“It happened on that very day: Hashem took the Children of Yisrael out of the land of Egypt, in their legions” (12:51)
One spark can start an inferno, and one jet of water can put it out.
During the recent terrible fires in Los Angeles, 65-year-old John Carr defied evacuation orders to save the home that had been passed down to him by his parents.
He said, “The house was built by my mother and father in 1960. And I lived here my whole life. There's a lot of memories here. And I think I owed it to them as well to try my best to save it. Some things in life are worth fighting for. I was hosing the house down and getting ready, and when the houses started to burn, I didn't see one single fire truck out here at all. Zero. If they had some fire trucks, just put a squirt here, a squirt there, and kept an eye on things, all these houses would be here.”
One small jet of water can put out an inferno – but only at the beginning.
The gemara in Sukkah: Rabbi Yehudah said: “In the future, Hashem will take the evil inclination and slaughter it in front of the Tzadikim and the Resha'im, the righteous and the wicked. Both the Tzadikim and the Resha'im will cry; the Tzadikim will cry when they realize that the evil inclination they overcame was like an enormous mountain; the Resha'im will realize that what they failed to overcome was like a tiny thread of hair, and they will cry, ‘How were we not able to conquer such a small thread of hair?’”
The uncontrollable inferno of the evil inclination starts off with a little spark. All one needs is one or two jets of water to put it out. But only in the beginning. If one doesn't stamp out that fire at the start, it will grow and engulf the person.
The Torah calls Egypt, “The nakedness of the land.” (Ber. 42:9) Egypt was an entire culture dedicated to the pursuit of infinite variety and potential. By definition, such a society is incapable of, and scorns, fidelity. When Hashem took the Jewish People out of Egypt, He took us out of a worldview that glorifies immorality.
If John Carr was prepared to fight for his legacy, his house, his memories, how much more we, the children of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov, should be prepared to fight for ours. Carr said there were no fire trucks in the area. He was on his own. You know, that's our world today. Relatively few people care about holiness in the world.
But the Jewish nation does, and we're preserving generations. We’re preserving a legacy infinitely more valuable than any house. We have to do for ourselves and the world what John Carr did for his house. We have to stand up and rescue a world, burning, out of control with physicality.
It only takes “a small jet of water.”
