The opening of Sefer Shemot raises one of the most unsettling questions in Jewish history: how did the Jewish people descend from honored guests to oppressed slaves? Chazal describe a slow and calculated beginning. Pharaoh did not start with whips. He began with opportunity. “Whoever produces a brick will receive a shekel.” Fair wages. Public projects. A chance to succeed. The Midrash notes that Jews worked themselves to exhaustion, driven by incentive, ambition and a desire to fit it. Only later, once their strength and spirit were weakened, did slavery fully take hold. But Shemot is not merely a historical telling of our exile. It is Sefer HaGeulah, the Book of Redemption. Sefer Shemot is a guidebook for how to navigate, and ultimately extricate ourselves from, exile.
In describing why something needs to be done with the Jews Pharaoh says, “lest they increase… and leave the land,” Sforno reads this not as a fear but as an objective: let us make them leave the land. Pharaoh wanted the Jews gone; not because they were failing to integrate, but because they were integrating too well. “Va’timaleh ha’aretz otam” “the land was filled with them.” Jews were no longer confined to Goshen. They were becoming prominent in Egyptian society, culture, and commerce. This visibility made the Egyptians uneasy. Paula Fredriksen, the renowned historian of early Christianity, makes an important observation: One of the earliest roots of antisemitism is not Jewish difference alone, but Jewish refusal to fully assimilate. Jews live among the nations, contribute to society, and yet insist on remaining distinct. That combination, participation without full acculturation, has always unsettled host societies.
Pharaoh sensed this tension. The Jews were present everywhere, but they were not Egyptians. When crisis would come, Pharaoh feared they would remain distinct. His solution was not immediate expulsion, but pressure. His plan was to make life difficult enough that the Jews would choose to leave on their own. But they didn’t. Why didn’t Bnei Yisrael simply return to Canaan? In Shemot the Torah describes Jewish growth using several verbs, including “va’yishretzu.” While usually translated as “they swarmed,” Sforno links it to sheratzim, creeping creatures. After Yaakov’s immediate family died, the Jews began to lose their inner dignity. Detached from their roots and their mission, they no longer saw themselves as carriers of a sacred identity. They began to see themselves like creeping insects i.e. small, dependent, and insignificant. Once a people loses self-respect, enemies and opportunists will take advantage. This can explain why Bnei Yisrael didn’t just leave Egypt. They no longer believed they deserved better. It also explains why Moshe struggled to inspire them with his message of redemption. The Torah says they could not hear it due to “shortness of breath and hard labor”. It was not only physical exhaustion, but their inability to hear was due to spiritual constriction and decreased sense of self-worth. Slavery had already taken root within the Jewish People.This tension appears already in the very first verse of Shemot: “Ve’eleh shemot Bnei Yisrael haba’im Mitzrayma” “the children of Israel coming to Egypt. But the Jews had already arrived in Egypt. Why the present tense? Many explain that The Jews in Egypt never fully arrived; they never entirely belonged. Rabbi Nissan Alpert notes that the verse ends with “et Yaakov”; they came with their patriarch. As long as Yaakov’s presence, values, and vision accompanied them, they were protected from the spiritual descent associated with Egypt. The tragedy was not that Jews lived among Egyptians. It was that they began to forget why they were different. While antisemitism often erupts when Jews refuse to assimilate, Jewish survival depends on that refusal. Shemot reminds us of the balance that is essential to Jewish identity: engage the world, contribute to society, be present and also remain distinct and proud of our differences. Exile becomes dangerous not when we highlight what makes us different as Jews, but when we forget why we must remain so.
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