Shalom everyone,
We all know that each religious festival has themes, and that there is a purpose to having those festival themes: that by celebrating these festivals together, God has the opportunity to shape and mould us into the kind of people that God intended us to be, as representatives and ambassadors of Yahveh.
We know that remembering the story of the Exodus raises our collective spirits each year, by recalling the power and the wonders of God; it gives us a common origin story; it recalls the birth of Israel as a nation; it celebrates liberation and freedom. But there’s one thing we tend to forget.
Strengthening our Empathy for Others
Throughout Torah, and the rest of the Hebrew Bible, the Exodus story is given as the underlying rationale for many things – for example, the right to rest on the Sabbath is a remembrance of the Exodus (amongst other things), and the main pilgrim-festivals are connected to the Exodus. The experience and memory of the Exodus is meant to become deeply ingrained in our nature and our very bones. But there’s one aspect of that experience we often don’t remember.
When you have gone through suffering yourself, it can have one of two main effects. It can either make you resentful and bitter with the world, and hate everyone around you; or it can make you empathise with the suffering of others. It is the latter quality that God intended to develop in us.
A proper reading of the Torah overall, gives us a picture of God’s great concern for the poor, the weak and the vulnerable. Ex 23:9 says,
“You shall not oppress a resident foreigner, since you yourselves know how it feels to be a foreigner – for foreigners are what you were in the land of Egypt.”
Lev 19:34 says,
“When a foreigner resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress or ill-treat them. The foreigners who sojourn with you shall instead be treated by you as the native-born among you, and you shall love them as yourself, for you were once foreigners sojourning in the land of Egypt; I am Yahveh your God.
Dt 24:21-22 says,
“When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not pick over the vines again. Whatever remains shall be left for the poor, the resident foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow. You must remember what it was like when you were a slave in the land of Egypt; that is why I command you to do these things.”
Dt 24:17-18 says,
“You must not subvert the rights of the resident foreigner, the poor or the fatherless, nor take a widow’s cloak as a pawned pledge. On the contrary, you must remember what it was like when you were a slave in Egypt, and that Yahveh your God redeemed you from there; that is why I command you to do these things.”
All the above commandments depend on empathy; God reminds us of what we have endured ourselves, so that we do not then inflict the same misery and misfortune on others.
Since we were once slaves, it should then engender a disgust for slavery. Since we were oppressed, we should not then oppress other peoples; since we often went without in the land of Egypt, we should have empathy with the poor and the hungry; since we were denied civil rights and social justice in the land of Egypt, we should then ensure that we do not deny these very things to others.
A religious person who looks down on others – who mistreats others, restricts the rights of others, exploits their workers, and enacts laws in order to disadvantage the poor – such a person is betraying the highest values of Yahveh our God.
We remember the Exodus as if we had experienced it ourselves, so that we have empathy with those who suffer around us – to develop an understanding of the conditions they are living in, and of their needs.
Love isn’t enough – ‘love without actions is dead’
When you see the suffering of others, merely loving people isn’t enough. When you see someone living in abject poverty, shivering in the cold, with little to eat and no opportunities in life, is it enough merely to tell them, ‘I love you’, and then walk away? James told us that ‘faith without actions is dead’. Well, so also I would say, ‘love without actions is dead’.
Our love should cause us to want to protect those we love; if our loved ones are in difficulty, our love moves us to help them; if there is something that is causing our loved ones to suffer, our love moves us to want to stop the cause of that suffering.
Experiencing the Exodus for ourselves should give us the urge to want to do something about what has caused a person to suffer poverty in the first place. In Yeshua’s day, it was often that poor people were taxed so heavily by the powerful and the rich, and consequently fell into such heavy debt, that they had very little left for themselves and their families. That is why it wasn’t enough for Yeshua to tell us to love one another; he also spoke up against injustices, against corruption, and against the greed of the rich.
If you have empathy, and you love your neighbour as yourself, then if you see the injustices that they suffer, wouldn’t those injustices hurt you in your heart as well, because you love them? If you truly loved your neighbour as yourself, wouldn’t you feel pain for what they are suffering? Wouldn’t you be moved by your love to do something about it – even if it’s just speaking up for them?
The forgotten theme of the Exodus is that it should help us feel empathy for what others are going through, enough that we would want to do more than simply love them; what hurts them, hurts us – deeply – inside of us, that we would want to do something about it. That empathy should give us the drive to play our small part in building a just and a fair society.
Yahveh our God gave us laws to live by. Just as a mother and father want to protect their children, so also Yahveh desires, out of love, to protect us. That’s why God desires to mould us into a people who will have a heart for the vulnerability of others. A society of love, is also a society that tries to remove the harm that is hurting the ones we love; those are the fruits of empathy.
Hag sameach! Happy festival of Matzot!
your brother and servant
Shmuliq