The Exodus is a success story with a dramatic plot – a weakling slave nation that goes up against the most powerful nation of that ancient age and wins its freedom. Some might claim that the theme of the underdog overcoming a cruel, powerful master is a stale cliché, but that would be like complaining that Shakespeare is trite. The point is that the Bible, like Shakespeare, is the source and not the imitation. The Exodus story is very vividly drawn and sparkling with special effects. It features seemingly humorous elements, like the plague of frogs, alongside ones that inspire terror – the Nile waters turning into blood, the pitch dark, etc. And then, when it seems as though all the special effects have been exhausted, we have the ultimate set piece – the Splitting of the Sea.

The setting also informs the sense of enchantment – not some backwater, but a land of magic and mystery, the Egypt of pharaohs and mummies, wizards and pyramids. The combination of setting, plot, and special effects fires the imagination. It is no wonder, then, that the movies made about the Exodus – from Cecil B. Demille’s Ten Commandments to Dreamworks’ Prince of Egypt – have been blockbusters.

That would seem to be a happy chance, considering that the Exodus was a foundational event in the history of the Jewish people, imparted and studied for more than three thousand years. We are enjoined to remember it daily, and to retell it as a story at the Passover Seder, so it is a good thing that we find it so agreeable to the imagination. Yet, it turns out that it is deliberate: when God tells Moses, in the beginning of our parasha, how the Jewish people’s most formative experience – an event of patent historical significance – will play out, we learn that He will harden the heart of Pharaoh, who will refuse to free the Israelites despite the plagues that will afflict his people. Why does God harden Pharaoh’s heart?

When I was a child, I thought the purpose is to punish Egypt, but the biblical text offers an entirely different reason: “And that thou mayest tell in the ears of thy son, and of thy son’s son, what I have wrought upon Egypt” (Ex. 10:2). It is not enough for God to bring the Israelites out of Egypt; He wants a monumental story that will be told for posterity, and thus has to quell Pharaoh’s freedom of choice so that he will not free the Israelites too soon.

A Story About a Story

The novelist Paul Auster once wrote that “stories happen only to those who are able to tell them.” It is an insight that can be extended to storytelling nations as well. The events of the Exodus take place so that there will be a story to tell, and the Jewish people’s retelling of the story throughout the generations – each formulating its identity by reading its own experiences in light of the foundational narrative – spins ever more secondary tales. “In every generation a person must regard himself as though he personally had gone out of Egypt,” the Mishna (Pesaĥim 10:5) says. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of Britain, once said that the relation between the Jewish people and the Exodus was not a nation that has a story but a story that has a nation.

One example of inspiration drawn from the Exodus is the protests calling for the release of Soviet Jewry, which were always accompanied by cries of “Let my people go!” Another is the civil rights struggle in the US, led by Martin Luther King, in which the Exodus was a major theme. But the story left its mark on individuals as well as movements: the story of my family also came to pass thanks to the Exodus.

My wife’s grandfather, Israel Prize laureate Professor Akiva Ernst Simon, a descendant of Rabbi Akiva Eiger, was born in Germany to an assimilated Jewish family. Until the age of 7 he did not even know he was Jewish; and growing up, he was just like any other German boy, his Jewishness only a minor component of his identity. When World War I broke out, he joined the German army, where he first encountered brutal and cruel anti-Semitism. The encounter with his comrades was the first sign that his place in German society was destined to change. One evening, Simon learned that the Jewish soldiers were holding a Passover Seder, a ritual that was utterly foreign to him, and decided to join them. Toward the end, several participants got up and exclaimed enthusiastically, “Next year in Jerusalem!” When Simon asked the young man seated next to him why they were standing, he was told, “Those people are Zionists. They want to emphasize that the Jewish people should return to the Land of Israel.”

“At that moment, my life changed,” Simon would relate when recalling the story over the years. “I, too, rose to my feet, slowly, and thought, I want to be a Jew. I want to be a Zionist. I want to immigrate to the Land of Israel!” As soon as he was discharged, he began to learn Hebrew, study Torah, and take on mitzvot, and a few years later he fulfilled his dream of moving to the Land of Israel.

Between Egyptian Immortality and Jewish Eternity

I once heard Rabbi Sacks tell of two ancient nations that sought eternity and found it. The Egyptians immortalized themselves by building magnificent monuments to withstand the winds of time – the pyramids, which stand to this day throughout the desert. The Israelites, too, found their way to eternity, but through a different approach. In his first address to the children of Israel, even before the Exodus is completed, Moses entreats his flock to tell their children and their children’s children what they have seen. Since then, every generation has carried out Moses’ will, and the Jewish tradition is thus maintained through the living bond between parents and children. The Jewish eternity is handed down for posterity.

Once, during a family visit with my parents in the US, my wife, Michal, took our children to the department of Egyptian art at the Met in New York. As soon as they entered the gallery, my youngest ran to a large Sphinx sculpture and sat between its paws. Of course, from that moment onward, one of the museum guards, an older, heavyset man, followed them around, keeping a close watch wherever they went. Michal told the children about the sculptures and about Egyptian culture, lowering her voice so as not to disturb the guard, but he only leaned in to listen more closely. When they emerged from the Egyptian art wing, he approached them and asked with amazement, “Is that Hebrew your children are speaking?”

The guard, a devout Christian, was well versed in the Exodus story. Yet, he was astounded, thousands of years after the fact, to meet a Jewish family from Israel whose children still speak the language of the Bible – the same language spoken by their forefathers as they made their way from Egypt to the Land of Israel. The Jewish people’s victory over Egyptian culture is undeniable: Egypt’s immortality lies behind glass in museum displays, while the Jewish eternity is alive and vital.

When we understand that God shapes reality in order to tell a story, we gain insight into life itself and into God’s place in it. Sefer Yetzira tells us that the Holy One created the world with storytelling (1:1). A story is not only derived from reality, it is the force shaping it.

Auster, in asserting that “stories happen only to those who are able to tell them,” apparently refers to the storyteller’s tendency to look at life from a special perspective. The storyteller understands that life itself is a story, one that he learns to read and plumb for meaning. By approaching life as a story, and searching for our place within that story, we learn to embrace the challenges mounted by life and “play” our part in them.

I enjoy stories immensely, but beyond that, I ascribe great significance to their power to guide me and generate new stories. I often find myself in situations where I am compelled to come up with a course of action. Whenever I see similarities between a situation and a story that once excited me, I know what I have to do, even if it is difficult. A good story is a story that helps me to be better.

The encounter with God in life, the sense that I can see His hand guiding my life, is a fundamental religious experience. In the Modim blessing of the daily Amida prayer, we say, “We will thank You and declare Your praise…for Your miracles, which are with us every day, and for Your wonders and favors at all times, evening, morning, and noon.” We must see God not only in the past, but in the present, too – in our very lives – and we must tell the story.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)