Masei
אלה מסעי בני ישראל אשר יצאו מארץ מצרים לצבאתם ביד משה ואהרן. ויכתב משה את מוצאיהם למסעיהם על פי ה' ואלה מסעיהם למוצאיהם. ויסעו מרעמסס בחדש הראשון בחמשה עשר יום לחדש הראשון ממחרת הפסח יצאו בני ישראל ביד רמה לעיני כל מצרים. ומצרים מקברים את אשר הכה ה' בהם כל בכור ובאלהיהם עשה ה' שפטים. ויסעו בני ישראל מרעמסס ויחנו בסכת (לג, א-ה).
These are the travels of the Children of Israel who left the land of Egypt according to their legions through the hand of Moshe and Aharon. Moshe wrote their exits according to their travels by the word of Hashem; and the following are their travels according to their exits: They travelled from Ra’amses in the first month, on the fifteenth day of the first month; on the morrow of the Pesach-sacrifice, the Children of Israel left with an upraised hand in full view of all of Egypt. And Egypt was burying those whom Hashem had smote amongst them – every firstborn; and Hashem had carried out punishments against their idols. And the Children of Israel travelled from Ra’amses and encamped at Sukkos.
There are a number of questions to raise about this passage: 1) As the Alshich notes, need we be told that the Children of Israel had left Egypt? 2) “According to their legions” implies that the Jews were conforming to some extraneous system – but they themselves were the legions - ? 3) What does “through the hand of Moshe and Aharon” mean? 4) How could the travels be described as through the hand of Aharon if he passed away before they were completed? 5) Why are we told that Moshe recorded the travels if they are part of the Torah and Moshe composed it in its entirety? 6) What is the function of the term “according to their exits”? 7) Why are the terms “their travels, their exits” repeated, and, more so, inverted? 8) And, as always, what is the contemporary relevance of this passage?
Relatedly, we need to examine the following passage in Bo: ויהי מקץ שלשים שנה וארבע מאות שנה ויהי בעצם היום הזה יצאו כל צבאות ה' מארץ מצרים וגו' ויעשו כל בני ישראל כאשר צוה ה' את משה ואת אהרן כן עשו. ויהי בעצם היום הזה הוציא ה' את בני ישראל מארץ מצרים על צבאתם, It was at the end of four hundred and thirty years, on this very day, all of the legions of Hashem left from the land of Egypt… And all of the Children of Israel did as Hashem had commanded Moshe and Aharon; so they did. It was on this very day: Hashem took out the Children of Israel from the land of Egypt according to their legions*.
1) Why the repetitive language? 2) Why does it first describe the nation as “leaving” and then as being “taken out by Hashem”? 3) Why first “the legions of Hashem” and then “their legions”?
In order to unravel all of this, let us begin with a question raised by the medieval thinkers: It is an established principle that for one to experience prophecy he must thoroughly prepare himself spiritually, intellectually, and meditatively. How then did an entire nation of millions of people manage to experience it suddenly, without any training – and while conscious, no less - ? The Ikkarim ** proposes that the prophetic experience of Moshe overflowed upon the rest of the nation due to their proximity to him. It is this that is meant when Moshe declared, אנכי עומד בין ה' וביניכם, I shall stand between Hashem and yourselves. ***
The Alshich**** rejected this explanation, pointing out that despite Aharon’s lofty personal level, his physical proximity never allowed him access to Moshe’ prophetic experiences. Instead, he suggested that since, as the Sages tell us,***** Israel was purified of its spiritual dross at Sinai, the people were rendered fit to experience prophecy. However, this too is difficult. For we know that even before the purification at Sinai, the people experienced abnormal levels of prophecy. After the crossing of the Yam Suf, “even a maidservant perceived that which the prophet Yechezkel did not see in his visions.”****** Even fetuses in their wombs burst forth in inspired song. ******* How was this possible?
Rather, it would seem that the experience of the miracles at the Red Sea provided the Jews with a profound deveikus, connection, with Hashem. This was engendered particularly through the confidence in Hashem that they achieved, as it says, ויאמינו בה' ובמשה עבדו. ******** That is, through their newfound trust they were able to tap into Moshe’s personal connection to Hashem, using it as a conduit to Him. And since Moshe was divorced from physicality, the rest of the nation achieved a semblance of that as well, allowing them to achieve the extraordinary prophecy that they did. As the aforementioned passage in Sotah explains, the fetuses were able to see the miracles of the Sea despite their fetal encasement due to their mothers being rendered crystalline like the looking glass through which Moshe would experience his prophecies.
Alternatively, we can borrow an answer from a resolution that I provided elsewhere to a comment of Tosafos in Shabbos.********* As the well-known talmudic passage goes, the Jews were compelled into accepting the Torah on pain of burial alive under Mount Sinai. Tosafos wonders how this conforms with the nation’s explicit, willing embrace of the Torah with נעשה ונשמע. They answer that that was their initial reaction, however, upon seeing the great fire that consumed the mountain, they were intimidated and retreated. The popular difficulty with this is that, seemingly, the sight of the awesome might of the Torah ought to have encouraged them in their acceptance, not discouraged them.
My personal understanding is that initially the nation was elevated to a level of greatness not of its own making. This was the meaning of the פסח, the skipping, that occurred with the Exodus – a leapfrogging to levels beyond their reach, as a means of demonstrating what they were capable of accomplishing. It was in this state that the nation gladly accepted the offer of the Torah. However, this level was but a temporary gift. They subsequently reverted to their initial, lower level, so as to task them with re-earning the vistas that they had been exposed to.********** Once they had fallen, they recanted on their initial acceptance, and a pushier method was necessary to seal the deal with them.
The same paradigm can resolve our original question. The prophetic experiences of the Red Sea and the Revelation at Sinai were of the same, freebie nature that the nation had been gifted on the night of the Exodus. As such, they did not conform to the standard restrictions of prophecy. Once they concluded, though, the people were instructed שובו לכם לאהליכם, return to your tents, *********** i.e., your original, more mundane level, with the hope that they would regain those heights through their own efforts. Only Moshe remained on the mountain.
Now, I would add that Egypt is symbolic of This World. The word מצרים means straights, referring to the physical limitations of our existence. The World to Come, in contrast, is purely spiritual, without contours.
We can now begin taking apart the verses of our sidra. אלה מסעי בני ישראל. As the Zohar writes in another context, travelling is symbolic of the spiritual journey that Man must undertake, each leg of the trip another gain in one’s self-development. For the Jews leaving Egypt, they travelled a great many legs at one shot thanks to the sudden elevation that they experienced. These are the travels of the Children of Israel – אשר יצאו מארץ מצרים, due to their instantaneous departure from the coarse physicality of Egypt, allowing them to achieve לצבאותם, the loftiness of the ministering angels. And who facilitated this? משה ואהרן, who held their hand and guided them. ************ Moshe, as described above. And Aharon, who, as the mishnah states,************* “loved people and drew them close to Torah,” i.e., Hashem, one of whose names is “Torah.” ************** Hence, the Kohen is described as an angel of Hashem,*************** that is, he has the capacity to elevate others to angelic levels as well. This is the meaning of the Sages’ instruction that one should only learn Torah from a teacher who is similar to an angel,**************** i.e., that he has the ability to develop the angelic qualities latent within the student.
Thus, the opening of the sidra alludes to these two causes for Israel’s sudden spiritual ascension. אלה מסעי בני ישראל לצבאותם, as explained above, ביד משה ואהרן, through Moshe and Aharon’s leadership. However, Moshe did not want to take the credit for himself, and so the verses continue: ויכתוב משה את מוצאיהם למסעיהם, Moshe wrote that that which they achieved the lofty level of their highest spiritual source (מוצאיהם) even before undergoing the arduous climb through the many levels typically necessary to reach it (מסעיהם) was due to the special catapulting that Hashem provided them. Subsequently, preserving such an achievement demands blood, sweat, and tears along a winding route from station to station. Namely, אלה מסעיהם למוצאיהם, the legs of the trip are what bring one back to his original greatness.
This is also the meaning of the verses in Bo. At first, ויהי בעצם היום הזה יצאו מארץ מצרים, the Jews left on their own volition from Egypt, reaching the level of angels – hence they are called צבאות ה'. Subsequently, Hashem assisted them in retracing that spiritual ascension level by level, הוציא ה' את בני ישראל מארץ מצרים, until they surpassed the level of angels, על צבאותם.
Perhaps this is the inner meaning of the verse ואשא אתכם על כנפי נשרים ואביא אתכם אלי, I carried you upon wings of eagles and brought you unto Me, which the Sages take as a description of how angels carried the nation from Ra’amses to Sukkos****************. The first phrase – ואשא אתכם על כנפי נשרים – refers to the nation’s elevation to the level of angels. The angels, however, are incapable of taking them higher than that, beyond their own capacity. Therefore, ואביא אתכם אלי, Hashem had to personally take them to the next level.
Alternatively, the beginning of our sidra can be understood as follows. As per the aforementioned verse from Malachi, the eved Hashem is compared to an angel. To my mind, this is in the sense, as the Akeidas Yitzchak ****************** explicates, that the spiritual angel adopts a material guise when entering this world for some mission, and divests itself of it upon its completion. Similarly, the human soul – a spiritual entity – descends to this material world to accomplish a mission, one which necessitates assuming a material shell. As such, use of that guise for any purpose other than the fulfillment of its mission is to abuse it, a punishable breach of protocol. This is similar to the parable of the agent who is dispatched by his town on a critical mission to the royal palace, outfitted with the necessary funds. Instead of doing so, the agent uses the money to invest in merchandise and tries his hand at business, losing it all. Upon returning home a failure, bereft of the deposit, the townsfolk take him to task for his irresponsibility.
In this sense, אלה מסעי בני ישראל אשר יצאו מארץ מצרים, upon leaving this world of distress (מצרים), the tzaddik reverts to לצבאותם, his spiritual state, divested of his corporeal guise. This latter word can also refer to the legions of angels generated by all of the tzaddik’s good deeds during his terrestrial sojourn.
How does a person achieve this accomplishment? As the verse continues, ביד משה ואהרן, through the recognition that, akin to Moshe and Aharon, every person walks the earth as but an angel on a mission. (That Aharon is an angel, we saw in Malachi. Moshe too is described as such by Rashi to the words וישלח מלאך ויוציאנו ממצרים, He dispatched an angel and removed us from Egypt.*******************) Indeed, the שפתי כהן ישמרו דעת, mindfulness of this reality is demanded in order to be successful. Most people, unfortunately, lack Da’as, and lose sight of this fact of life.
Hence, ויכתב משה את מוצאיהם למסעיהם על פי ה'. One who has this mindfulness has a semblance of Moshe, the exemplar of Da’as. He inscribes upon his heart the reality of his origin – a lofty soul hewn from the divine Throne of Glory, and the mission that he was sent upon by divine instruction, like an angel. The next step is ואלה מסעיהם למוצאיהם, to be wary that all of his journeys in this world do not take him off course, rather they should be directed to returning him to his point of origin.
The takeaway from all of this is the centrality of mindfulness in the life of a Jew. A poignant demonstration of this is the testimony of Rav Moshe of Coucy in the introduction to his magnum opus, Sefer Mitzvos Gadol (Semag). He relates that he received a heavenly message in a dream, pointing out that in his inventory of the 613 mitzvos he failed to list the most important of them all: השמר לך פן תשכח את ה' אלקיך, guard yourself lest you forget Hashem your G-d.********************
The passage continues with allusions to the nation’s spiritual growth. ויסעו מרעמסס, the name רעמסס alluding to the word רססים, shards, indicating that they viewed all material matters as mere waste. ויחנו בסכת, the Sukkah representing the idealized spiritual abode on this Earth,********************* it indicates the lofty level that the nation now ascended to. The rest of the names of the stops along the journey can be interpreted in a similar fashion.
ומצרים מקברים. As we wrote above, מצרים is symbolic of materialism. Ultimately, all materialism winds up in the ground, meaningless and forgotten. הכה ה' כל בכור. The same is true of glory, represented by the firstbornship, the position of power in antiquity. Hashem strikes down power. What’s more, ובאלהיהם עשה שפטים, He tears down the idols of wealth.
However, to the credit of Israel, they do not need to experience the turning of the wheel of fortune to cure them of their immersion in materialism. Even when things are on the up and up, they forgo all of the glitz and glamor of the mundane in favor of the eternal bliss of spirituality. Hence, the repetition of ויסעו מרעמסס, they did not wait until the collapse of the material to make their exit from Egypt. Rather, בחמשה עשר יום לחדש הראשון, while the Egyptian materialism was at the height of its power – as connoted by the middle of the first month, when the constellation of the Egyptian deity of the sheep was at its apex – ממחרת הפסח יצאו בני ישראל , after repudiating the sheep, the Jewish People marched out of the country. לעיני כל מצרים, despite the Egyptian materialism being its most eye-catching, they abandoned it, focused on reaching Sukkos and its spirituality.
With the above exposition we can resolve a number of questions raised by the Alshich: 1) Why mention at all the exit from Ra’amses being that it is the actual Exodus? 2) Why mention here the date of the Exodus? 3) Why mention that the Jews left לעיני כל מצרים? 4) Why mention that the Egyptians were burying their dead? 5) The same for the mention of the destruction of the idols. 6) Why the repetition of their travel from Ra’amses? 7) And why is that exit first described as ויסעו מרעמסס and then as ויסעו בני ישראל מרעמסס? In light of the above, the answer is that the second phrase describes the nation acting in accordance with its elevated title, the Children of Israel, ignoring the glitter of Egypt before seeing its bankruptcy. This is similar to the talmudic exposition********************** of אשרי האיש ירא את ה', Praiseworthy is the man who fears Hashem*********************** – while he is still “a man,” i.e., in his vitality. Or, similar to the Zohar’s ************************ take on מפני שיבה תקום, You shall stand before an elder ************************* – before you reach your elderly years, arise to grow in your spirituality.
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* Shemos 12:41, 50-51. ** 3:11. *** Devarim 5:5. **** Shemos 19:2. ***** Yevamos 103b. ****** Mechilta, Beshalach 2. ******* Sotah 30b. ******** Shemos 14:31. ********* 88a. ********** To this method one can apply the verse in Tehillim 48:15: תומלע ונגהני אוה , he will lead us like children. Just as a parent must allow his toddler to stumble while learning to walk, so does Hashem leave us to our own devices so that we develop our own spiritual muscles. *********** Devarim 5:27. ************* In this vein, the Zohar (Raya Me’hemna, Teitzei, 278b) states that Moshe and Aharon were like the wings that bore aloft the pigeon that was Israel. ************** Avos 1:12.*************** Zohar, Beshalach 60b. **************** Malachi 2:7. ***************** Moed Katan 17a. ****************** Mechilta, Yisro 2. ******************* 63.******************** Bamidbar 20:16. ********************* Devarim 8:11. ********************** As the Zohar (3:255b) writes, ה"כוס has the same numerical value as the two Divine Names of ת"ונדא ה"יוה*********************** Avodah Zarah 19a. ************************ Tehillim 112:1. ************************* 3:87b. ינפמ 25 Vayikra 19:32.