Rabbi Herzl Hefter – The Choice: Freedom or Victimhood
h/t to Lee Diamond
And the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued after the children of Israel: and the children of Israel went out with a high hand.
When the children of Israel left Egypt, they faced a choice; to maintain a posture of victim-hood fueled by desire for revenge or to look inward and forward so that their authentic identity could unfold and develop.
Onkelos deviates from the straightforward meaning of the Torah text by translating “a high hand”, be yad ramah, as reish galei –” heads held high.”
The key to understanding the differing connotations of “a high hand” as opposed to “heads held high” is in the Targum Yonatan on the same verse. He translates “with a raised hand overcoming the Egyptians”.
The high hand is raised against Egypt.
Rabbi Mordechai Yosef of Ishbitz (1800 – 1851) explains that, in contradistinction to the raised hand, the head held high indicates that the freedom which the Israelites experienced was “not against others with pride and a feeling of superiority rather they felt as free people without fear of any man”.
Our ancestors experienced their freedom not in opposition or response to their former oppressors. It is very tempting to adopt a stance of victim-hood. Self-righteousness is very satisfying in an odd sort of way. Together, self-righteousness and victim-hood seem to grant the moral high ground. In fact, adopting a posture of victim-hood and allowing it to fashion the personality can be very destructive. Too often the victim turns into the victimizer. The abused becomes the abuser. Undoubtedly, the Israelites suffered terrible injustices at the brutal hands of their Egyptian masters. However, to adopt the role as ‘victim’, when the post slavery era did not justify it, would in a sense perpetuate the slavery. They would continue to be obsessed with Egypt.
The Halacha insures that we will never forget our travails in Egypt. R. Mordechai Yosef is teaching us the nature of the experience of liberation. Freedom is to live in fear of no man.
Rabbi Herzl Hefter:
A rabbinic studies program for men and women
to meet the challenges of the Twenty First Century
The Dalai Lama wrote in his autobiography that the traditional education which he received as a child in the monasteries of Tibet left him singularly unprepared to lead his people in the 20th Century. We insure that the same will not be said of rabbinic training today.
Beit Midrash Har’el inspires and prepares tomorrow’s communal leaders to serve as agents for change within a context of continuity. Our program brings modern sensibilities into the halakhic discourse.
We straddle the divide between the cognitive experience of study and spiritual nature of the quest.
Our innovative curriculum combines the in-depth study of halakha and public policy alongside comparative religion and creative writing.
The equability between men and women in our Beit Midrash is a value that we hold deeply. We model this by taking it for granted as an issue we no longer need to revisit.
Beit Midrash Har’el is the only Orthodox framework whose students include seasoned pedagogues as well as promising educators and leaders of the future, men and women, engaged in rabbinic studies in an open and supportive learning environment.
