בצאננו ובבקרנו נלך
With our flock and our cattle shall we go
When Pharoah began to be convinced to send a portion of Bnei Yisrael from Egypt, he asked (10:8), 'מי ומי ההולכים' – ‘Which ones are going’? Moshe Rabeinu responded to him (10:9), 'בנערינו ובזקנינן נלך בבנינו ובבנותני בצאננו ובבקרנו נלך' – ‘With our youngsters and our elders we shall go, with our sons and our daughters, with our flock and our cattle shall we go’, and we must understand the question and the answer. Pharoah already knew that part of Bnei Yisrael had to go serve Hashem, but he did not know which part of Bnei Yisrael was chosen to go serve Hashem. At the moment, it did not enter his mind that all of Bnei Yisrael were going to serve Hashem and certainly that they would not have to take the flock and cattle, for how was this connected to the service of Hashem Yisbarach? This is what he thought, but Moshe Rabeinu answered him that ‘all of us are going, adults, children, the elders and even the flock and cattle, since by a Jew the mundane [physical – gashmiyos] is part of the spiritual [ruchniyos], since we will take from them to serve Hashem’, and to this Pharoah did not agree, for a goy cannot understand what the connection is between a lamb or cow to avodas Hashem, and also what is the difference between a lamb or cow and a donkey or other non-kosher animal.
There was a time when it was flock and cattle, today it is ‘tech devices’, and even today as then the goy does not separate between the spiritual and mundane. They come to their houses of prayer while their heads are in filthy places, and all the filth in the world is found in their heads and pockets... and in their minds one does not hinder the other, and even if they sense that something is not right – they go along with it. But this is not so with a Jew, a Jew cannot eat a food that was under the bed and he slept above it because of a spirit of impurity that rests on the food, and he can certainly not walk around with impurity in his pocket, since the Jew is pure, and impurity and purity [tumah and tahara] simply do not go together!
This Shabbos – in the middle of the holy days of Shovavim – was chosen for ‘Shabbos Tahara’ – ‘Shabbos of Purity’, we are accepting on it to conduct ourselves as Jews and not chalilah as goyim. Since all Gedolei Yisrael without exception have ruled that impure devices are forbidden by the Torah, everyone must make an inspection that he not have in his possession any ‘electroni device’ that is not approved by the view of the Chachamim, and may it be His will that in the merit of this purity, we should soon merit to be redeemed with the eternal redemption.
-Tiv HaTorah - Bo
