Shemot: And Thus Begin All Exiles
Shemot: And Thus Begin All Exiles

 

The Book of Genesis finished last Shabbat with the first generation of exile dying. The original Hebrew family – Israel and his sons with their wives and children – had come down to Egypt, had been warmly welcomed there as honoured guests, and lived peaceable lives ensconced in their Jewish enclave of Goshen.

And thus begin all exiles. The Midrash (Tanhuma, Lekh Lekha 9) gives a general principle for understanding all of Torah, that the deeds of the fathers are a portent for their descendants: commensurate with this, the Egyptian exile was the paradigm for all future exiles.

Only after that first generation died did the Egyptians’ friendly smiles begin to fade. The Children of Israel who had left the Land of Israel had known only good in Egypt. Their children, those who had been born and grew up in Egypt and knew of no other country, who considered themselves Egyptians par excellence, could not possibly conceive of any other life, or of any other allegiance than to Egypt, their “homeland”.

The new king who arose over Egypt (Exodus 1:8) knew and understood this only too well. This new pharaoh addressed his people with the words, “Behold! The nation of the Children of Israel is greater and mightier than us. Come, let us be wise about it, lest it increases, and then, in the event of war, it too will join with our enemies and fight against us, and go up from this country” (vs. 9-10).

Being “wise about it” meant understanding the Jews’ mentality. The Torah says that “Egypt enslaved the Children of Israel with forced labour” (v. 13); the Talmud (Sotah 11b) offers two connotations of the word parekh (“forced labour”): according to Rabbi Elazar, it connotes pe rakh, literally “gentle mouth” – i.e. ostensibly friendly persuasion; according to Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachmani, it connotes prikhah, coercion. A contemporary gedol ha-dor synthesises these two interpretations: “In fact, these two explanations do not contradict each other, rather they are two different stages of Egyptian enslavement: it began with the “gentle mouth”, persuasion, and ended with coercion. Indeed, in the Midrash (Sh’mot Rabbah 1:11), Rabbi Ivya said that Rabbi Elazar [who interpreted parekh to indicate pe rakh] agrees that this was coercion” (Rabbi Meir Kahane Hy”d, in Peirush ha-Maccabee, Exodus page 32).

Elsewhere, the Midrash describes in greater detail how this cunning persuasion developed: “When Pharaoh said, ‘Come, let us be wise about it’ and ‘placed taskmasters over it’ (v.11), he assembled all Israel and said to them: Please work for me today as a favour. This is the meaning of the verse, ‘Egypt enslaved the Children of Israel with forced labour’. With parekh (“forced labour”) means with pe rakh (“with gentle mouth,” i.e. by persuasion). He [Pharaoh] took a basket and a trowel; who could watch Pharaoh holding his basket and trowel, working with bricks, and stand by idly?! Immediately, all Israel went with alacrity and worked with him with all their might, since they were all strong and heroic (Bamidbar Rabbah 15:20).

The Talmud (Sotah 11a) has a similar description: “They brought bricks and hung them round Pharaoh’s neck. To every single Israelite who said, I am feeble, they [the Egyptians] responded, Are you then more feeble than Pharaoh?!”.

That is to say, Pharaoh invited the Jews to volunteer to work for the good of their beloved country for just one day. As Rabbi Kahane puts it, “Pharaoh called on the Children of Israel to fulfil their national obligation by participating in building cities – and they were all eager to volunteer” (Peirush ha-Maccabee, Exodus page 24).

The Midrash (Bamidbar Rabbah 15:20) continues: “When night fell, he placed slave-drivers over them, and said to them: Count the bricks. They immediately stood up and counted them, and he said to [the Children of Israel]: You shall provide the same amount every single day”.

Rabbi Kahane continues: “Pharaoh cunningly pretended to go out to work, to serve as an ‘example’ of nationalism and patriotism. Therefore, all the Children of Israel, feeling part of the nation, hastened to participate in this supposedly national endeavour… Initially, the Jews rushed to fulfil their obligation. They did not want to be suspected of treason, the ‘enemies’ whom the Egyptians feared being the Hyksos who were Semites, like the Hebrews; furthermore, they were proud patriots who were genuinely grateful to Egypt, and believed themselves to be an integral part of the country and seized it. This is always the case with Jews: they come to a new country, want to be part of it, want to be loved and accepted by the local population. They contribute their greatest talents to their new country and develop it, becoming ever more confident of being accepted as equal citizens – and then comes the reversal” (Peirush ha-Maccabee, Exodus page 25).

And thus begin all exiles. How many times in our history have we found ourselves in countries where we have been welcomed, treated with respect and dignity, integrated with the host population, had wonderful lives for generations, for centuries – only for persecution to begin one day?

Moslem Spain has entered our general consciousness as the golden age. Indeed, when Tariq ibn Ziyad led the Moslem invasion of Spain in 711, the Jews initially enjoyed relative tolerance, freedom, and opportunity (although the Moslem invaders persecuted the indigenous Christians harshly).

But two and a half centuries on, Moslem persecution set in: discrimination, disqualification from certain professions, restrictions on public Jewish life became the norm. And then, on the 9th of Tevet 4827 (30th December 1066), 945 years ago last Wednesday, some 5,000 Jews were massacred in Granada. This was the beginning of increasingly vicious anti-Jewish persecution in the previously comfortable Spanish exile.

Poland has entered our general consciousness as a country of unrelieved persecution. Yet a thousand years ago, Poland was called in Latin the paradisus Iudaeorum (Jewish paradise): when the Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025, Poland was the most tolerant country in Europe. During the darkest days of Christian persecution, and during the Crusades when Jews were being massacred in myriads throughout Europe, Poland provided shelter for persecuted and expelled European Jewish communities.

It would take centuries, but eventually Poland, too, would evolve from the Jewish paradise to a veritable Jewish hell on earth.

 And thus begin all exiles. Turkey, Germany, Morocco, Hungary, Yemen, Italy, Persia, South Africa – all have followed the same paradigm as that first exile in Egypt. All begin comfortably (otherwise why would Jews ever have gone to those countries in the first place?); and all degenerate into persecution and bloodshed – some within decades, some after centuries. And when the change finally happens, sometimes it happens within a few short years, usually it takes decades.

Emma Lazarus poetically referred to the Jews as “the Piel of the Peoples”: in Hebrew grammar, the “Piel” is the most intensive form of a verb, and Emma Lazarus recognised that in every country, Jews have become uber-patriots – more Spanish than the Spaniards, more French than the French, more British than the British. Above all, a century ago, more German than the Germans. Just as, three and a half millennia ago, they were more Egyptian than the Egyptians.

Yet this has never saved Jews from the fury of the host country when it came. The Egyptian king “did not know Joseph”, did not remember (or deliberately ignored) that Joseph had saved Egypt from starvation in the days of the famine. He ignored decades of friendly relations between Egypt and the Hebrews, just as he spurned the Hebrews’ loyalty to Egypt.

And thus end all exiles. The later Islamic rulers of Spain chose to ignore how the Jews had fought alongside them in their conquest, even as the Christian rulers of Spain ignored how Jews had made their country wealthy and expelled them all in 1492.

Jews built up German culture and science (try to find a single great German poet, composer, statesman or scientist from the 18th century until 1920 who was not Jewish or part-Jewish, or al least educated and heavily influenced by Jews). 100,000 Jews fought for Germany in the First World War, of whom 12,000 died on the battlefields; another 320,000 fought for the Austro-Hungarian Empire, of whom 40,000 died. A decade and a half later, all that was forgotten, the memory of Jewish contribution to Germanic greatness crushed under the heels of jackboots.

In Egypt, “they embittered their lives with hard labour, with mortar and with bricks, and with every labour in the field; all their labours that they laboured in were enforced” (Exodus 1:14).

Rabbi Kahane analyses this statement in depth, and it is worth citing his words here at length: “Come and see how delusional the Jews in exile really are! On the one hand, they think that the country is rich and prosperous and advanced, immune to hatred of Jews. On the other hand, they tell themselves that it is precisely a country which contains so many different nationalities and ethnic minorities that is the safest, and in which Jews will live at peace. But woe unto such distorted ideas, which inevitably lead to tragedy and disaster!

"As the Midrash says: ‘There were members of all seventy nations in Egypt, but only Israel was enslaved’ (Tanhuma, Va-yetze 9). This teaches two morals. First, that even in a cosmopolitan and progressive society like Egypt, which attracted immigrants from every nation, in which culture flourished, and whose denizens must logically speaking have been open-minded and broad-minded – even there, Jews were persecuted. Second, even though there was a broad spectrum of national groups and ethnic minorities, this did not help the Children of Israel, for the hatred was directed specifically at them.

?The other minorities (even the Hyksos, and the mixed multitude who would eventually escape from Egypt with the Israelites) did not help them, because they were happy that the Egyptians had a scapegoat towards which to direct their hatred, leaving other minorities unscathed. And thus it always is. Neither will Israel find any help from the oppressed strata of society, for their suffering does not make them ipso facto better people; rather, their ambition is to reach the same status as the tyrants who control them, and the easiest way is for them to find their own scapegoat…

And with this in mind, brother Jews, let us cast aside distorted delusions, and come to terms with the fact that exile is a graveyard – and that the wealthier and more comfortable and more advanced that the exile is, the more dangerous its end will be” (Peirush ha-Maccabee, Exodus pages 36-37).

And thus end all exiles.

Parashat Sh’mot sounds the tocsin loud and clear, for every Jew in every exile. In more and more countries, the warnings are looming larger and nearer than ever before. In countries where a generation ago Jews lived in luxury and freedom and safety – in Iran, in Turkey, in South Africa – they today live in fear, on the knife-edge of the abyss. In other countries – in France, in Sweden, in Britain, in Holland – the winds of uncertainty are already blowing uncomfortably cold. In the USA, as the economy begins to spiral out of control and Israel is increasingly perceived as a burden and not an asset, the storm-front of Jew-hatred can be heard rumbling on the horizon.

In Egypt, we had no choice but to remain until the Exodus. But in our generations, our exile is already beginning to draw to its end; any and every Jew who decides to come home, to evade the horrors of the end of exile, need but make the decision.