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Shabbat HaHodesh 5768

It’s count-down time. Tonight’s the first of Nisan. There are only two weeks to Pesach.

Some of us – I certainly include myself in that group – some of us find preparing for Pesach so stressful and so burdensome that we forget the main idea. We forget that in these two weeks – the first two weeks in Nisan – we might be preparing to get the hametz out of our houses but the Jewish people were preparing to get themselves out of Egypt.

And the two are connected. Just as we can’t enjoy Pesach without preparation and effort, the Jews couldn’t leave Egypt without preparation. No redemption without preparation. Redemption doesn’t just arrive on a plate, as a present. It has to be earned.

There’s a famous Mechilta which Rashi quotes on our parasha (on Shemot 12:6) and is also quoted in the Haggadah. The Mechilta brings a verse in Yehezkiel (16:8) which pictures the Jewish people like a young girl who has just reached maturity:

“I passed by and saw you and you had reached the time of love”.

The Mechilta continues, “The pledge that I gave to Avraham, that I would redeem his children, has come due. But they did not have any commandments to be busy with in order to be worthy of redemption.”

You see, no redemption without preparation. The Jewish people needed some mitzvoth to perform, some positive actions, in order to make them worthy of being redeemed. And the Mechilta mentions two.

One, which is explicit in the p’shat in today’s parasha, is taking the Pesach lamb and putting its blood on the doorposts and the lintels of the houses. The second, which is a d’rash by the Mechilta, is brit milah. Apparently the people had not performed brit milah – hadn’t carried out any circumcisions – while in Egypt. They were now commanded to circumcise themselves. You can see this implicit in the halachah, mentioned later in the sedra of Bo, that you need to be circumcised to eat the Pesach.

The Mechilta brings these two mitzvoth together because they’re both connected to blood, and they are linked in the Haggadah to the two dippings on Seder night. When we dip twice, we remember the blood of the Pesach on the door and the blood of the brit milah.

But the Mechilta isn’t the only source with the idea of preparation before redemption and these aren’t the only mitzvot given to the Jewish people in Egypt.

The Talmud Yerushalmi in Rosh Hashanah (Rosh Hashana, 3:5) mentions a third mitzvah. It tells us that the Jewish people were told to free their slaves.

[The Yerushalmi, commenting on Shemot 6:13, explains: “Rabbi Shmuel the son of Rabbi Yitzchak said, “commanding Bnei Yisrael - what was He commanding them about? Freeing slaves.””]

Before being free they needed to free their own Jewish slaves. This is a shocking idea. According to this tradition Jews kept other Jews as slaves during the oppression in Egypt. And they didn’t release them after seven years. It’s a disturbing idea but it rings true. According to this tradition, their mitzvah, before being redeemed, was to recognise the seventh year and let their slaves go.

Finally, we have a fourth mitzvah. The mitzvah of counting the calendar, which is explicit p’shat in our parasha this morning as well. A free people controls its own calendar.

So we have four mitzvoth – lots of items related to Pesach come in fours - the blood of the lamb, the blood of brit milah, freeing our slaves, and counting our own calendar. If we think for a minute we can see why these four in particular are necessary for freedom.

Brit milah represents the mastery of our own physical desires. Someone who isn’t master of his own passion is not free.

Control of the calendar highlights the special responsibility of the free person which a slave does not have, namely to control and be responsible for his own time. Slaves don’t own their time but free people do.

Freeing our own slaves is necessary because we can’t be free while at the same time oppressing others. I think this is obvious.

Finally, the blood of the Pesach on the doorpost makes a formal, explicit recognition that we are not independent - we depend on God’s protection. We may be masters of our passions, our possessions and our time but not of our destinies.

In summary, these four mitzvot encapsulate special requirements on the Jewish people prior to redemption. And they are still relevant today. Control over our own passions, mastery of time, consideration to others, and recognition that we are not independent remain challenges for all of us, every day.

The tragedy is that the generation of the Exodus, the generation which first received these ideas was not redeemed.

By tradition only 20% of the Jewish people left Egypt at all. After they crossed the Red Sea they complained; after they heard the revelation at Sinai they made and worshipped a golden idol; when they were brought to the border of the land of Israel they refused to go in. This is not the generation that was redeemed but the generation that died in the desert.

However, we are still here. We are here because of a fifth mitzvah given to the generation of the Exodus, namely to tell their children the story. We have the story and we enter tonight another Nisan. According to tradition the Jewish people will be redeemed in Nisan. And, as we said, the mitzvoth given to the Jewish people in Egypt are still relevant to all of us today. Every year brings a new opportunity and it’s our responsibility to seize it.

© Benedict Roth Adar II 5768