The Torah of Rochelle Zell
Empathy in the Exodus Narrative
Rabbi Rachel Braun Rubenstein, CJHS 2009, and Rabbi Marcus Rubenstein
בכל דור ודור חיב אדם לראות את עצמו כאילו הוא יצא ממצרים “In each and every generation, a person is obligated to see themselves as if they left Egypt.” It is not enough, the Haggadah teaches us, to read the story of the Exodus, or even to teach the story to our children. We have a specific instruction, it is clear and repeated again and again. We must put ourselves into the story, to see ourselves as if we ourselves were slaves in Egypt. But, why? Why is this pivotal Jewish ritual, the most observed Jewish ritual among American Jews, predicated on a radical act of empathy? The answer may be found in the Passover story itself. “A long time after that, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites were groaning under the bondage and cried out; and their cry for help from the bondage rose up to God. God heard their moaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites, and God knew” (Exodus 2:23-25).
The great mussar rabbi, Yerucham Leibovitz (18751936) clarifies even further when he writes in his great work Da’at Hochma U’mussar,
“...once redemption was ready to begin, God’s attribute of strict judgment reversed towards compassion.” God’s capacity for empathy, Leibovitz explains, is so powerfully overwhelming that “[t]here God feels even the smallest amount of their suffering, all their distress, their afflictions, and suffering, even the most scant and small amounts of it. The slightest, smallest prick is seen and is heard and comes immediately before the Throne of Glory.” -Rabbi Yerucham Leibowitz, Da’at Hochma U’mussar
We ourselves are far from being an all-knowing God, but in our world today of 24/7 news coverage, I think we can relate to this feeling. We cannot bear the weight of all of the suffering of all of the world all at once. If we truly allowed ourselves to dwell in empathy without This verse challenges many of our assumptions about bounds, the type of empathy that God feels for every life the God of the Torah. And God knew — does that imply on Earth, we wouldn’t be able to function. And so too that there was a time when God did not know — the for God. And yet, we are still left with the question — why now? Why was God’s compassion and empathy for all-knowing, all-powerful Creator of the Word? the suffering Israelites activated at this moment? The medieval Spanish commentator Rashi (1040-1105) helps explain this difficulty, by clarifying that it wasn’t It is here that Rashi hints at a truly remarkable revethat God did not know, but perhaps God had not yet lation. A few verses earlier, in Exodus 2:11, we read, “Some time after that, when Moses had grown up, he learned to know. Rashi writes: went out to his kinsfolk and saw their labors. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his kinsmen.”
נתן עליהם לב ולא האלים עיניו:וידע אלהים And God knew — God directed God’s heart to them and did not hide God’s eyes from them. Rashi on Exodus 2:25
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Rashi explains on this verse:
וירא בסבלתם — נתן עיניו ולבו להיות מצר עליהם And he saw their labors — he directed his eyes and heart to them to share in their distress. Rashi on Exodus 2:11