Pesach’s Haggadah (Rabbi Dovid Gottleib) (Jewish Philosophy) (Series Part 5)

page 18 and the other ones I don't know how they title it but it says where and he went down to Egypt you know how to find it then he descended to Egypt or yeah well and he descended to Egypt and then it has verse and explanation verse explanation short paragraphs compelled by divine decree. Yes, that's it. Okay. So, tell tell the people what page that's on in that version. Uh 33. This is my own. I don't know if anyone else. Okay. Does everybody have it? Yeah, I'll find it. Okay. You have it. you know. So here we have a very interesting long passage where we actually describe the Exodus from Egypt. And the way the passage is structured is this. You probably would imagine that if you want to tell the story of the Exodus, you would take some material out of the book of Exodus. Yeah, that's what you would assume. I mean, it' be a natural thing to do, but that's not exactly how it's set up really. It's four verses of the book of Deuteronomy. Four verses that very briefly outline the fact that we left Egypt. And then each phrase in those verses is explained by adding supplementary material. Most of it from the book of Exodus. Now, it isn't just that Jews like things to be complicated. That's probably part of it. But actually if you those verses are are said by a farmer in Israel who's coming to the temple to present his first fruits. Um and then when he comes with his basket of first fruits and he gives it to the cohane and there's a waving ceremony he makes a declaration declaration of praise of thanksgiving for the fact that he lives in the land of Israel and he's a successful farmer. And in that declaration, he gives a um an overview of the history that that that uh that the the people went through from the exodus of Egypt and and coming into the land. So why not just read for the book of Exodus? Because this way of doing it expresses the position of the vast majority of people who in later generations are going to perform the seder. They aren't they weren't in Egypt. They w didn't go through the Exodus. They didn't wander 40 years in the desert. Their ancestors did. Who are they? Well, for hundreds and hundreds of years they were people who owned land in Israel and some were farmers and some were craftsmen and some were trappers and some were weavers and so forth and so on. This idea of bringing first fruits and then giving a a a background of the of the ancient history fits their reality more than just telling the story uh of the of the Exodus. And it also puts the reader into the picture. In other words, I'm dealing with this history. It's not just history that's there and I'm reading it, but I my present reality am dealing with that history. That's part of what I said when we said we relive it and it's going to come up over and over again. and the additions and clarifications from the extra material in the book of Exodus and other places needs analysis. I'm going to offer you the pieces that I understand and I'll point out some of them that I'm aware of I don't understand and but as I said at the very beginning there's enormous enormous amount of material on this. What I'm saying is by no means certainly not comprehensive. It's not even representative. It's the particular angle that that that appeals that appears to me. Now the very first words of those four verses are he went down to Egypt and the comment of the haga is compelled by the speech. That's not a quote from a verse. That's a comment by the author of the have to understand he didn't just go down. He was compelled. You read those words and you'd be forgiven if you thought, "Oh, must mean that God commanded him to go down and he's he was then compelled by God's command." But that's not true. That's not how it happened. What happened was Joseph was sold to Egypt and he became the viceroy in Egypt and then there was a plague and people were coming from all over the lands and and the adjacent lands to buy food in Egypt and the brothers came down and there was went back and forth and finally Joseph ident identified himself to his brothers and he said listen there are five more years of the famine which is what he correctly knew to be the fact on the on the on the on the table at the time when when Jacob came down and the famine ended, but he couldn't know that. Tell my father to bring the whole family down to Egypt to be with me and I will provide for you. They come back with this message from Joseph and Jacob agrees. So there's no command there. There's no command there. Now on the way down the following happens. He starts going down and he has lots of wagons with Pharaoh sent him and plenty of food for the way and the whole trek. Pharaoh said, "Abandon all your goods in the land of Kanan. I'll take care of you here." And they don't do that. They take everything with them and all the livestock with them. And they're on their way down. They come to Beva and Jacob prays to God. He offers a sacrifice to God. Sorry. He offers a sacrifice to God. And the verse says he offered a sacrifice to the God of his father Isaac. H you could ask why is God described that way? Other places in Jacob's life he refers to God as the God of my of Abraham and the God of Isaac. Here it's only Isaac. And in a dream that night, God comes to him and says, "Don't be afraid to go down to Egypt. I will go down with you and I will take you back up." That sound like a command. So, what's what's motivating him? Well, a little history is motivating him. Abraham, when he came to the land of Israel, soon after his arrival, there was a famine and he went down to Egypt. Maybe that's what you do when there are famines in the land of Israel. Go down to Egypt. And then in the time of Isaac, there was another famine. And Isaac was ready to go. And God said to him, "Don't go. Stay here." Okay. So if Jacob looks at his history, he thinks I have a grandfather and a father. My grandfather went to Egypt when there was a famine. My father wanted to go. So it means it's a reasonable idea. God told him not to go. What should I do? I'm faithful to my tradition. I'm faithful to my ancestors, but I have contradictory information. So, he stopped and what what does he want to do? He wants to go. He wants to be with Joseph. But maybe it's not right. So, he stops at Beva and he offers the sacrifice to the God of his father Isaac because he says, "What I'm worried about is what you told Isaac, my father. You told him not to go. So, I want to know from you whether it's appropriate to go or not. And God says to him, "Yes, you should go down. And I'll be with you when you go down. I'll take you out." Whatever that means. I'll take your descendants out. Yes, you should go. So now, does Anus Alpadu refer to that? He's already on the way. Isn't as if God said to him, you know, go, which God does say to people, say to Abraham when he left his place, he said it to Jacob when he to leave, get up and go. Here's how it was. It was wasn't like that at all. Unless the word deeper here is being used in a more general sense. You know that God created the world with speech. Each thing was brought into existence by speech. Not that it's really speech because there was nobody listening. Not because it's really speech because God doesn't speak into into atmosphere and create air waves. But it's described as speech. So I think there's a deeper idea here that God runs the world through something called speech and the deeper the speech that's running the world forced him to go down because after all Jake Joseph was kidnapped and was sold into slavery and became a servant of Pharaoh and now there's a famine and this is the only practical way to to uh preserve the family. So the deeper that's running the world created conditions under which he had to go down. I I think that's right. Truth is I thought of it 10 minutes ago when I was sitting here thinking of the first words. I realized I never I never thought this through. What does it mean compelled by the speech when there's no speech in the history which which commanded him to go down. So that's a suggestion. You can ask other people and see what you get. You get something good you can you can send it to me. Then it says heam um I don't know if it's called sojouring but the trouble with that word is nobody knows what it means. When's the last time you said I was sojouring in Jericho? Um it's the idea of coming for a practical purpose with no commitment to stay. It's not moving residents. You're not going to set up a new postal address and you know pay taxes to local government and so forth and so on. They came because there was a famine and they have flocks who are going to starve and so so they came for a practical reason. That's what it means. So it says this to teach you that Abraham went down just didn't go down there to take up residence. Just lagur. Lagur means and the word g lagur is the same as the word g which means like a convert or someone from a different origin who takes up temporary residence, you know, gets a green card. And here proves it from a verse from from the book of Exodus. They said the the brothers said to Pharaoh, "We have come lur" which means to take up temporary residence because there's no pasture for the flocks that belong to your servants because the p the famine is very severe in the land in the land of Cananan. And now let us take up residence in the land of Gan. But and that's because Joseph told them to ask for that. But this is only according to what they're describing temporary residence, not permanent residence. So here you have a proof of what the Hag is saying about this phrase. Now this is all a description of the first two words in the in those verses. Now it says with few of number as it says explicitly in the verse both in the end of of um precious um first book of the English the English time and and and also again it says in the beginning of the book of Exodus was 70 people, 70 souls, our ancestors went down to Egypt. And now the verse goes on, the verse in Deuteronomy. And now Hashem, your God has put you in a position like the stars of the heavens for multitude. So we know that the number of the Exodus was approximately 600,000 men from the over the age of 20. Some say between 20 and 16, some say just over the age of 20. Which would mean that if you have an equal number of women, it's a million200,000 over 20. And they have children. So who knows how many children there were in an expanding population. The vast majority of the people are youngsters because it's an expanding population. So it's two and a half million or three million something something like that. Now very often people say rabbi in 210 years how you going to go from 70 to 2 and a half million. I mean how you going to do that? Well I once made a calculation with this. It's not a realistic calculation but it's it's sort of very approximate but I think it will give you an answer that you probably won't don't anticipate. Let's say that a generation is 30 years. So in terms of of reproduction a the average now there some people the reproductive span of a woman's from 20 to 40. So the average size length of a generation would be 30 years. In 210 years you have seven generations. How many children must each person have in each generation to go from 70 to two and a half million? So if you take it that way I uh I did a calculation it's something like 4.7 that means like nine children per couple which isn't extravagantly impossible. We have families today much larger families than nine children per family. Okay we have modern medicine and we have better nutrition. Yeah that's true. That's true. But it's like extra. It's not like each woman gave birth to children. Ah, you'll tell me. But don't we have a midrash that says that each that people gave birth to six children at a time? Yes, we do have such a midash. But the midrash was not there to overcome the numerical obstacle of getting from 70 to 2 and a half million because there isn't a significant numerical obstacle. Now, someone will say, "Oh, but rabbi, how do you do this? You do you you you take um seven times itself raised to a power and the powers you know then you figure out what the power has to be to get you get that that that time 70 and that's how you get uh you get the and it's this is underestimated because not only were there 70 but they were wives so really more than 70 and that's only calculating the size of the seventh generation but when they left many people from the sixth generation were also alive. So that if anything there's been there's there's a minimizing in the estimate. Now some people say but rabbi you told us that there's a midrash that only 20% went out of Egypt. And that means that the figure of of Jews in Egypt wasn't 2 and a half million but 12 a.5 million. Right? Okay rabbi. How you going to get from 70 to 12 and a half million? The answer is that if you raise the exponent to 5.7, you get that. So that'll be 11 and a half children per per couple. Okay. Again, not extravagantly impossible. They're just uh now again populations don't work out exactly and and who knows what the generation time was at that time, but this is a rough estimate and we're not talking about hundreds of children per family. We're not talking about something which just is extravagantly miraculous. Um and then it says they they there became a Now I should just mention this to those who are not very familiar with with Jewish slang. The word doesn't mean non-Jew. I mean it may be the intention of people when they use the word from time to time but the word means nation and we are called a many many times. So it means a distinct social group. Uh a related word refers to the body of a human being. A single human being's body is distinct from everything around it. The skin is the border between it and everything else. It's a distinct entity. We became a distinct entity in social terms in the land of Egypt. And it brings a proof from a verse in in Exodus it to teach us that they were distinguished there. Then it says batsum. Now, gadole really means big. And um in Hebrew, the word gadole is ambiguous. I don't know if they still use the same terminology as I did when when I was in grade school about 160 years ago. Um they divided nouns into two types. There were count nouns and mass nouns. Right? Shoes is a countdown. You can ask how many shoes. Snow is not a count. How many snow? Can't say that. milk. Can't say that. And sometimes when we want to use a number, we create units. You can ask how many glasses of milk, but you can't ask how many milk. So that's the difference in count. Now, gadole can refer to both types of nouns. It can mean very many of those that you can count or very big of those that you can't count. Shoes is a count noun. Footwear isn't a countdown. How many footwear? You can't answer. It refers to the same items in a different way. So here it means numerous because they were they were very the people there are account and atu means powerful. So they were big in number and very powerful as it says the verse there says three words for uh plentiful re reproduction. That's the same word asum. They became very powerful very very much and the land was filled with them. And this is what I told you maybe yesterday or day before in the name of the that instead of living in Gan their own ghetto in their own isolated geography they spread out and came to live intermingled with the Egyptians which was a terrible thing to do because they lost their isolatedness which was the methodology for surviving and flourishing in exile. That's what it says. Um and then it says vav that um means also another type of great and it goes another verse. Um, now you were large, developed, plentiful, like the grasses of the of the field. I placed you, positioned you, and you grew, and you matured, and you reached a certain level of maturity. Who's the you? You'll see. and your breasts were formed and your hair was grown and you were completely naked. This is the prophet talking about the Jewish people in its infancy. We started to multiply in Egypt. We got a bigger population, a bigger and bigger population. But during that time, nothing new happened. There were no new revelations. There were no new mitzvah that that came into existence. We just kept living the way we've been living up until that time. We got to the point where we were very large, large enough to support an exodus to go to the to Mount Si to receive the Torah. But in the meantime, none of that has happened. So you developed and reached the stage of maturity, but because you didn't have the Torah, you were like a young woman unclothed, which means, you know, normal people when they look at that think something's wrong. and something was wrong because she's prepared for certain functions and the functions aren't available to her. So here too she we were prepared for a certain function receiving the Torah and it wasn't yet presented to us. And then it says I passed by you and I saw you wallowing in your blood and I said through your blood you shall live through and I said you through your blood you shall live. Now given that the back that's the background of this vision, what does this mean? I saw you wallowing in your blood. So the commentaries say very directly if we're talking about the development of the Jewish people into nationhood in the land of Egypt, what happened just before they left. Well, what happened just before they left, the day before they left, is that the men all did circumcision which spills blood and they started the pascal sacrifice so that they would be able to uh eat the pascal sacrifice at night which spills blood. You had blood in which which was surrounding you. And I said through that blood you'll live. Through that blood you will live. I said twice because there were two causes of blood and those were gigantic gigantic gestures on the part of the Jewish people to inscribe in themselves a mark a physical mark which is going to make them differentiated distinguish from other peoples. And also the pascal sacrifice which you may know the animal that we slaughtered was an animal that was holy to them. And that means in their very presence we're going to slaughter the animal that's holy to them. When one of the plagues and Moses says to Pharaoh, we have to go to the desert to worship God with our with our animals. And God and and and Pharaoh says, do it here in Egypt. You want a day off? You want offer sacrifices? I'll give you a day off. Do it here. And Moses says to to Pharaoh, if we take the animal that your people hold as a holy animal and slaughter it in their faces, what will be the result? Now, the literal verse says, "Won't they stone us?" One of the commentaries that I saw recently says, "Really? Are you worried they're going to stone you? You're already beating them. Plague after plague after plague. They haven't been able to stop the plagues. They can only turn them off by pleading with Moses to pray for them. Are you really afraid that the Egyptians are going to succeed in stoning you? Why are you afraid of that? And this says this as well. She says, "No, no, listen how subtle this is." He says, "No, what I mean is that they'll want to st to to stone us because they see their holy animals being slaughtered and they won't be able to and they'll be frustrated." How terrible that is. The Egyptians will be frustrated and they shouldn't be frustrated. That's what he's saying to you see how careful we are. See how considerate we are? We don't want to cause that frustration. Therefore, we'll go out into the wilderness. Okay? At any rate, that's what what it says here. That's that's the blood we're talking about. Now, my rebat was here in the year, maybe this was 20 years ago when in the night of the seder, there was a bomb in a hotel in Natana and I don't know 20 or 30 people were killed. It was a horrible, horrible tragedy. And he spoke during to to his I was there. I said the following. Pay better attention to the words here. It says means what? Anybody know Hebrew? Almost. That's that one letter. Your bloods. Because your blood would be dam. The possessive of dam is d your blood. is shal and damim is plural and if you say it twice it means there are four bloods four dams so something else has to be said he said the following the first one which is already your bloods has two that's the standard explanation of the blood of doing circumcision and the blood of the capascal sacrifice The second one refers to the verb uh do which in Hebrew means silence. And when Aaron's two children, his two oldest sons died on the day of the inauguration of the tabernacle, it says vidom aaro. He was silent in the face of that gigantic tragedy. He was silent and he gained a great deal of of praise for that. So do can mean to be silent and said there are two here because there's a tragedy of our own and the tragedies of the Jewish people throughout the generations and we have to learn to be silent to learn to be silent. And then he quoted who said that coming towards the end there will be a lot of troubles and there's our sources which say the troubles will be with Muslims rather than Christians and then two the troubles will be so difficult the only thing we'll be able to do is be silent we won't be able to say anything okay that's just how a great sad and a great applied these words to contemporary situations. Okay. Now look up to the next verse in the book of Deuteronomy. I'm going to translate this in a very ambiguous and strange way because I think there are two meanings here that both have to be taken into into account. I know it from the commentaries. The Egyptians evild us and they oppressed us and they put on us difficult labor. So let's go through what the what the says and then I'll I'll explain a little. They eved us the Egyptians as it says. These are Pharaoh's words. Let's now take counsel and be wise lest um be wise concerning the Jewish people lest they multiply and it will happen that there will be a war and the Egyp Jewish people will be added to our enemies. There'll be like a fifth column and they will join our enemies in making war against us and the Jewish people will leave the land. So now this has to be taken with great care. These are the words that Pharaoh used to invite his his advisors to make a plan of enslaving the Jews. So they aren't yet slaves when these words are spoken. Okay. Now let's read the words again. Let's be wise concerning the Jewish people lest they multiply. Of course, they have already multiplied, but less they multiply more. And it will be when there'll be a war and they'll be added to our enemies and they'll make war against us and they will leave the land. Is that the natural outcome? You're you have Egypt. The Jews are there. Assyria is attacking. The Jews think here's our chance. We'll join Assyria in attacking Egypt. Yes. So now you got the Jews and Assyria on one side, Jewish and they go and the Jews in Assyria win the war. What would the Jews do? What could Pharaoh anticipate that the Jews would do? They win the war. Leave. Take over. Take over. Sure. Egypt, the bread basket of the whole near east. Why should they leave? Just take over. But why would he say that? So there is a principle of interpretation several times in the Tanakh where someone says something and he doesn't say what he really means because what he really means is something which is so bad for him he won't say it and he'll say it about somebody else but if you read the circumstances correctly he means it about himself. What he means is they'll take over and they'll kick us out. But he doesn't say that because that's as if he's speaking out bad things happening to himself and that was something that they and we also have a have a sensitivity to doing that. Okay. But now you see that the purpose of the of the of the exercise of making them slaves was not to get free labor. It was to prevent them from multiplying further so they won't become so powerful a military force they will have to worry about them. That's the that's the the motivation and you'll see that's carried out consistently in the verses. um they oppressed us as it says this. Watch this. Watch this carefully. They the Egyptians put on them the Jews um officers of taxes. So the Jews will have to work to pay off these taxes in order to oppress them with their burdens. In order to oppress them with their burdens. Not in order to get free labor to build the treasure cities. That wasn't the purpose. The purpose that they should be oppressed. And the purpose of oppression was they shouldn't multiply. Lose faith. Lose faith in the future. Be too exhausted. No inspiration. And they shouldn't multiply. And they built storage houses for Pharaoh, storage cities for Pharaoh, Pes and Rames. Maybe none of you has ever come across this, but I have had people over the years who say, "You say that the Jews built the pyramids, but that's not true." No, historical source says that. Yeah, but we don't say that. Says were not pyramids. They were storage cities. They were different. They put upon us difficult work. As it says, but the Egyptians caused the Jews to work the far means exhausting, backbreaking work. And here I can't resist telling you an explanation of this word, which uh if you remember it and you say it at the at the at the table where you're at the seder, I think you'll get, you know, two points. Um the word for encodes an idea. There's a coding with a coded idea. And to decode it, you have to take two steps. The first step is there's an atbash coding which the gum actually mentions where you associate the first letter and the last letter of the alphabet alphant. The second letter with the next to last b and shin. That's why it's called the at bash coding. And then you keep going the gibbles with the r and the dollars with the kof. You keep associating them going in towards the middle. So if you do the undo the atbash coding it comes out like this. Pay is six letters from the end. So the coded letter is love which is six from the beginning. Re is three from the end which is then parallel to gimmel which is three from the beginning. and is 12 from the end which is over the middle because it's 22 letters so it's 11 and therefore it's paired with the one that's on the other side which is lammed. So perhap is is paired with lammed vav gimmel. That's the first step. And now take the kamachi, the numerical value of those three letters. Well, let's see. The lam is 30 and above is six and the gibble is three. So you got a grand total of 39. And the comment now says those are the 39 forbidden activities on Chabas, which are the 39 activities of which the tabernacle was built and the temple was built. and the Egyptians caused us to work in all 39 of those categories. The idea is that physical labor, constructive physical labor can be divided up in a certain certain number of ways and it sort of covers the scope of physical physical labor and it can be used for the holiest and most uh uh exquisite physical constructions like the tabernacle. It can be the backbone of Shabas to escape the physical world by not doing any of them. And the very same structure can be used to oppress the Jewish people in slavery that they should have to do that for another human master. That's the basic idea behind the comment. And now if you remember that and you say it at the at the the seder, you can then challenge your audience. Who said that? What dimension of Jewish scholarship does that come from? What sector of Jewish practice and belief and piety does that come from? Who's likely to make a comment like that? You want to guess? Yeah, remember. Okay. So, uh it's not a cabalist or not an open capitalist. It's not aidic source. No, not even a sparty source where are much open about doing cabalistic ideas than Ashkanazm it's right you wouldn't expect something like that inus but in the last chapter says all of this so that that remark is just meant to to liberalize people's attitudes towards this kind of learning is only for those kinds of people because they're substandard and they don't know how to learn. Uhhuh. Right. Right. Right. Right. We've heard that sort of thing before. Okay. But this shows you how deep this is. There are connections between historical events as you see in the tradition which you would never you would never dream. The Torah states several times Shabas and the tabernacle are related. And T is pointing out goes further back than that. Goes back to to Egypt as well. Okay. Now, the next verse, uh, the Jewish people, that's why it's singular, cried out to Hashem, the God of their fathers. And Hashem heard their voice and he saw their oppression and their strain and their pressure. These are three descriptions of the kind of circumstances that they were living under. And now it gives proof verses for each one. We cried out to Hashem of the God of our fathers. As it says in Deuteron in in Exodus, it was in those many days that the king of Egypt died and the Jewish people uh sighed because of their work and they cried out and their cry rose to God. from from the from the from the work. Now, first of all, I have to understand the circumstances here. I suppose you've heard of North Korea. Could a North Korean citizen cry over what he's suffering? Oh, no. He has to be happy. He has to be joyful. He has to be reounce rejoice to the great leader, you know, and praise him for the wonderful things he does for his people. When could a North Korean cry? When the leader dies, then he could cry. Okay, he died. The North Korean is crying because he's in a terrible situation and the successor, be it his sister or some other lunatic. Yeah, I said it. I said it into the into the into the recordings. Do something. He's going to take over. So, but at least he can cry. He's allowed to cry. So, the Jewish people side from from their work. It says twice in the verse from their work. and their cry went up to Hashem from the terrible work that they were suffering. Now, Zaka here says something which I think is is really very remarkable how you see something and you see a connection but you have no clue what's really going on. We said yesterday that when Moses asked God, why are you taking the Jews out of the out of Egypt? What did they do to earn it? The answer he got was nothing. They didn't do anything to earn it. There are two reasons. One was the the the covenant with the patriarchs and the other was to receive the Torah at Sinai. H let's think about the covenant with the patriarchs. God made a promise to the patriarchs. Um what about the 80% of the population that died in Egypt? What about the covenant for them? somehow even with the covenant didn't save them. And what about the fact that after the golden calf, God says to Moses, I've had it with these people. They're incourageable. There's no hope for them. I'll wipe them all out and make a nation out of you. And if you'll ask me, says the oral tradition, what about the covenant with the patriarchs? I'll make it come true with your descendants. Wow. So the covenant could just fulfill itself through Moses and nobody else. So it means that the mere fact of the covenant doesn't guarantee that there'll be a successful exodus from the land of Egypt and that they'll go to Sinai and receive the Torah doesn't guarantee that. There's an extra ingredient. So now I'm expressing the idea of the government in my own in my own terms. says the present population has to show that it is connected to that covenant that doesn't reject that covenant. It hasn't lost sight of that covenant. And we've mentioned a couple of times that the cultural assimilation of the Jewish people was very extreme to the extent that when the sea parted the the angels could complain, why are you saving these and and and destroying those? Suppose they both worship idols. Why do you see any benefit of one over the other? So how is it going to be established that these people represent that covenant? So says the throne of Hashem arranged that the the oppression should be increased and become more severe. So they can't stand it anymore. And then when the pharaoh dies, they can cry out to Hashem to Hashem. Which Hashem is that? That's the God of the ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And thereby demonstrate that they are connected to the covenant. And then the covenant can be the reason for for taking them out. So when we look at it at getting worse, it's really getting better. That's the secret. Just like say about Purim when took off his ring and gave it to Haban that was the beginning of the salvation say greater was the passing of the ring than the prophecies of all the prophets and prophet says who told the Jewish people that you're failing and you have to reform and you have to do better and you're suffer and you're cording disaster taking off the ring that was what did it then that's a salvation not something So here where where it increased it and they cried out to Hashem the increase of the of the oppression is what saved them. Then the verse says that Hashem heard their voice as it says uh Elohim God heard their these are different words is again like a a moaning and Hashem remembered his covenant with Abraham with Isaac and Jacob which is what I just told you he heard their co their groaning and he remembered his covenant now for those of you who were here before Purum you remember what what I said about remember doesn't mean that he forgot in the interim and oh look at that they're crying. What about the covenant? No, no, no, no. That's not that's not our our our religion. This in biblical Hebrew can mean to make a present decision on the basis of a past fact. A fact which you knew the whole time but now it's become practically relevant. And the proof of that is that in chapter two of the book of Esther, the scroll of Esther, it says thatro remembered Vashi, remembered what happened to her and then asked his advisers about getting a new queen and they advised a a scenario for getting a new queen. It doesn't mean he forgot him in the intro that months ago he deposed the queen and got rid of her because she was a political uh nemesis for him. No, but now it became relevant. So here too, God heard the cry and hearing the cry and knowing that that meant they were connected to the covenant, then it became practical for him to do something about it. And then it says, "Hashem saw our oppression." So now, yeah, along with everything else, including the weather and including the reproduction of mosquitoes and and the the stars in their pants and everything else. So you what what news are you giving me that he saw this? I mean, of course, he saw this. He know he knows everything. And the the implication that's taken in the Hagada is he saw something about them that no one else could see. This is now back to where we started with Pharaoh's intention. He saw the fact that they men and women separated which no one else could know which is exactly what Pharaoh wanted. He wanted them to separate. As it says, hash God saw the Jew the children of Israel and God knew. Again, that indicates something that only he would know. Now, there's a great deal of agotic literature about this idea of separating and then and then going back together. I just tell you two stories from the from the Gomorrah which um make visible a certain feature that should be kept in mind. It applied then and it applies to us as well today. Um when it says that a man from Ley took a daughter of Ley and got married and Moses was conceived. That has to be understood in in context of the fact that Moses is the third of the three children has an older brother and sister. So what does it mean that a man woman, a lady got married and and conceived Moses. So the oral tradition tells us yes, they were married and yes, Aaron and Miriam and Aaron were both born already, but then because of the depth of the of the depression and the decree to kill all the firstborn, everything else, Amram, Moses' father said, "That's it. It's over. We can't do this anymore." He told his wife, "We're separating. We're not having any more children. When Miriam found out about it, she came to her father and she said, "Phara, your decree is worse than that of Pharaoh. Pharaoh decreed that the newborn males will be killed." That's half the population. Your decree is that there won't be any more Jews at all. And then she gave her father arguments that what he's doing is wrong. and Amra listened to her and was convinced by her and took Yab back. And that's what the verse is describing when it says that a man from Lady took a daughter of Levy and married her. He remarried her remarried her. So um this means that one of the greatest if not the greatest uh sage of the of the time fell into despair over the future and his daughter a child a female child told him what to do and he listened and he changed his action on the basis of what she said. There's a double message here. she knew and had the courage that he didn't and he was willing to change his position because of her which means ultimately that she's responsible for Moses' birth in addition to saving him and so so and so on she's responsible for for Moses birth now the tradition says the same thing true was true about the men generally the period of time which they lost their ability to face the future and separated from their wives and theor says that after a full day's work and the women were enslaved also. The women would go out to their husbands in the fields and they would bring with them two small pots of water and some fish and they would take some wood and make a fire and they would wash their husband's bodies with the one pot of water, cook the fish on the other. And after they gave them something to eat, they would sit next to their husbands and take a mirror and hold it up and see the two of them in the in the in the reflection of the mirror and she would say to him, "Am I not more beautiful than you are me?" And with those words, encourage them to father the next generation. What a dramatic story. Where did they get copper muras from? Remember they were the nobility of the country for 100 years. They were there for 210 years. They were enslaved for only 90 so years. They had a lot. That's how the women were the ones who preserved the population and with their their faith and trust in that's going it's going to be is going to be saved. And that's why says because of the merit of the righteous women our ancestors were saved from Egypt and it says why someone said this and he said about the future I said I can't find it so he found it and showed it to me there's one which says and in the future it'll happen again that it'll be the the fate of the women that will present will preserve us and enable us to stand before the before the Msiach and you have it again when they left Egypt and they saw and and the sea split and the Egyptians were drowned and there was that great poem called a song really it's a poem um which the people pronounced in praise and it says the men pronounced and it says the women separately were led by Miriam and they pronounced how much of it is they pronounced also and They took um they had drums and they used drums to dance with. And the oral tradition points out, gee, it doesn't say that the men had drums, only the women. And that's because the women knew there was going to be a cause for celebration. So they brought the drums and they celebrated. And the Rashmish says they danced in circles because the oral tradition tells us that in the future the ultimate future the sadiki will be in a circle around the circle be speaks equality because everyone's equidistant from the center that's an image of the ultimate future and the women there had an ability to express that ultimate future by the dances that they made and the men and the men didn't. So again you see the superiority of the women in this in this whole whole process and and the fact that Amra listened to his daughter people talking about about role of women and the inferiority of women and all the rest these sources you know are at least worth thinking about. Yeah. Um what was saying about disruption of family like meaning that men and women were separate don't we still separate men and women generally? Well, it depends for what purpose here if if they're actually singing music for sure. Coishia is something that a man is not supposed to listen to. Now there are various dynamics for him and not many one you know recorded and not recorded but the general thing is that it is a se something which we don't listen not the same thing before when it was our affliction when the like well no this means physical separation they're living in the same bedroom I mean so how's anybody going to know about it I'm not I'm not I'm not sure what you're asking I I thought you had said earlier that what that the Egyptians were were splitting the men and the women. No. Again, what what was Pharaoh's original thing? Let's deal wisely with with them lest they multiply. So, we're taking practical measures so they won't multiply. So, let's exhaust them and dispirit them and cause them despair so they won't multiply. As a matter of fact, he was to a great extent successful. Precious means they didn't live together as man and wife. And that's the thing that God knew and nobody else knew. Not that they sent guards in and said, you know, sleepers have bedrooms, but the whole idea was to put pressure on them so that they wouldn't spontaneously be able to to multiply. Okay. Next week, here's Hashem. Sunday and Monday question and answer. Then Wednesday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, we'll have um