>From the Beit Midrash: The Source Of Righteousness by Joshua Cypess The Slavery in Egypt, Shiabud Mitzrayim, is a critical event in our history and one that demands explanation. In our attempts to rationalize the event we usually highlight the Exodus and the redemption but we de-emphasize the subjugation. For example, it is a recurrent theme in Sefer Devarim that being redeemed with great wonders, taking one nation from within another nation, is to teach the world that God is Almighty (see Dev. 4:32-34). But what about the oppression? Was it only to justify this great redemption? That is akin to shooting someone just to show him how good a doctor you are. There seems to be a deeper lesson that B'nei Yisrael was supposed to learn. Oppression in general is difficult to reconcile -- just ask Iyov -- but this particular oppression is too large, too important to ignore. If it was a punishment, then for what crime? Ironically, when the future subjugation is first mentioned in the first covenant God made with Avraham, the Brit Bein Ha'Betarim (Ber 15: 7-20), it seems that the upcoming oppression is not as much a punishment, but a reward! God introduces the covenant by saying: "Don't fear, Avram, I am a Shield for you; you will be greatly rewarded." (15:1) Later God tells Avraham (15:13-14) "Know...great reward...?", so even if we say it is not a reward, the opinion seems to be a necessary type of precondition for being made a nation, a natural-law, a recipe as it were (To make one nation: Take 3 patriarchs, mix, bake in iron furnace, take out of oven with wonders. Yield: 600,000). This necessity is punctuated in the Torah, especially in Sefer Bereshit. For example, God promises Yaakov when he was descending to Egypt that he should "Fear not going to Egypt because a great nation will I make you there." (Ber. 46:3). So, the actual oppression, the tremendous pain our ancestors went through in the "iron crucible" of Egypt (Dev. 4:20) seems to be a precondition to be a nation. The crucible could have been there to bond the people together as a people, give them a common history and a harrowing, smelting, experience. That the other nations of the region (e.g. Edom, Moav) did not need this pain suggests that B'nei Yisrael needed something very special. This point is corroborated by an explanation given in the name of the Rav zt"l: that B'nei Yisrael needed to witness and experience the subjugation in Egypt so that they would learn that the most sophisticated, cultured, and advanced civilization could commit these ghastly atrocities. The Rav highlights that Mitzrayim was the ultimate in human perfection and civilization -- the highest level a nation could reach. Despite the irony that their might and wealth came from the God-fearer extraordinaire, Yosef Ha'Tzaddik, the Egyptians believed that they themselves created their successful society and raised themselves to the highest in technology and thought. Egypt is thus becomes a symbol for a culture that give aggrandizes themselves and ignores the influence of God. This emphasizes a crucial aspect of the oppression in Egypt, as brought forth in the Hagadah and alluded to in God's name of Ahiyeh Asher Ahiyeh, that it is a paradigm for future Jewish oppressions, and through that, a metaphor for all human interactions. Egypt enslaving B'nei Israel is an embodiment of how any strong person will unjustly oppress the weak. Egypt was the strongest nation at that time, Israel the weakest (strangers in a strange land - the most pitiful status in the Ancient World). Added to this conceit of how Man treats Man, is how each of these two peoples treat God. Each nation's Material Strength is in inverse proportion to how they treat God. This is to emphasize how destructive a life of worldliness without God will be; nothing will prevent a powerful person from exerting terror and injustice on others if they have no fear of God to keep them reined in. In this way, Egypt becomes a symbol for man-made strength and anti-God evil. This metaphor is bolstered by strong comparisons between Egypt and the three distinctly described civilizations mentioned earlier in Bereshit: Sodom, Bavel, and the Generation of the Flood. Egypt exulted in their man-made wealth, just like Sodom (as indicated in Ber. 3:10); Egypt challenged the domain of God with their technology and human achievements like the architects of Migdal Bavel as directly implied by the Egyptian employment of the "crushing labor" of building treasure-cities like Pitom and Raamses using the same levanim and chomer used in constructing the Tower of Bavel (compare Shemot 1:14 to Ber. 11:3); and Egypt suffered the same fate as the generation of the Flood -- death by drowning in the Red Sea (Sota 11a). So we must see the Subjugation in Egypt as a paradigmatic drama, a grand morality play, where B'nei Yisrael is the worldly-weak but Godstrong slave and Egypt the worldly-strong but Godweak oppressor. In punishing Egypt, God proves to that strength gotten in this world means nothing to those who believe in God and have Him on their side. This brings us back to the lesson of the Rav. B'nei Yisrael was supposed to learn from their oppression that even a great society like Egypt will turn evil. This could be taught on the macrocosmic scale, without the oppression -- but the Jews, a stiff-necked people, may need extra prodding. The iron furnace is not there only to smelt the people together, but to soften their hearts, to burn into their souls this lesson: depend not on Man but on God. Egypt (perpetrating a secular evil, not done in the name of religion, but for the pure ideology of nationalism), while being the highest advancement of human achievement and thought can, and even will, lead to horror and oppression. Without God, no nation can rise above the mortality, the physicality, the prison of death. A culture based on a human soul cannot rise above its own mortality, it will always be limited and turn, instead, to licentiousness and violence towards others -- the tripartite evil of Egypt (Sodom, Bavel, Flood). Only a culture based on the immortality of God can have Truth and Life. This lesson, made on a grand scale in the struggle of Egypt and B'nei Yisrael, is seen microcosmically, in the brief story of the Egyptian Midwives, Shifra and Puah (Shemot 1:15-21). The well-known Midrash claims that they were alternatively Yocheved and Miriam or even Elisheva (Sota 11b). An alternative understanding of these midwives, quoted by the Kli Yakar as well as the Torah Temima from the Yalkut Shimoni (Yehoshua 2), and more faithful to simple pshat, is that they were native Egyptians, or as we call it nowadays "righteous gentiles." Without their story, we would be forced to dwell in the horror of the recognition that humanity can be capable of the depths of evil, even on a society wide scope. This is especially poignant to us living in the smoke-choked shadow of the Holocaust, an especially atavistic embodiment of the oppression in Egypt -- the testament of how the cultured Germans, like the Egyptians, could devolve into the inhuman monsters that the world mutely witnessed them to be. The miracle of the Exodus would thus teach us that the only goodness in the world comes from God's supernatural intervention. But, betwixt this nightmare vision comes the story of the midwives. We learn from them that even in the midst of a genocidal nation like Egypt there could still exist righteous people who can prove that goodness and morality comes not from philosophical musings, genetic disposition, ethnic mores, or even peer pressure -- it comes from a simple fear of God. These midwives were spiritual successors, even incarnations, of Avraham Avinu; Chazal even suggest that they invoked Avraham's memory and merit to God in order to elicit His help in saving the children. (Sota 11b) These votaries of Avraham, the avatar of righteousness and compassion, struggled, also like Avraham, to evoke the fear of God against all the social forces around them, and in doing so are immortalized in the Holy words of the Torah. We learn from the actions of the righteous gentiles, Shifra and Puah, that humanity can rise above its social tendencies for evil. The lesson of Egypt is that the ultimate human achievement, when devoid of God, will lead to the ultimate evil, and goodness will still survive through a pure devotion to God.