If Slavery Was Necessary, Why Didn't Shevet Levi Need It?

Hi, this is David Eliavski with our question and answer series. If we had to go through the shibud Mitzrayim to return to chaim to accept the Torah, why did shevet Levi not have to go through the shibud? Well, this is obviously a complicated question uh to someone who is a neophyte who might be coming in, you know, and uh let's let's break down the question. We went down to Egypt and we became slaves and in that process we lost our identities. Right? We we lost our names. Geulah the safer Geulah is called safer Shmos. We had to get our names back. We had to regain our identities. Slaves have no identity. And so it's compared to a smelting pot where if you want to make something new out of gold, you have to first melt it down into its raw form and then you can give it a new form. So because we had to go to Har Sinai and receive the Torah and give us ourselves a whole new tsurah, a whole new form, we had to boil out all the impurities and be reduced to pure gold to be able to go on and build from there. Right? So if in fact this was essential, then the question they're asking is how come shevet Levi did not have to go through the shibud? I'm so glad you used that word cuz if you would have said how come shevet Levi didn't have to go through the avdus, the slavery, that would be a better question. But we didn't have to have the slavery, we only had to have the shibud. And in fact, if the Jews had followed Yosef's advice and stayed in the land of Goshen and stayed among themselves and did not begin to assimilate into Egyptian society, we never would have become enslaved and we never would have had all that suffering. All of that was simply because we were assimilating and losing our Jewish identity. And unfortunately, as history has taught us, anti-Semitism is very often the most effective cure for assimilation. Unfortunately. But it didn't need it. >> [snorts] >> And that's why Rashi in Vayechi says that the shibud began when Yaakov died. Now, they didn't become slaves until all of the shvatim died, which was years later, but the shibud started. The the fact that they were under the control of the Egyptians. When we are in golus now, it's called shibud malchiyos. The nations of the world have control over us, even though we're not slaves. So, Shevet Levi was definitely affected by that. But because they maintained their Jewish identity stronger, they didn't need the slavery and the suffering to remain Jewish. And if the rest of the Jewish people had followed their example, we never had to become slaves. We would have had a shibud, but it would not have been an avdus. It wouldn't have been slavery. So, a very fine point. The question was phrased well. Baruch Hashem, you can find the answer in the question itself. This is Dov Olensky with our question and answer series.