Well known to every yeshiva child of even tender age are the four terms used in parshas Vo’eira to describe the redemption of our ancestors from Mitzrayim, and associated with the Seder’s four cups of wine.  Two other words, however, are used repeatedly by the Torah to refer to Yetzias Mitzrayim.  While they may come less readily to mind, they share something odd in common: both are terms for describing a marriage’s dissolution.

The Gemara’s term for divorce is geirushin, and its root is a word used repeatedly in Shmos (as in 6:1, 10:11, 11:1 and 12:39) to describe what Par’oh will be compelled to do to the Jewish people – “divorce” them from the land.  And the Torah’s own word for divorce, shilu’ach – as in vishilchoh mibaiso (Devorim 24:3) – is also used, numerous times in Shmos (examples include 4:23, 5:2, 7:27, 8:25, 9:2, 10:4 and 13:17) to refer to the escape from Mitzrayim.

In fact, the word yetziah, one of the four well-known redemption words and the word employed in the standard phrase for the exodus, Yetzias Mitzrayim, also evokes divorce, as in the phrase “viyatz’a… vihay’sa li’ish acher (Devorim, 24).

The Original Chuppah

More striking still is that the apparent “divorce” of Klal Yisroel from Egypt is followed by a metaphorical marriage.  For that is the pointed imagery of the event that followed Yetzias Mitzrayim by 50 days: ma’amad Har Sinai.

Not only does Rashi relate the Torah’s first description of a betrothal – Rivka’s – to ma’amad Har Sinai (Beraishis 24:22), associating the two bracelets given her by Eliezer on Yitzchok’s behalf as symbols of the two luchos, and their ten geras’ weight to the aseres hadibros.  And not only does the novi Hoshea (2:21) describe Mattan Torah in terms of betrothal (v’airastich li…, familiar to men as the p’sukim customarily recited when wrapping tefillin on our fingers – and to women from studying Novi).  But our own chasunos themselves hearken back to Har Sinai:  The chuppah, say the seforim hakedoshim, recalls the mountain, which Chazal describe as being held over our ancestors’ heads; the candles traditionally borne by the parents of the chosson and kallah are to remind us of the lightning at the revelation; the breaking of the glass, of the breaking of the luchos.

In fact, the birchas eirusin itself, the essential blessing that accompanies a marriage, seems as well to refer almost explicitly to the revelation at Har Sinai.  It can, at least on one level, be read to be saying “Blessed are You, Hashem, … Who betrothed His nation Yisroel through chuppah and kiddushin” – “al yidei” meaning precisely what it always does (“through the means of”) and “mekadesh” meaning “betroth” rather than “made holy”).

So what seems to emerge here is the idea that the Jewish people was somehow “divorced” from Egypt, to which, presumably, it had been “married,” a reflection of our descent there to the 49^th level of spiritual squalor.  And that, after our “divorce,” we went on to “marry” the Creator Himself, kivayochol.

On further reflection, the metaphor is, , truly remarkable, because of the sole reference to divorce in the Torah.

You Can Never Go Home Again

It is in Devarim, 24, 2, and mentions divorce only in the context of the prohibition for a [female] divorcee, subsequently remarried, to return to her first husband.

The only other “prohibition of return” in the Torah, of course, is a national one, incumbent on all Jews – the prohibition to return to Mitzrayim (Shmos 14:13, Devorim, 17:16).

Decrees and Deserts

More striking still is the light shed thereby on the Gemara on the first daf of massechta Sotah.  Considering the marriage-symbolism of Mitzrayim and Mattan Torah in that well-known passage reveals a deeper layer than may be at first glance apparent.

The Gemara poses a contradiction. One citation has marriage-matches determined by divine decree, at the conception of each partner; another makes matches dependent on the choices made by each individual – with each person receiving his partner “lifi ma’asov,” according to his merits.

The Gemara’s resolution is that the divine decree is what determined “first marriages” and the merit-based dynamic refers to “second marriages.”

The implications regarding individuals are unclear, to say the least.  But the import of the Gemara’s answer on the level of Klal Yisroel – at least in light of the Mitzrayim/Har Sinai marriage metaphor – afford a startling possibility.

Because Klal Yisroel’s first “marriage”, to Egypt, was indeed divinely decreed.  It was foretold to Avrohom Avinu at the Bris Bein Habesorim (Bereishis 15:13): “For strangers will your children be in a land not theirs, and [its people] will work and afflict them for four hundred years.”

And Klal Yisroel’s “second marriage,” its true and final one, was the result of the choice our ancestors made by refusing to change their clothing, language and names even when still in the grasp of Egyptian society and culture.  When they took that merit to its fruition, by saying “Na’aseh vinishma,” they received their priceless wedding ring under the mountain-chuppah of Sinai.

© 2004 Rabbi Avi Shafran

Reasonable minds might well wonder if there is a major blood-focus in Judaism.  In fact there is, and noting the fact is timely, for the bloodletting is on Passover, or Pesach.

I don’t mean the spilling this time of year of Jewish blood, of which there was indeed much over centuries in Christian Europe (another echo of Christian blood-fixation – Jews drinking Christian blood was a common slander in the Middle Ages, so much so that halachic sources actually suggest using white, not red, wine for the “four cups” in places where such libels are common).   No, not human blood but rather animal.

Specifically, the blood of the Pesach-sacrifice, which, in the times of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, was slaughtered the on afternoon before the onset of the holiday.  The meat of the lamb or goat comprised the final course of the Seder (the original “afikoman”), and some of its blood was placed on the Temple altar.

We don’t have a clear comprehension of the Jewish laws of sacrifices; somehow, the ritual dispatching of animals results in our own greater closeness to G-d (“korban,” the Hebrew word for sacrifice, means “that which makes close”).  But the spiritual mechanics, as is the case with so many of the Torah’s commandments, are ultimately beyond mortal minds.

The Pesach sacrifice, though, seems clearly to hearken back to the first Pesach, when the blood of the sheep or goat our ancestors were commanded to slaughter in Egypt, in preparation for their exodus from that land, was placed on “the doorposts and lintel” of each Jewish home.

In rabbinic literature, houses are symbols of the feminine, and so it has been suggested that the blood on the doors of the Jewish homes in ancient Egypt may represent the blood of birth.  From those homes in ancient Egypt, in other words, a new collective entity came forth into the world.  A Jewish nation was born.

As the Shem MiShmuel, a classic Chassidic text, explains, before the exodus the Jews were all related to one another (as descendants of Jacob) but they were not a nation.  Any individual was still able to reject his or her connection to the others and the rejection had an effect.  Indeed, our tradition teaches that many in fact did so, and did not merit to leave Egypt at all, dying instead during the plague of darkness.

Once the people were forged into a nation-entity, though, on their very last night in Egypt, things changed radically.  With blood on their doorways and satchels filled with matzoh, they readily followed Moses into the frightening desert on G-d’s orders, knowing not what awaited them.  As the prophet Jeremiah described it, in G-d’s words: “I remember for you the kindness of your youth… your following Me in the desert, a land where nothing is planted.”  And thus the Jews became a living nation, an entity whose members, and descendants throughout history, are part of an organic whole, no matter what any of them may choose to do.

Which is why, in the words of the Talmud, “A Jew who sins is still a Jew,” in every way.  There is no longer any option of “opting out.”

And so, blood in Judaism is a symbol not of suffering, not of torture, not even of death, but of its very opposites: birth, life, meaning.

The words of another Jewish prophet, Ezekiel – words recited in the Haggadah and traditionally understood as a reference to the Pesach sacrifice – well reflect that fact.

Referring to “the day you were born,” G-d tells His people: “And I passed by you wallowing in your blood, and I said to you, ‘in your blood, live.’  And I said to you, ‘in your blood, live’.”

© 2004 AM ECHAD RESOURCES

The word “slave” doesn’t generally inspire positive feelings.  For Jews, though, especially when Passover arrives, it should.

To be sure, the images evoked when we think of servitude tend to be of economically or racially oppressed classes, of men and women being treated as if they were something less than fully human.

There are other types of servitude as well that have little or nothing to do with class.  For example, whether we choose to confront it or not, we are all servants – indeed slaves – to a considerable host of masters.  Most of us are indentured to one or another degree to any of a number of physical and psychological desires.  Some are relatively innocuous, like the craving for a particular food – or for food in general – or the yearning to be entertained or pampered or allowed to sleep late.  Other desires are more sinister, like the compulsion to ingest some addictive chemical, or the lust to lord oneself over other people, or the coveting of property or persons.

In contemporary times, many of us are enslaved virtually without even knowing it – chained to our work, taking orders from advertisers, moving to the dictates of the arbiters of style, addicted to the media or to the Internet.  Oddly, every modern opportunity seems to morph into a new master; new options pull us even further from true freedom.

It seems almost as if it is a hard-wired part of human nature that we serve.  Indeed, Judaism maintains, it is, and for good reason: Because we are meant to be servants.

We just have to choose the right master.

Most people are aware that Passover is the Jewish holiday of freedom, commemorating how the distant ancestors of today’s Jews, embraced by God and led by Moses, threw off the yoke of Pharaoh’s enslavement.  But there is something very essential to the Passover account that many don’t realize: Though Egypt was rejected, servitude was not.

“Let My people go!” G-d ordered Pharaoh.  But the command doesn’t end there.  It continues: “… so that they may serve Me.”

The Jewish concept of freedom, or cherut, does not mean being unfettered, but rather fettered to what is meaningful; it does not mean independence but rather subservience – not to the mundane but to the divine.

Which is why Passover, in a sense, doesn’t end after its seven (or, outside of the Holy Land, eight) days.  On the second day of the holiday, following the Biblical command, observant Jews begin counting, marking each of the following forty-nine days by pronouncing a blessing and assigning the day a number.  The fiftieth day, the day after the counting, or Sefirat Ha’Omer, is completed, is the holiday of Shevuot (“Weeks”); it is in a very real sense the culmination of Passover.

For according to Jewish tradition, Shevuot is the anniversary of the revelation at Sinai, of the day the Torah was given to the Jewish people.  And therein lies the deep secret of Jewish freedom.

The life of a libertine is not freedom but quite its opposite, enslavement to transient pleasures, to substances and possessions, to the dictates of society.  Meaningful freedom, paradoxically, is being indentured – but to the ultimate master, the Master of all.  And so as we count the days – quite literally – from the holiday of freedom to the holiday of Torah, we express (and, hopefully impress on ourselves) just how inextricably the theme of Passover is linked to that of Shevuot, how the ultimate expression of true freedom is having the courage and mettle to throw off the yoke of temporal masters and commit ourselves to what is meaningful in an ultimate sense: the will and law of G-d.

The rabbis of the Talmud put it pithily, punning on the Hebrew word for “etched,” used about the words carved on the Tablets of the Law.  The word is “charut,” which the Rabbis compare to cherut, freedom.

“The only free person,” they inform us, “is the one immersed in Torah.”

© 2001 AM ECHAD RESOURCES