Sacks 6/7:6 or 7 Insights by Rabbi Sacks in the Coming Parshiyot

Vaera, Bo, Beshalach

Every week or so, depending on the Parsha, I will share 6 or 7 insights from Rabbi Sacks that stuck out to me and will inspire us in the coming week or weeks.

Insight #1 - וָאֵרָא-The purpose of Freedom-8:16

וְיַעַבְדֻנִי Send My people forth, so that they may serve Me – The Torah does not frame the move from slavery to freedom in terms of the ability to do what you like. Rather, it promotes the freedom to do what you ought. -p. 433

Insight #2-Intro to בֹּא-The Importance of Storytelling-The World tells stories to put people to sleep, I tell stories to wake people up" - R. Nachman of Breslov

Parashat Bo introduces the institution of storytelling as a fundamental religious duty, recalling and re-enacting the events of the exodus every year, and in particular, making children central to the story. If we are the story we tell about ourselves, then as long as we never lose the story, we will never lose our identity.

Cultures are shaped by the range of stories to which they give rise. Some of these have a special role in shaping the self-understanding of those who tell them. We call them master-narratives. They are about large, ongoing groups of people: the tribe, the nation, the civilization. They hold the group together horizontally across space and vertically across time, giving it a shared identity handed on across the generations.

None has been more powerful than the exodus story, whose frame and context is set out in our parasha. It gave Jews the most tenacious identity ever held by a nation. In the eras of oppression, it gave hope of freedom. At times of exile, it promised return. It told two hundred generations of Jewish children who they were and of what story they were a part. It became the world’s master-narrative of liberty, adopted by an astonishing variety of groups, from Puritans in the seventeenth century to African-Americans in the nineteenth and to Tibetan Buddhists today.

I believe that I am a character in our people’s story, with my own chapter to write, and so are we all. To be a Jew is to see yourself as part of that story, to make it live in our time, and to do your best to hand it on to those who will come after us. All of this begins in Parashat Bo. - p. 446

Insight #3-בֹּא - The importance of the elderly and the youth 10:9

‎בְּנַעֲרֵינוּ וּבִזְקֵנֵינוּ With our youths and our elderly folk – It was the very young and the old who were sent straight to the gas chambers during the Holocaust. They were deemed of no use. Likewise to a civilization like ancient Egypt, able-bodied men represented the ideal. In the nation, Moshe’s signaling different set of values. We care about our young and our old. Our young are our future, our old are our past, and both are precious to us and to God. We respect those who brought us into being and care for those who have brought into being. The phrase, “with our youths and our elderly folk,” has become familiar as an expression of Jewish collective responsibility. We do not abandon anyone. All Jews are responsible for one another. (Shevuot 39a)-p.448

Insight #3-בֹּא - The dual nature of Matzah 12:4

Matza represents two things: the food of slaves, and the bread eaten by the Israelites as they leave Egypt in liberty. What transforms the bread of oppression into the bread of freedom is the willingness to share it. One who fears tomorrow does not offer his bread to others. One who is willing to divide his food with a stranger has already shown himself capable of fellowship and faith, the two things from which hope is born. The Seder returns us to the solidarity of that original moment on the cusp of freedom.-p 458

Insight #3-בֹּא - Living with the past and not in the past 12:35

items of silver and gold. The Israelites are to ask their neighbors for such things. Why? Why is God so insistent that they take the objects of value with them in the long journey across the wilderness? The answer is profound. A people driven by hate cannot be free. If revenge had motivated them, a burden of hatred laid upon the Israelites would still be there, bound by chains of anger as relentless as any metal. To be free you have to let go of hate. Moses insists that we can begin to understand this Mosaic insight from the past and living in the past. Judaism’s religion of memory. We remember the exodus annually, even daily. But we look at the past not to be held captive by it but to create a future. That is why Moses insists: “Do not despise an Egyptian, for you lived as a stranger in his land. Do not despise an Edomite, for he is your kin” (Deut. 23:8-9).

Do so for the sake of the future, not the past. “Do not oppress the stranger,” says the Torah, “because you know what it is to be a stranger” (Ex. 23:9). In other words: what you suffered, do not inflict. Memory is a moral tutorial. In Santayana’s famous words: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Israel remembers its past precisely in order not to hate. Moshe’s message is: remember, but do not hate. That means drawing a line over the resentments of the past. That’s why when a slave went free, his master had to give him gifts. This was not to compensate for the fact of slavery. There is no way of doing that. It was to mark the beginning of a new chapter, to signal that the parting was done with goodwill, with some symbolic compensation. The gifts allow the former slave to teach emotional closure, to feel that a new chapter is beginning. One who has received gifts finds it hard to hate. That’s the significance of the silver and gold taken from the Egyptians by the Israelites at the express command of God.-p. 469

Insight #5-בְּשַׁלַּח - Carrying the past with us 13:19

יוֹסֵף The remains of Yosef – A moving fulfillment of Yosef’s last request, shortly before he died (Gen. 50:25). It was a mark of honor that the remains were carried by Moshe himself. There are cultures that forget the past and there are cultures that are held captive by the past. Jews do neither. We carry the past with us.-478

Insight #6-בְּשַׁלַּח -Facing the future with doubt and strength Ch. 14

We all face an unknown and unknowable future. Every single course of action we take, every commitment, has its underside of doubt. That is what faith is. Not the absence of doubt but the ability to recognize doubt, live with it, and still take the risk of commitment.

Judaism is not described as a state of being. It is about walking along the way, heeding the call of God. And along the way, the work is hard and there will be many setbacks and false turnings. We need grit, resilience, stamina, and persistence. In place of a column of cloud leading the way we need the advice of mentors and the encouragement of friends. But the journey is exhilarating, and there is no other way.-p.478

Insight #7-בְּשַׁלַּח -Do not rely on miracles-the Manna 16:1

Zohar, indeed, calls manna nahama dekisufa, the bread of shame. Why? Because we did not work for it.

We should not need miracles, nor should we rely on them. Judaism is a religion that celebrates law: the natural law that governs the physical universe, and the moral law that governs the human universe. God is found in order, not in the miraculous suspension of that order. Faith is about seeing the miraculous in the everyday, not about waiting every day for the miraculous.-p. 498