By: Rabbi Ken Spiro
 

The Exodus story is certainly one of the most significant events in Jewish
history. It is a model -- in microcosm -- for what happens later. We see
again and again the roller-coaster ride from high points to low. Generally,
the higher the Jews manage to rise, the lower they fall.

The story of Exodus recounts the Jews going from a good situation (as when
they were welcomed into Egypt by the Pharaoh himself) to a very bad
situation (when they were enslaved) to the highest heights, the pinnacles of
spirituality (when they were freed from slavery by God Himself and given the
Torah at Mount Sinai).

At the point in time when the Exodus story begins the family of 70
individuals that arrived in Egypt at the time of Joseph has grown to a
nation of about 3 million people. This is not as far-fetched as it may seem.
All you have to do is assume that each family had 12 children (as did Jacob
and as is happening today in ultra-Orthodox families in Israel) and you can
easily compute that in five generations there will be this many people if
not more. This is far from the most supernatural thing to happen in Jewish
history.

The rapid multiplication of the Jews has made the Egyptians nervous --
"there are too many of them, what if they rise up against us" -- and the
Pharaoh issues a genocidal decree: Kill all the Jewish boys. (This is a
classic anti-Semitic pattern -- the Jew in Diaspora is always loyal to his
host country, yet can never escape unfounded suspicion of treachery.)

At this point, baby Moses is born. His parents decide to hide him, but after
a few months they realize that very shortly they will be found out. So his
mother, in order to save him somehow, puts him in a waterproof basket and
floats it down the Nile. As we all know, he is saved by none other than the
daughter of Pharaoh.

Irony of ironies? It's all part of the plan. As noted earlier, God puts the
cure before the disease. This is another classic case.

It does give one pause though -- that the savior of the Jewish people is
going to be raised in the house of the ultimate enemy of the Jews. The only
modern equivalent would be of some fellow who is meant to overthrow Nazi
Germany being raised as Adolf Hitler's adopted grandson. That's what we have
here. You realize what a wild story this is if you imagine it in a modern
context.

EGYPTIAN HISTORY

By the way, who is the Pharaoh in the story here?

The events of Exodus happened circa 1314-1313 BCE if we translate Jewish
chronology into the Christian dating system the world uses today. But that
may be misleading. For one thing, the Egyptian chronologies we use in modern
world history have only been calculated in the last century by scholars who
tried to estimate the reigns of the kings of Egypt and Assyria, two of the
oldest empires in the world. There's a huge amount of educated guesswork
involved in these chronologies. If you open any books on ancient Egypt
you'll get lots of different opinions as to when different Pharaohs reigned.

Generally, the Pharaohs associated with the Exodus are Seti and Rameses.
Rameses II was certainly the great builder of this period of time. And it's
interesting that the Bible says that the Jewish slaves built the cities of
Pitom and Ramses. (See Exodus 1:11.) Of course, it took them 116 years to
build these cities so that covers the reign of more than one Pharaoh.

Now what's fascinating is that after Rameses there was a ten-year period of
chaos in Egypt; this much we know from available records. This would fit if
Egypt was, in fact, destroyed by ten supernatural plagues; they would be in
bad state for a number of years afterwards. So there we have some evidence
of it.

The Pharaoh who reigned after Rameses is named Merenptah and he ruled from
the late 13th to early 12th century BCE. Now what's most interesting is that
there was found an inscription from his reign which is today called the
"Israel Stele." On that stele is a record of Merenptah's campaigning in the
area of Canaan, the Sinai/Israel area. And it's the first extra-Biblical
mention of "Israel" anywhere in human history. We're talking about something
that's around 3,200 years old. And this would correspond in Jewish
chronology to some time after the Exodus story.

What does the stele say? "Israel is a widow. Her seed is no more." That is,
we've wiped out the Jewish people, they're gone. This means:

1) The Egyptians lie when they record things. Jews are here today 3,200
years later, they hardly wiped the Jews out; in fact, they're gone. (This is
not surprising as the ancient people are notorious for lying in their
official records to make their rulers look good.)

2) At this early time in history, corresponding to the time when the Jews
just entered the Promised Land, we have concrete references to a people
called Israel in the records of another country. This is very significant
piece of archeology.

PRINCE OF EGYPT

Moses grows up as the grandson of Pharaoh, who is then (whoever he was) the
most powerful human being on earth, being the ruler of the mightiest nation
on earth.

Moses could easily have grown up to be a totally assimilated, totally spoilt
Egyptian kid. But the Pharaoh's daughter has hired his own mother as his
nanny and so he never loses the connection to the Jewish people.

It is no surprise therefore that, when one day he sees an Egyptian
taskmaster beating a Jew, he cannot stand it and he kills the taskmaster.
Then, of course, some Jews inform on him, which is another classic case
we're going to see in Jewish history -- Jews informing on other Jews. And
Moses has to flee for his life.

He goes to the land of Midian, which is across the Sinai Peninsula. There he
meets Jethro, an excommunicated priest who has several daughters, one of
whom Moses marries. His wife's name is Tzipporah, and the Bible describes
her as being black. Moses has two sons, Gershon and Eliezer, (about whom we
don't hear much) and he becomes a shepherd.

In this regard he follows the example of the other great leaders of the
Jewish people; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jacob's twelve sons were all
shepherds. So, we have to ask: Why were so many Jewish leaders shepherds?

Now if you've ever watched shepherds at work, you might have noticed that
most of them sit around doing nothing except daydreaming. A shepherd has a
lot of time to think, and this is an absolute prerequisite for being a
prophet. To elevate oneself to the highest level, where one transcends the
physical reality and enters a higher dimension of communicating with the
Infinite, requires a huge amount of work, and a lot of time to think.

Another reason why Jewish leaders were shepherds has to do with the fact
that the work of a shepherd is practice for dealing with large groups of
living creatures. Leading the Jews is the hardest job on the planet. One of
the great lessons that we need to learn from Jewish history is the
difficulty and the challenges of unifying and trying to lead the most
individualistic nation on the earth. Being a shepherd is good practice for
this daunting task.

THE BURNING BUSH

While Moses is tending the sheep, he has a vision of the burning bush.

The story of Moses' encounter with God at the burning bush is incredibly
profound and laden with many deep meanings, but for our purposes in
analyzing Jewish history we will consider the burning bush as synonymous
with the Jewish people.

The burning bush is burning, but it is never consumed by fire. So, too, the
Jewish people seem to be forever on the verge of being destroyed yet we
always survive. On another level, we could say that the Jewish people are
burning with the fire of Torah, with an ideology that is going to change the
world.

When Moses encounters God at the burning bush, God identifies Himself
repeatedly (Exodus 3:6, 3:13, 3:15, 3:16, 4:5) as the God of his
forefathers -- Abraham, Isaac and Jacob with whom He had made an eternal
covenant.

This is an extremely important passage because later on in Jewish history a
lot of different people are going to come -- the Christians, for example --
claiming that God changed His mind, abandoned the Jews and made a new
covenant (new "testament" to use the Greek term) with them.

But God made an "eternal" covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and He
renews the deal at several intervals. We learn that God has a master plan
for humanity and the Jews have an absolutely essential part in that plan.

At this juncture, God has decided to bring the Jews out of Egypt. And it's
important to keep in mind that God put the Jews in Egypt in the first
place -- that God is responsible for the bad things and good things that
happen.

It says in the Talmud, you have to bless the bad as well as the good. When a
person dies, the observant Jew will say "blessed is the true Judge," because
everything God does is part of a plan, even though we don't always see what
that is. Sometimes He puts people into a bad situation so they can
accomplish their mission on earth. It's not just that the bad things are the
product of "the devil" and the good things are from God.

So, in effect, we come to understand that Egypt served as a womb, where the
Jews were formed as a nation in a very difficult situation, so that when
they were ready, God could bring them out and establish a special
relationship with them.

God tells this to Moses in effect and then commands, "Go back and tell
Pharaoh to let My people go."

"LET MY PEOPLE GO"

As commanded, Moses goes back down to Egypt, confronts the Pharaoh with his
brother Aaron, and he says, "The God of my forefathers told me to tell you:
'Let My people go.'" And in response, the Pharaoh is incredulous "What are
you talking about? Who is this God? I don't know him."

The ancient Egyptians had around 2,000 gods. They took their spirituality
and knowledge of the spiritual world very seriously. Since they didn't have
a laptop to do a "god-search," their priests starting furiously flipping
through their lists of the different gods and couldn't find the God that
Moses was invoking.

The notion of one, infinite, all-powerful God was an idea that was
incomprehensible to the ancient polytheistic people -- it simply did not fit
with their fragmented way of viewing the world.

When the Pharoah won't listen, what does Moses do? He takes his staff and he
throws it down and it turns into a snake.

The Pharaoh is not impressed. His magicians can do the same thing.

It is very important to stress that the ancient world understood
spirituality in the way we cannot even fathom today. Today we talk about
magic, but magic for us is illusion, not a manipulation of the forces of
nature as they were able to do.

It is a fundamental idea of Judaism that there's a spiritual reality, and
that there's a physical reality. You can transcend the physical into the
spiritual; you can use the spiritual to manipulate the physical. And you can
do this by accessing the dark forces or the light forces. And the Egyptians
were able to access the dark forces and they knew how to turn a stick into a
snake, so they were not impressed by what Moses did.

But Moses was just getting started.

NEXT: THE TEN PLAGUES
 

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