Angel for ShabbatOutgrowing Slavery: Thoughts on Parashat Va-era, January 16, 2010

By Rabbi Marc D. Angel"And the Lord spoke unto Moses and unto Aaron, and gave them a charge unto the children of Israel, and unto Pharaoh king of Egypt, to bring the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt."  

"It is understandable why God commanded Moses and Aaron to order Pharaoh to let the Israelites leave Egypt.  Pharaoh was the ruler who had the power to release the Hebrew slaves. But what did God command them in regard to the Israelites? Some commentators explain that Moses and Aaron were commanded to be kind and patient with the Israelites. 

The verse, however, might be understood as follows: Moses and Aaron were to command Pharaoh to let the Israelite slaves leave Egypt. They were to command the Israelites to get "the land of Egypt" out of themselves. The time had arrived not merely for a physical redemption from slavery, but for an emotional and psychological awareness of freedom. The Hebrew slaves needed to erase the scars of servitude in Egypt, and to become self-respecting, independent people. The experience of having been enslaved in Egypt was to have a profound impact on the future character of the people of Israel.

The Torah reminds us to be compassionate to the stranger--for we were strangers in the land of Egypt. It commands us to treat others with kindness and humanity--because we had been treated with cruelty and inhumanity when we were slaves in Egypt. 

The Talmud defines Jews as being characterized by modesty, compassion, and lovingkindness.  One lacking these qualities is suspected of not really being Jewish! Professor Gershon Galil of the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Haifa recently deciphered an inscription dating from the 10th century BCE--the earliest known fragment of Hebrew writing. How wonderful that this oldest Hebrew inscription captures the essential spirit of the Jewish people going back to antiquity:  

"You shall not do it, but worship the Lord. Judge the slave and the widow; judge the orphan and the stranger. Plead for the infant, plead for the poor and the widow. Rehabilitate the poor at the hands of the king. Protect the poor and the slave, support the stranger." We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, but we have learned from that experience to become ever more sensitive to the rights and feelings of others, ever more vigilant on behalf of the poor and the downtrodden, ever more righteous in our dealings with widows, orphans and strangers--and indeed  with all fellow human beings.  Outgrowing slavery means living as free, responsible and moral people.    

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Rabbis call for revival of traditional schooling

Religious leaders criticize state-religious education for being unable to prevent students from leaving. Rabbi Benny Lau: System created divisive network since it did not accept diversity of strengthening orthodoxy.
Kobi Nahshoni

"Ethnic segregation is a tragedy, a bone of contention; the system isolating itself is an embarrassment," Rabbi Dr. Benny Lau said Wednesday as he addressed growing amount of private religious schools and the weakening of state-religious education. He called upon parents and educators to act responsibly towards weak students and strengthen state-religious education. Rabbi Lau made these comments at a conference on "educational segregation and its price" which took place Wednesday night and was brought to light by the religious Zionist movement Ne'emanei Torah vaAvodah and by Bema'aglei Tzedek, a youth-driven NGO integrating Jewish values and social justice to effect meaningful change in Israeli society. "We need to create a leadership for all of Israel. Can we create this kind of leadership in closed institutions?" The rabbi fervently continued, saying, "We can't give up on any child, and not on those with difficulties either."

'Segregation is an original sin'

However, he actually blamed the situation on the state-religious schools and said, "The state-religious system created this divisive network since it did not accept the diversity of strengthening the orthodoxy and that shattered its growth. "Segregation is an original sin and today we are eating its unripe fruits." Rabbi Lau said that when he arrived with his family in Jerusalem he asked to enroll his children in the state-religious school system and the principal told him, "parents like you don't send (their children) here but rather to orthodox schools." "At that moment I understood that my children will not study under this woman and not for the reason mentioned," said the disgruntled rabbi.

Rabbi Avi Gisser who is the chairman of the state-religious education council and a candidate for the Education Ministry's position of director of Religious Education Administration also spoke at the conference.He asked to calm the parents who fear the exaggerated intervention of the government in the state-religious education system and said, "The solution is the creation of the state-religious education council, which will be the sole authority in hiring teachers.

"This is the best defense in the face of secular coercion," said Rabbi Gisser. He added that "nowadays, school principals determine most things. We are living in a type of privatization and we can't compel the principals to do anything."He called upon the parents to send their children to the state-religious school system and strengthen these institutions. 'Orthodox students not being depraved'

The rabbi explained that "heterogeneity has big advantages. The impulse of discrimination, segregation and isolationism must not increase. We want to pay the price for sitting with the rest of Israel." Former Bnei Akiva Secretary-General Dr. Amnon Shapira who sat in the audience rejected the claims that orthodox students are being, "depraved" in the in the state-religious system.
 

Shapira also said, "There is also a flipside to the coin. The statistics reveal that the percentage of secularization is less than the percentage of traditional students who become religious. "For every child that we "lose" to the (secular) public we gain 1.2 or 1.3 children. So overall, we will only gain from the strengthening of the state-religious school system," he added.  

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