‘Therefore, say to the children of Israel: “I am the Lord, and I shall remove
you from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will save you from their
labor, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments.
And I will take you to Me as a people and I will be a God to you… And I shall
bring you to the land which I swore to give… to you as a heritage…”’ (Exodus
6:6-8)
This stirring passage presents the four (actually five) expressions of
redemption which are the source for our four (actually five) cups of wine at the
Passover Seder. (The fifth refers to the Divine promise to “bring you to the
land.”) And this text tells us of the coming attractions when it speaks of God’s
redemption by means of His “outstretched arm and with great judgments,”
referring to the Ten Plagues against the Egyptians, the awesome wonder of the
splitting of the Re(e)d Sea, which drowned the Egyptians and enabled the Hebrews
to escape freely onto dry land and the Revelation at Sinai, when God took the
Hebrews to Himself as His covenantal people.
As we shall see, the
expressions of Divine redemption set the stage of contrast between our biblical
history and post-biblical history. In the earlier period, God plays the star
role (as it were) in effectuating our national freedom and in establishing our
national constitution to form us as a “holy nation and kingdom of
kohen-teachers” to all humanity, whereas during our subsequent Second
Commonwealth – talmudic and post-talmudic history leading up to Redemption – it
is Israel who must take the responsibility and assume proactive leadership as
God’s senior partners in the international arena.
The talmudic Tractate
Shabbat (88a) teaches as follows: “And they stood at the bottom of the mountain”
(Exodus 17:19). Rabbi Abdimi bar Hama bar Hasa said, “This verse teaches that
the Holy One, Blessed be He, hung the mountain over them like a barrel and said
to them, “If you accept the Torah, it will be good; if not, there shall be your
grave!” Rabbi Aha bar Jacob said, “This constitutes serious grounds for
protesting the validity of our acceptance of the Torah.” (If our obligation to
uphold the Torah today harks back to our acceptance of Torah 4,000 years ago at
Sinai, which was based on duress, our commitment then and now would not be
binding.) How can Rabbi Abdimi logically – and textually – maintain that God
“forced us” into accepting the Torah? The chapter relating the Sinaitic covenant
clearly states, “The entire nation responded in one voice and said, ‘all the
words which the Lord has spoken, we shall do.’” And then, for emphasis, it
states once again, “Everything which the Lord has spoken, we shall do and we
shall internalize” (Ex. 24: 7). The Sages dare not “remove a biblical verse from
its literal and contextual meaning.”
What Rabbi Abdimi may be referring
to is the supernatural, Divinely orchestrated context within which the
Revelation was placed: the outstretched arm of God which had wrought the
judgments of the plagues and the Re(e)d Sea upon the Egyptians, “the thunder,
the flames, the sound of the shofar and the smoking furnace” (Ex. 20:15) that
accompanied God’s words. Rabbenu Tam goes so far as to say that no covenants
agreed upon by Israel after hearing Divine Speech can be seen as voluntary
commitments; “God’s awesome communication in itself creates a situation of
duress”; it removes the individual’s uninhibited power of free
choice.
THE QUESTION then remains: are we or are we not obligated to keep
the commandments of the Torah? In the previously cited talmudic passage, Rava
explains why we remain obligated: “Despite the [coercion at Sinai], Israel
freely accepted the Torah in the days of Ahasuerus, as it says, ‘the Jews
confirmed and received’ (Esther 9:27) – that is, they confirmed then what they
had previously received [at Sinai].”
Allow me to explain. During the
biblical period, Israel was in diapers, slowly advancing to bar
mitzva.
It was essential that our “Parent in Heaven” assume center stage
by establishing our status as a free nation and communicating His Torah as our
Divine constitution and mission statement.
As we developed, from the
Second Commonwealth and onwards we were given the charge to complete an
incomplete world and also to complete an incomplete Torah, which had to remain
relevant through changing times and circumstances (the Oral Law, interpretations
by the Sages of every generation).
From then on, we became responsible to
lead ourselves and the world in the path toward redemption.
The story of
Esther took place and was written just as the period of the Second Commonwealth
was about to begin. God’s name does not appear in the Scroll of Esther; He has a
significant role, but He remains behind the curtain and the crucial decisions
must be made by the human participants: Esther, Mordecai and Haman. The victory
of Torah Jewry over Persian assimilation that takes place in the Scroll of
Esther demonstrates the new age dawning. The Scroll of Esther confirmed the
Jewish acceptance of Torah commitment as an act of free choice even without the
overwhelming Divine Presence taking center stage.
The writer is the
founder and chancellor of Ohr Torah Stone Colleges and Graduate Programs and
chief rabbi of Efrat.
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