It is told that when the Israeli government captured Adolf Eichmann, yemach shmo, they deliberately chose a sephardic officer to be on guard. They feared that if the guard would be an Ashkenazi, he would not be able to control himself and would hurt or kill Eichmann before trial due to the devastation the Holocaust caused Ashkenazi Jewry.
However, after the mission, the Sephardic officer remarked that it took every ounce of self control to not harm Eichmann. Despite his being of Sephardic descent and his family not being directly involved in the Holocaust, he found it almost impossible not to hurt Eichmann. I’m reminded of this episode by a fascinating midrash in this week’s parshah.
We are taught that the tribe of Levi was not enslaved in Egypt. They were allowed to study and were considered clergy and exempt from the hard labor of slavery.
Reb Yonasan Eibshizt asks, Why was it that Paro did not enslave the tribe of Levi? Why would he care about the spiritual welfare of the Jewish people?
He provides a powerful psychological insight. Paro was a shrewd strategist. His astronomers advised him that the Redeemer of the Jewish people would stem from the tribe of Levi. And he therefore understood that for a Redeemer to rise up, they would need to feel the pain of the slavery. So he allowed the tribe of Levi to retain some sense of freedom, thinking that if the future Redeemer would grow up without the terrible suffering that the rest of the Jews were experiencing, he would never feel the pain of his brethren.
In the words of Reb Yonasan Eibshizt, Mi sheayno nichnas bioso betzarah, eino yachol lihoshian. He who is not experiencing the same suffering won’t be able to rise to redeem them. If Moshe would be shielded from the pain, he would lack the identification with his brethren’s plight and wouldn’t muster the courage to rise against Paro.
But Paro was wrong. He thought that it was the shared bondage of slavery that would spurn action. He failed to recognize that the bond of the Jewish nation runs deeper. That if one of us is suffering, all of us are suffering. Much like the Sephardic Jew who felt the indignation of his Ashkenazi brethren, our connection is inextricable.
It’s not our shared experience that connects us. It’s our connection that allows us to feel our experiences as shared. It’s not our pain that unites us. It’s our unity that makes us sensitive to each other’s pain. Paro thought that he could isolate Moshe into becoming complacent and insensitive to his nation’s plight.
But Moshe’s story shows that there is no such thing as an isolated Jew. We are all one and we share one heart. And it was this very unity that was the catalyst for Moshe leading us out of Egypt into freedom and nationhood. Wishing you a wonderful Shabbos.
