You made your bed - And you don’t want to sleep in it

I distinctly remember as a child every year when it came the Pesach Seder and Pesach Knights, when all of us would finish asking the Manistana and the four questions, and it came the time to recite the entire Haggoda, which is recited as an answer to these four questions. My father's Ozan Gizant would give a three-word Yiddish introduction to the entire Haggoda. The Haggoda, of course, begins with the words "Avodim Ayinul Afarib Amitsrime" We would slave the Pharaoh in Egypt, and right before we would say those words in Yiddish, my father would say, "There terets is" "Avodim Ayinul Afarib Amitsrime" "There terets is" means the answer is "We would slave the Pharaoh Amitsrime" and I assume to this day, the wisdom behind this custom or this introduction, if you will, is to explain to the children and all those sitting around the table, you should understand that the Haggoda we're about to say is here to answer those questions. You've asked four wise questions. Here is the answer to the question. The answer is, "We were slaves to Pharaoh Amitsrime" and Hashem then took us out Biyod Khazaka with a mighty arm, with a mighty hand, Bizaroyanotuya with an outstretched arm, and we experienced the miracle of Exodus from its rhyme. And right after that in the Haggoda we say something fantastic. We say, "Ilu loyhoj siyakodashboru khosabu is sayinom imitsrime" Had al-Mariqat not removed our ancestors from Egypt, harayonu we, ubaneno and our children. Ubanay, baneno and our grandchildren would still be slaves to Pharaoh in misrime till this day, although we are three and a half thousand years later. The simple reason why the Haggoda says this is to explain why the story is relevant. Big deal. So our ancestors were slaves to Pharaoh Amitsrime three and a half thousand years ago, and Hashem took them out. How is that relevant to us today? Well the answer is, their territory is, if Hashem hadn't taken them out back then, then we'd still be stuck there till today. This is what's written in the Haggoda. And of course, in this week's Pasha Pasha's Voirah, we begin to study really in depth about the story of the Jewish people actually leaving misrime. The question the commentary is discussed, and actually I should say, really struggle with, is how we can possibly say that if Hashem didn't take us out then, we'd still be stuck in misrime till today, when the entire decree of the Jewish people being in misrime or being for that matter in any golis at all was clearly articulated by al-Mariqat, who Avramovino, at the brispaint up some of the covenant between the pieces, and Hashem made it clear that it was only going to last Arba Meiyos Shona for 400 years. So how can we sit here today in 2024? Still say that if Hashem hadn't taken them out, we'd still be there. We're talking about three and a half thousand years later. Surely the 400-year sentence should have ended by now. Why do we assume we'd still be stuck in misrime? Still be stuck in a golis that Hashem said was going to end after 400 years. And once you ask that question, it begs a deeper and bigger question. Which is, what's this business that we say Almighty God took the Jewish people out of Egypt, be your chazokah with a strong hand, who'd be strolling at you with some outstretched arm, as if we had to accomplish something tremendous and amazing. Imagine I tell you, tomorrow I'm going to give you 400 dollars. Then I come to you the next day with the 400 dollars which I've promised you. And I say to you, "Despite all odds, despite all the great challenges, here's the money." Well, here's the money that you promised you would give me. Imagine if I borrowed 400 dollars from you one day and came back to you the next day and wanted to be thanked for repaying the loan. Imagine if I asked you to thank me for repaying the loan for three and a half thousand years. Almighty God put us into golis. Yes, He promised 400 years later that He would take us out. And He did. It's nice that He fulfilled His word, but it doesn't seem like she should have to be so difficult for Him. The Yodh Chazokah with a great hand to be strolling an outstretched arm with her bonschalant to sweat, so to speak, in order to take us out of its rhyme. Why? Why is it so difficult to free the Jews? When the entire sentence in the first place was only supposed to be 400 years. The Labavitsh Rebbe once worded the question, "This way which gives even a deeper level, a deeper level, a layer to the question." He said, "The Jewish people were free. They were free. They were inherently benaykhairin. They were inherently free people." Before Almighty God sentenced them to 400 years of slavery and exile. If that's the case, said the Rebbe, "Once these 400 years are over, they should automatically revert back to their initial stage, which is to be the fact that they're inherently free people." It shouldn't even require any special type of pool, any special type of activity from Almighty God's behalf. It should just happen by itself. The way I understand this question, it's kind of like, imagine if you take a free person and God forbid you lock them up, but the lock on the door has a timer on it. Once the timer is up, the lock should open by itself and the person should immediately walk out. And yet, not only do we say that, "O Almighty God, I have to take us out." And not only do we say that, "I have to take us out," "But Yad Khazak with a strong hand and an outstretched arm," we say that if he hadn't done that, we'd still be stuck there till today. What does this mean? The commentaries give a gut wrenching, a really, I want to say, a kick in the stomach type of answer for this. They draw a parallel very briefly to a Mitzvah in the Torah that the Torah will articulate later in Pasha's Mishpah Tim called "Evid Ivery." And in short, it has to do with a Jew who, for whatever reason, for whatever circumstance, is sold into slavery for six years. But the Torah says that the maximum a Jew can be sold into slavery to another Jew is Shayshan in six years. Shayshan in Yavad. For six years, he can be subjugated. After that in the seventh year, Yad Sayyid al-Akhafshinah, he goes free. "I love my master. Layate Sayyid al-Akhafshinah, and I refuse to go free." Then the Torah says, "We turn to the slave and say, "Wait a second. Until now you are sold into slavery. Until now we assume there were circumstances to one degree or another beyond your control with a put you in a difficult situation." So yes, you ended up getting slave, but your sentence was only six years. Now it's time for you to go free. Now you're choosing to remain a slave and not just choosing to remain a slave. A half to you're saying, "You love this. You only want more." Now you're subjugating and enslaving yourself. We put this Jew in that case through a process after which the Torah says, "Va va va doi la ilam." He would remain a slave forever. Yes, the Gomorrah explains in that case, "la ilam" means "to the Jubilee year to the year of the ovel." But the word of the Apostlech is "la ilam forever." And the wisdom of this is that there's two types of Midsrayam that as you can find themselves in. One is a Midsrayam that's forced upon us. First upon us by Hashem, forced upon us by circumstances, forced upon us by all sorts of things, the situation, the political situation, the times, the circumstances, whatever the case may be, it's Mibachhuts. That, those that Midsrayam that's placed upon us from the outside, is always temporary. At a certain point, automatically it ceases to exist and the Jew is free to go. But the moment the Jew is given his freedom once again, the Jew becomes vulnerable to a much deeper, much more severe, much more dangerous, and much more long lasting type of Midsrayam. And that's the Midsrayam that we choose to put ourselves in. These are the problems that we create for ourselves. This is the moment we tell the slave you're free to go and the moment the slave says, I don't want to go. I love my master. I love being a slave. In fact, I refuse to go free. I says the Toyota the Jew. Now you're enslaving yourself. Now I'm giving you free choice, says the Rabondashlilm. I'm giving you free choice and you're using it to sabotage yourself. Now you're a slave forever. Not says Hashem because I made you a slave, but because you made yourself into a slave. Now you're truly stuck. You're stuck because you chose to be, not because anybody made you be. And the deep, that's the, that becomes the deeper meaning of what we mean when we say in our God that if Hashem hadn't taken us out of Midsrayam then we'd still be stuck there till today. It's not this Midsrayam that we credit Hashem for saving us from. Which we would have still been stuck until this day is not so to speak in a spiritual sense. The Midsrayam that Hashem put us in, that Midsrayam would have ended after 400 years anyways. Which Midsrayam are we talking about there? That's the Midsrayam that the Jews constantly strive to go back to. This is the Egypt that the Jewish people even after their forced. They are sent into freedom that constantly being nostalgic over all mitzvahiyah must so wonderful. We remember the food that we ate and we remember the conditions that we had etc etc and all they want to do is go back. That's the mitzvahiyah that we say to the burnish oil and save us from if not, we would still be stuck there till this very day. In the end Almighty God has to save us from the problems we seek to create for ourselves. Otherwise they would truly ensnare us and keep us trapped there forever. You'd see us mid-shrim, leaving mid-shrim the part that we read about this week, the plagues and everything involved. In the end wasn't truly, wasn't simply merely just about geographically relocating the Jews. It was a certain psychological and spiritual breakthrough that the Jewish people had to experience that in the end truly they actually struggled with and I dare say we still struggle with till this very day. They had to learn to see themselves differently. They had to free themselves from their slave mentality and this becomes incredibly difficult. One who sees themselves as a slave can easily be enslaved by others. One who makes themselves into a victim sooner or later can be victimized by others. And the Jew who sees themselves as their true place being in mid-shrim. There are no shortages of paroys and homons and Yamaximum anti-Semites who are ready to capitalize on this weakness in the psychology in the mind of a Jew and say okay if you see yourself as a slave then we'll enslave you. The moment Hashem did take us out of its rhyme what really truly happened was that every Jew was equipped with the ability to break out of every type of blockage and blockade that holds us back. And for the Jew to be able to truly stand up and say nothing is in my way for so long as we remember that we are truly and inherently free. Being in the world is more powerful and more capable than a Jew who knows his or her own strength. Have a wonderful Shabbos.