says, "Done." Seven years go by and there's a wedding and Lan substitutes the older sister Leia for for for against the deal. Jacob in the morning is quite upset, let's put it that way. and he challenges him. He said, "Oh," he says, "you surely didn't think when we said Rachel that you're going to have Rachel first, did you? We don't let the younger married before the old the elder." Of course, you understood that it would be Leia and then Rachel afterwards. I mean, you understood that, didn't you? No, he didn't understand it. And in fact, when he made the deal, he made he said, "Rachel, your younger daughter." So, they'll be like, "No room to mis misinterpret and reinterpret and so and so on." But we just don't do it that way, you know. Okay. So now he's he's married to both and serves another seven years for the sake of the seven. Okay. And the seventh year he says, "Okay, the 14 years. Give me my children, my wives, and my children. Give them to me. Don't they belong to you?" Yeah, but we know who loven is. Love thinks he owns everything. Give them to me. I want to go home. And loan says, "I have guessed that I've been blessed by God because you're here. Stay. So, Jacob is well, I didn't see it in the commentaries, but one explanation is out of the gratitude for the fact that he took him in. I took him in and put him to work. Yeah, but he took him in. That's something for which you have to show gratitude. And in the Jewish sources, we have to have gratitude to the Egyptians because they took us in. It's a very big uh Jewish value. Okay, he wants me to stay. and they name wages there but now he says you know I have to provide for my my family so they name wages okay he says another six years during that period of time the what it's a question which animals the flocks will will produce and the flocks produce different animals and loan feels that he's not getting what he wanted and changes the wages until it comes a point when it's clear to Jacob that loan has turned against him and his cousins have turned against him so he decides to So he gathers together his love and his three days journey distant from him and he confers with his wives and gets their voluntary consent and they gather everything and they with all their flocks which they have now flocks and servants and Lan chases after him with his friends who form an army and catches him and he says what did you do? You ran and you and you uh I if you had told me you wanted to go, I would have sent you with celebration and song and feasting and so and so you did. And by the way, you stole my gods. Which Rachel did. She stole the gods of her father. So Jacob says, "I ran because I said that if I don't run, you'll take your daughters and grandchildren from me and they belong to me. And as far as stealing your gods, search everywhere you want. We'll see if you find your gods in my possessions. He searches everywhere doesn't find them. That's a whole story how Rachel was able to hide them. So then Jacob opens up after 20 years. It's a long speech. You ran after me. You treated me like a thief. Here, show between before my my company and your company, where's the stolen goods that you said I have? It's not here. You're a liar. And furthermore, uh if if I had not run, you would have taken everything from me, I ran because otherwise I would have I would have I would have been I would left with nothing. You wouldn't have sent me with celebration and and music and dancing. You would have stolen everything from me. So then loan makes the following speech. Oh, by the way, the first thing that loan says when he speaks to to Jacob, he says, I have the power to do evil to you. And the word you there is plural. But your the the God of your father came to me last night and told me not to do that which is written in the text itself that God came to. I have the power to do evil to you plural. H who's you plural? Well what his daughters and his grandchildren and and the flocks and everything else. And now he says, "The daughters are mine and the grandchildren are mine and the flocks are mine. Everything you see is mine." Oh, really? Aha. So that's how you look at it. Hey, you really look at it like it's all yours. So then you're verifying what Jacob said. If he had said he wanted to go, you'd have kicked him out with nothing because it's all yours. And then he says the following words. And what evil can I do to all of these which is mine? But you said two hours ago that you have the power to do evil to to to you. He doesn't mind being caught in a lie. There are cultures like that. Before he said I would never I I have the power to do you evil and now I said but I do evil to the it's all mine. Uhhuh. So clearly he had some vicious intent here that it's all his. That's what you see from the surface. So this he's crafty. He's willing to cheat. He's willing to lie. What's his underlying motivation? His underlying motivation is that Jacob, you're a dreamer. You have in mind a totally unrealistic life goal and you can live with your dream and you can die with your dream. I don't care. Your wives are my daughters. Your children are my grandchildren. You're living in my culture, my society. And when you're gone, it'll all be mine. It'll be over. He really did want to uproot the whole thing. He really did want to uproot the whole thing. But you have to read it and you have to read it carefully and you have to read it with with subtlety and you have to rely also in the oral tradition which for us is uh part of the original information and that's why it says go out of your uh customary feelings and and uh and and learn and I think we have modern counterparts of this. I'm sure that if in 1928 you had made a trip to Germany and asked German Jews, how is it to be a German Jew? Wow, it's wonderful be a German Jew. It's wonderful. Top of the world, enlightened, you know, progressive democratic country and what could be better than this? And in much miniature terms, but but also disturbing, ask an American Jew 15 years ago, could 15 years ago anyone have imagined random violence against Jews in the streets and marches of tens of thousands of people calling for Jewish bloodshed and political uh parties and elements of government which don't want to take action. against them and don't want to protect Jews. Could that have been imagined 15 or 20 years ago in America? Surely that couldn't possibly happen. That's why a lot of the people on the left October 7th, you know, this can't happen. It can't happen. It did happen. Some of them admitted it. So, this is that sale uh moment where you have to leave your your um your your prejudices behind. Now here I'm going to go back to this is what I mentioned with a verse from Joshua. So it says um Pharaoh only decreed uh against the the the um male the newborn male children and he wanted to uproot everything. The nativ has an essay on anti-semitism and in particular on exile what it means to live in exile and to be successful in exile. says what the verse in in in Joshua and this and these verses over here tell us is that um we had to undergo a period of exile for a certain purpose I'm not going to go to the moment and he gave us instructions how to survive Israel Badad Jew the Jewish nation has to be isolated culturally religiously and geographically who made the first ghetto. So you say, well, see, ghetto is an Italian word. Probably was a early European thing that happened in in in in Italy. No, the first ghetto was made by Joseph because when he told his his family to come down, he said, "Come to Gan. Goan is near me. You'll all be in Gan geographically centralized where you'll all be together." Furthermore, they were practicing circumcision, which means they were physically different from the Egyptians. Now, the Nifie points out there's a verse which says God overturned their hearts to hate his people. That means when the Jews first came down to Egypt, they weren't hated. They were respected. Indeed, the thief says they were loved. When did it change? When they dropped this shield of being isolated. And the midrash records both things. Number one, they stopped doing uh circumcision. And number two, they moved out geographically to live cheek by jowl with the with the Egyptians. So much so that when we left it says says to tell says well tell them each woman should take from her neighbor her Egyptian neighbor her valuables and I'll make sure that they want to give it to you and so forth and so on. It means we had Egyptian neighbors we weren't living in go anymore. So says the says the fact that they gave up the Jewish the divine strategy of survival, not only survival but but um security and and flourishing in exile since they gave it up. So then the security and the flourishing disappeared. So this idea of of what parro wanted to do is because we gave that up and now he says had we spent the 400 years with love on we would have been totally lost. We would have been totally lost. So the going down to Egypt was a way of saving us because in Egypt we have a survival mechanism. We didn't use that survival mechanism to the greatest extent that we could have and therefore the end had to be hastened not for 100 years but 210 years yes but at least you had a mechanism that's what he says and I believe I understand him correctly by by applying it this way when he lived it with love on he couldn't have used that survival mechanism because his daughter his wives were love's daughters and his children are love's grandchildren where you going to go live in a cave he couldn't isolate himself there and says that's the survival and flourishing mechanism in exile. He couldn't put it into practice. So he moved him to Egypt where he could put it into practice and his descendants could put it into practice and as long as they did things were good and as soon as they didn't then it began to deteriorate. So that's a deeper picture of what's going on here that this going down to Egypt was saving us from ego worse fate. That's an Arave this Arabian wanted to destroy. he would have been successful. He would have been successful. And you could ask, well, why didn't he give us a strategy to overcome that? That I don't know. I don't know. He wanted this strategy to be the strategy that we that we employ. And uh that's why we went down to Egypt. So, these are some themes that are not exactly on the surface, but they're there. Okay. See you tomorrow, and we will continue. I'm not ed.