The high-rise manager was showing his new assistant around the building when they came to a large empty glass box. Above it was a sign that read: “Use only in case of an emergency.”
“What is this for?” asked the young assistant.
“Oh, that’s where we keep an axe in case we need to break a door down. But the box is always empty.”
“Why?” asked the young man.
“Because we are in a constant state of emergency!” said the boss.
Virtually every time I submit my column – now 25 years and counting – I never know what emergency is going to descend upon us before you read what I’ve written, and may very well make my comments “old news.” As I write these words, the gathering armada of American military might is being assembled all around us, and – given the Trumpster’s erratic behavior and tendency to shoot from the hip – we have no clue where it is heading.
Will the guns be turned full scale on the Nazi-like Iranians – who murdered more than 30,000 of their own citizens in 10 days – or is this just a scare tactic that may lead to some cosmetic changes, yet allow the evil regime to remain in power?
Life for the Jewish people, and virtually anyone who comes within our circle, is unpredictable. We do know that history teaches us there is an up-and-down, undulating flow of the years, divided between prosperity and persecution, acceptance and expulsion, exile and redemption.
The ups-and-downs of Jewish history
This week’s Torah portion of “Beshalach” contains the most memorable scene in our – or any – Bible. The splitting of the Red Sea will become history’s miracle par excellence, and it will officially mark the end of our long Egyptian exile, one that witnessed the rise to glory of Joseph and the cruel reign of Pharaoh. But just how long was our stay in the land of the pyramids (regarding which Menachem Begin reportedly told Anwar Sadat, upon visiting there, “We Jews do good work, don’t we?”)?
The rabbis – surprise! – are quite divided on this issue. Last week’s Torah portion seems to be clear (“Shemot” 12:40-42): “The habitation of Bnei Yisrael in Egypt lasted 430 years; at the end of those 430 years, the multitude departed.” Seems pretty cut and dried.
But an earlier verse, dealing with the “Covenant between the Pieces,” has a different number: “God said to Avram: ‘Know that your descendants will be strangers in a strange land and will be enslaved and oppressed for 400 years” (Bereishit 15:12-16).
To make things even more complicated, medieval commentator Rashi, doing simple math, concludes that we could not possibly have been in Egypt for four centuries. He maintains that we were there for about half of that, 210 years to be exact.
Why, I ask you, all this fuss about when we came and when we left?
I suggest that the Torah means to emphasize that exile, however long it may last, is “baked into the pudding” of Jewish national life. Indeed, this principle began at the very dawn of time, when Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden, thus beginning our wondrous wanderings. But why was this all necessary?
One reason, on a negative note, is that we conducted ourselves in a less than exemplary fashion in several of our stops and had to be called out and disciplined, and so exile constituted a harsh reaction to our behavior (“Because of our sins,” we recite thrice annually in our prayers, “we were banished from our land”). Exile – with apologies to Boca and Bondi – is ultimately a punishment, not a paradise.
But I prefer to put a more positive spin on this recurring roller-coaster ride. The Torah tells us (Devarim 4:20) that the Egyptian experience – I suggest this includes all our many stops along the way – was a kur ha’barzel, an iron crucible designed to purge us of our ungodly behavior and steel us for the challenges ahead.
In this Egyptian foundry of fire, we would regain a sense of humility, a quality that is a necessary element of leadership. We would sink to the “49th level of impurity” to give us a sharp shot of modesty, so that we would not let our stature of “God’s first-born children” go to our head too much. And, thrown together with all our sisters and brothers in the slave enterprise, we would regain and refine a sense of unity that we had lost when Joseph was thrown into the pit by his brothers.
All the uncountable episodes in our long journey, so many of them tragic, teach us two basic, all-important lessons: God will never, ever desert us, even in the darkest times; and if we overcome our partisanship and lack of mutual respect for every segment of society, then no force on Earth can derail our mission.
Israel is built upon the shoulders of legions of heroes who encountered every possible roadblock, yet kept on going. To demean or denigrate any one of these brave citizens is no less than to blaspheme God, who loves and cherishes each and every one of His beloved family.
Will we survive the next crisis coming around the corner? Yes, of course. Will we move from exile to ecstasy, ending in that elusive golden age we are promised?
The answer to that is in our hands, each and every day.■
The writer is director of the Jewish Outreach Center of Ra’anana. rabbistewart@gmail.com