Dvar Torah on Parshat Shemot

This week, we begin a new book of the Bible: Shemot - Exodus. Nachmanides (1194-1270), also known as the Ramban, in his commentary on the Torah, prefaces this book, as he does the other four, with a short, insightful introduction. In it, he tells us that the Book of Exodus focuses on the exile in Egypt - what he calls the 'first exile' - and the redemption from it. He discusses the definition of that redemption; those elements which would end the exile in Egypt and turn the Israelites into a free people. The Ramban seems to be trying to arrive at a precise definition of these two terms - exile and redemption - which figure so prominently in Jewish history and religious and intellectual tradition. What exactly constitutes exile, and when can a nation be said to have been redeemed from it?

This is what Nachmanides says: "The exile did not end until the day that they returned to their place and to the exalted level of their forebears. And when they left Egypt, even though they had left the house of slavery, they were still considered to be in exile, for they were in a land which was not theirs, lost in the wilderness. And when they arrived at Mt. Sinai, and built the Tabernacle, and the Holy One Blessed be He's presence was once again among them, at that point they returned to the exalted level of their forebears...and then they were considered redeemed. And that is why this Book [Exodus] ends with the completion of the Tabernacle and with the presence of God filling it always."

I have placed in bold what seem to be the central elements of exile and redemption. The first is for the Israelites to return to their place. While they are in Egypt, they are strangers, in a foreign and threatening place, one which is not their own. That constitutes an obvious element of exile. Its opposite, being in one's place, one's homeland, is therefore an obvious and necessary aspect of redemption.

The next element is a spiritual one - attaining the "exalted level of their forebears." In Egypt, apparently as a result of being enslaved in a strange land, they were in a diminished spiritual and cultural state, they were not the spiritual giants that the patriarchs and matriarchs were. This, too, this spiritual diminishment, is an element of exile. The third element is that of slavery. The Ramban says that leaving Egypt and "the house of slavery" was insufficient to turn the Jews into a redeemed people, but it clearly was necessary. As he says: "when they left Egypt, even though they left the house of slavery [a necessary element of redemption], they were still considered in exile, for they were in a land which was not theirs, lost in the wilderness." It would seem that being free was a positive step, but being in the desert, rather than having returned to their homeland, meant that they were still in exile.

At this stage, we think we know what the punch-line is going to be, and how this process has to end: When all the elements are there, and the Jews, freed from slavery in Egypt, finally do get through the desert, and arrive back in the Land of Canaan, they will then, as a free people in their homeland, return to the exalted spiritual situation of their forebears, and that will do it; they will be redeemed.

However, this is not what happens in the Book of Exodus. As the Ramban points out in the last line which I quoted above, the Book of Exodus, which is the Book of Exile and Redemption, ends with the Israelites still in the desert, with forty years of wandering ahead of them. And yet, by the end of the book, they are "considered redeemed"! What happened to the all-important element of returning to their place, to their original ancestral homeland, the Land of Israel?

What happened is that the Israelites managed to attain the spiritual level of their forebears while still in the desert, by receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai and building a Tabernacle, which externalizes the fact of their intimate, ongoing relationship with God. Once that has happened, the Ramban, as it were, is in a bind. How can people who are the recipients of God's word and law, and have God dwelling among them, be considered to be in exile, falling short, in some essential way, of their true and ultimate identity and destiny? Once this level of intimacy with God has been achieved, the Israelites must be "considered" to be redeemed, even though they have not achieved the element of returning to their place, which the Ramban seemed at first to indicate was necessary for their redemption.

I think that the word "considered" is crucial here. The Ramban is struggling with two visions of Jewish redemption, two visions of what ideally constitutes Jewish destiny and identity. He posits, right at the beginning, that "place" is important, and that returning to their place is a central element of redemption. This is also classic Zionist thinking. The importance of having and being in their own land, as a sine qua non for any attempt to redeem the Jewish people, enabling them to be who they can and should be, is central to the Zionist endeavor, and the Ramban, in his first statements, seems to agree. On the other hand, the Ramban believes that the Jewish people's destiny is, ultimately, a spiritual one, one which is about the Torah, and our relationship to the Divine and the Divine will. That, apparently, can happen almost anywhere. Perhaps it can not happen in a house of slavery, but, once freed and in the desert - a neutral not-their-own-land but also not an oppressive Egypt - they can receive the Torah and live with God among them, as indicated by the Tabernacle, and that must be considered a redemption, which is why the Book of Exodus can end there.

This non-Zionist position - to be fully Jews we do require a measure of freedom and autonomy, which the desert provided, but we do not necessarily need a full-blown independent country and political entity of our own - also seems to be acceptable to Nachmanides. In the desert, we could and did fulfill our Jewish potential, we were able to become God's people. At this stage, I think the Ramban uses the word "considered" when he says that the Israelites were "considered redeemed" to signal his ambivalence on this question: Is full political freedom and autonomy, in a physical Jewish homeland, a necessary condition in order for us to be redeemed, and be fully realized Jews, or can we accomplish that as long as we have the degree of freedom necessary to live a culturally and spiritually full Jewish life, even when we are outside of the Land of Israel, outside of a land which is our own? The fact that today just about half of the Jews in the world live in Israel, while most of the other half lives in freedom but in lands which are not "ours" would seem to indicate that, as the Ramban did in the 13th century, we are still struggling with this question.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Shimon Felix