What being in Egypt really means for Jews

You can read the same book several times over the course of your life and each time, you’ll derive different meanings from it. That’s how things are meant to be. You’re in constant movement (even when sitting still), each cell of yours is different right now than it was just a second (or less) before. You’re ever changing, ever evolving. And so are your thoughts, your emotions, your personality.

Fail to miss that, to recognize it, and your mind might just get stuck. To get unstuck you have to become aware and live in a state of awareness. That is the deeper meaning our tradition is communicating to us when we read about being in exile as slaves in Egypt.

Chronologically, right now, we’re in the Torah period of time that our people are being enslaved in Egypt. Time in Judaism is not linear, it functions on a spiral, so that while yes, while we’re in the year 5784 / 2024 we’re actually reliving parts of our history relative to this time period. Yes, it’s a very spiritual way of looking at reality. But go for it just a bit.

If you’re travelling with me on this little journey, I don’t mean that we’re actually physically in Egypt (I’m not crazy, after all), but spiritually we are most certainly there, right now. We’re in a place of exile in these times. It might just be the worst place for us, spiritually speaking. A place where there is no sense of a Creator, God, a Higher Force connecting the universe. We are enslaved by the mind-set of those who have no understanding of things like that, it’s not part of their world. It’s a place that values the material so much, that parting with things of this world is too impossible a notion.

In this place of exile, people will crave the physical so much that they will invent ways to preserve the pure body, the vessel that encases what the true entity is, the soul. They will even bury their things with them. That’s ancient Egypt, yes….but think about it, much can be said about this situation in our time as well.

We have lost touch with who we really are. That’s what it means to be enslaved in Egypt, the word in Hebrew is Mitzrayim meaning ‘a constricting or narrow place’. We are in this constricted place now, a place of restricted thought, of limited states of being. Our very actions are very often knee-jerk responses to stimuli. We are pleasure-seekers who often don’t think through consequences. In that way, our minds are not free; we are not using our free will to make the moral choices we need to. That’s a definition of being enslaved. Those who are enslaved mentally can live very good lives, from outside appearances.

Not every one who could, chose to leave Egypt. Our tradition tells us that many of our people chose to stay behind, preferring a life of limited choice surrounded by a comfier lifestyle. But we know that ‘having it all’ doesn’t guarantee happiness, and instead often means living in material excess which often breeds spiritual emptiness.

Then, nothing changed things until we cried out to the One of All Being that we’ve had enough. I know. This is a difficult notion to grapple with. But our text tells us that we have to make the first move to a different choice.

We have to set things in motion. As long as we accept things as they are, they will either stay that way, or get worse.

The deepest parts of ourselves yearn to be in a more expansive place, a place of true freedom, which our tradition represents as the Midbar (the wilderness, expansiveness), which we will soon be able to escape to (spiritually and metaphorically speaking of course). When we leave exile to enter there, that freedom will involve responsibility, of course. It’s the freedom to decide right from wrong. Good from Evil. The responsibility of living by our own choices. That’s the price of freedom—-once free, you’re charged with being responsible for the welfare of others, not just your own.

Those who are enslaved aren’t able to do that. They just do what they’re told, according to their ruler’s whims and wishes that don’t come from a place of measured judgment or morality. The Midbar is a place free of distractions, no temptations, nothing to pull us away from dealing with who we are individually and communally. We get the chance to clear our minds. It’s a time for us to inculcate those values that are timeless. That’s how we’re meant to live.