When the land of Canaan was struck by famine, Yaakov encouraged his sons to travel to Egypt to buy grain. According to Rashi, he told them, “Why should you show yourselves before the sons of Yishmael and the sons of Eisav as though you are sated?” Rashi’s words imply that if not for the resentment of the sons of Yishmael and Eisav, Yaakov’s family could have subsisted without purchasing additional grain from Egypt.
Grain, the staple of the human diet, is analogous to wisdom and knowledge. Just as food is absorbed into the bloodstream and becomes one with the body, the wisdom one studies is absorbed by the brain and becomes one with the mind.
Egypt was once the world capital of science and wisdom. (As an indication of this, the wisdom of King Shlomo, the wisest of all men, is lauded as being “even greater than the wisdom of Egypt.”) And, corresponding to its role of providing civilization with “intellectual sustenance,” Egypt became the world’s primary supplier of physical sustenance.
4. See Zohar 1:125a.
5. I Melachim 5:10.
As such, Rashi’s implication that Yaakov and his family were not actually dependent on Egypt for their food alludes to the Jewish people’s inherent independence from Egypt for their knowledge and wisdom.
Instead, the Jewish people were given the Torah from which to draw their wisdom. Even the knowledge of the sciences that is necessary for comprehension and observance of the Torah is essentially contained within the Torah itself. In addition, where necessary, the Jewish Sages themselves composed scientific works. In the era of the prophets, for example, sages from the tribe of Yissachar wrote texts explaining principles of astronomy and geometry relevant to the workings of the Jewish calendar.
This allowed a Jew’s knowledge of the sciences to be entirely independent of secular influence.
Alas, due to the travails of exile we must now rely to some degree on secular scholarship for knowledge of the sciences relevant to the Torah. With the coming of Moshiach, however, the Jewish people’s intellectual independence from “Egypt” will be restored, and we will once again draw all our wisdom from the Torah alone.
—Likkutei Sichos, vol. 30, pp. 194–197
6. See Mishneh Torah, Hil. Kiddush Hachodesh 17:24.
