This Shabbat the Jewish nation are privileged to witness the last three plagues afflicted onto Pharaoh. The Jewish nation sees God’s infinite love for them. Despite the fact that the Jewish nation was on the 49th level of impurity., God passed over the home of every Jewish house and spared them from any calamity that affected the Egyptians for all their horrific treatment of the 210 years of slavery.
This Shabbat not only did our bodies leave Egypt, we also had to leave Egypt in terms of our slave mentality, to stop thinking like a slave, to stop allowing Pharaoh have dominion over us.
Many times in each and every one of our personal life we make mistakes and our yesterdays enslave us and all the mistakes of yesterday don’t allow us to taste true freedom.
Sometimes we get too comfortable in the exile. We thought, “this is our home.”
The first state of getting out is not only getting out in body but getting out mentally.
The Sfarim write that “I’ll take you out from the suffering of Egypt” can also mean “I’ll take you out from being patient in the Galut.”
You’ll stop liking it. You’ll stop feeling comfortable there.
This Shabbat, the Jewish nation during that plague of darkness managed to retrieve all the wealth of Egyptians. And yet not one Jew ratted out another one. Every Jew was loyal to each other. And we were able to come out.
I hope and pray this Shabbat with all the internal strife and all the internal fighting that’s going on here in Eretz Yisrael, we should be able to overcome it all. We should be able to leave our own personal bondages. We should be able to unite together and leave our own little exiles both in body and in soul.
Shabbat Shalom.
