By Yanki Tauber, chabad.org
And often, in the trajectory of our lives, we must be both. And in the history of a people, there must be leaders and visionaries who are both.
The Torah tells us that when Jacob and his family came to Egypt, they numbered "seventy souls". But the detailed list given by the Torah (in Genesis 46:8-27), includes only 69 names. Our sages explain that when Jacob's family departed the Holy Land, there were only 69 Jews; but upon their arrival in Egypt, they numbered 70. Who is the mysterious 70th soul?
It is Jocheved, the mother of Moses, born "between the boundary walls" as the first Jewish family entered our first galut (exile).
If you are outside of a problem, you can't solve it. If you are part of the problem, you can't solve it either. You need to be both.
The woman who gave birth to and raised Moses could not have been of the generation that was born in Egypt, the generation for whom galut was the reality. She could not have been of the generation born in the Holy Land, for whom galut was never real. She had to be both.
