Moses’ Early Years
It is one of the most intriguing components of the Exodus story. The first leader of the Jewish people, who would set them free and mold them into a nation, grew up not among his own people, but in the palace of the man who wished to destroy them. Why did Providence have it that Moses was raised not in a Jewish home, but among non-Jews, in the Egyptian palace?
To quote Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra (12th-century Spanish philosopher, poet, and biblical commentator):
Perhaps G-d caused Moses to grow up in the home of royalty so that his soul would be accustomed to a higher sense of learning and behavior, and he would not feel lowly and accustomed to a house of slavery. You see that he killed an Egyptian who did a criminal act [beating an innocent Hebrew to death], and he saved the Midianite girls from the criminal shepherds who were irrigating their own flock from the water the girls had drawn.
Had Moses grown up among the Hebrew slaves, he too might have suffered from a slave-mentality lacking the courage to fight injustice and devoid of the ability to mold an enslaved tribe into a great people with a vision of transforming the world into a place worthy of the divine presence. He would not find within himself the strength to dream of liberty and confront the greatest tyrant of the time. Only because he grew up in a royal ambiance, did Moses have a clear sense of the horrific injustice and feel the power to fight it.
As our own country faces today such divisiveness and extremism on the Left and the Right, we need to ask ourselves if we have not reverted to our “reptilian brains,” and cannot see anything larger than what we are being indoctrinated with by people driven by hate and bias? Can we stop tolerating being told all the time what to think, and labeling people in extreme ways just because they do not fit into the narrow paradigms that we created to define morality and justice?
Moshiach
Just as this was true in Egypt, it is also true today. We have been in exile for close to two millennia. But the greatest danger is when we come to tolerate it, when it is seen as normal. The beginning of our redemption is in our awareness that our exile is unnatural and cruel. Can we learn to begin thinking with the broadness of a redemptive model? Can we cry out sincerely about our individual and collective pain of alienation?
Standards Determine Destiny – A Little Story
In the 1950s, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, walking on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, encountered two administrators of a local yeshiva (Jewish day school) gazing at a yellow school bus parked on the road. When the Rebbe asked them what they were looking at, they said that the bus was on sale and they were thinking of purchasing it for the yeshiva. "We desperately need our own bus," they told the Rebbe.
"But this bus looks like an old shmateh," the Rebbe said. "It seems like it's on the verge of retirement. Why not purchase a brand-new bus for the children?"
"If we could only afford that type of money!" they exclaimed. "The price of this old bus is something we could maybe fit into our budget."
"Let me tell you something," the Rebbe responded. "You know why you can't afford the money for a new bus? Because in your mind, the old and run-down bus will suffice for your yeshiva. If it would be clear to you that the children need a new and beautiful bus, you would have the money to purchase it."
What the Rebbe was saying is that in many cases, your standards are often what ultimately define the quality and destiny of your life.
