The Egyptian Bondage – A Deeper Look

The Slavery and its Paradoxes

Every year around this time, we read in shul about the shi’bud Mitsraim, the Egyptian bondage. We read how it took root incrementally (the Nazis, may their name be blotted out, took macabre lessons from that).  We see how taskmasters were appointed to monitor the slave labour with ever-increasing rigour and how the lives of the Bnei Yisrael were embittered. We read how ultimately the Jewish foremen who were appointed over the people, were beaten.  In little over a couple of months at our Seder tables, we shall also expound upon the midrashim: for example how the women were given men’s work to do and vice-versa (nowadays this would be applauded by the woke brigade in the name of the elimination of gender roles) and how the Egyptians tried to destroy the spirit of Am Yisrael by giving them inferior materials with which to build the so-called store-cities so that as a new section was begun the previous section would collapse.

Yet if we delve a little deeper we see other details that might surprise us.

• The Bnei Yisrael were allowed to remain in Goshen. There was no herding of Israelites into tiny walled ‘ghettos’ or ‘concentration camps’, it would appear. “Only in the land of Goshen where the Bnei Yisrael were, was there no hail” (Ex. 9:26)..
• The Bnei Yisrael were permitted to retain possession of their livestock. It would not have been unfeasible for Pharaoh to have confiscated all the sheep and cattle of their slaves. The Egyptians owned livestock (which they revered as deities) as is evident during the fifth plague. “All the livestock of Egypt Of the livestock of the children of Israel, however, not a single one died” (9:6).
• The Bnei Yisrael apparently enjoyed fish without restriction. A variety of nutritious vegetables were also freely available to them. When the people left Mount Sinai after almost a year encamped there, the complaints started to filter in.   “We remember the fish which we ate freely in Egypt; also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. (Num.11:5).    The people, overcome with nostalgia, positively wax lyrical nostalgic about the food in Egypt No dry crusts of mouldy bread or bowls of putrid soup apparently!  Even allowing for selective memory, these reminiscences are astounding.
• Additionally there are the several other times – including when they had just left and their memories of the slavery were fresh – when the Bnei Yisrael express to Moses the desire to return to Egypt.
• The Bnei Yisrael increased mightily, in number and strength. “The Children of Israel were fruitful, multiplied, increased and grew strong … The more [the Egyptians] oppressed them, the more they increased” ( 1:7, 12) While undeniably there was a miraculous element here, Divine miracles ‘feed’ upon human will. The valiant womenfolk – who, remember, were given heavy, masculine work to do – summoned the will and the strength to cook for their husbands and create an ambiance of intimacy. Children were conceived through natural intercourse, not through immaculate conception.. Evidently the Bnei Yisrael could not have been worked to the point of utter physical incapacitation
• Inherent in this last-named observation is the obvious but significant fact that the men and the women were not herded into Nazi-like separate camps but were, in general, allowed to continue to cohabit in order to have the opportunity to perpetuate family life. Families were not permanently separated.

While there is no gainsaying that the slavery was harsh, cruel and at times tyrannical – witness Pharaoh’s (thankfully thwarted) attempts at feticide and male infanticide – there are indications in the Torah that the overriding cruelty did not lie simply in the physical torments and deprivations but were aimed as much at our nation’s emotional and psychological equilibrium.  Two of them – the destruction of gender roles and the futility of the Hebrew slaves’ assigned projects – were already pinpointed.  However there is a significant clue to an overriding hurt and sense of injustice experienced by our nation which is so subtle it can easily be overlooked.

Servants versus Slaves

It was Yosef haTsadik – Joseph – who created what I would describe as a benign serfdom culture in Egypt.

Joseph was Pharaoh’s viceroy.  He saw it as his loyal duty to enhance his master’s status as much as possible. Hence his policy during the years of famine: to make the Egyptian populace dependent upon the king.  He sold grain to the Egyptians while they still possessed money.  When their funds were spent, he requested their livestock in exchange for the grain. When their livestock was gone, he acquired their land on behalf of Pharaoh. He then “resettled” the entire population “from one end of Egypt’s borders to the other” (Gen. 47:21). Rashi (loc. cit.) enlightens us as to the method in this ‘madness’. Joseph “intended to remove disgrace from his brothers [the nascent nation of Israel, the ‘new immigrants’] so that the Egyptians should not call them foreigners. Now everyone was a “foreigner”!  Joseph’s intention was to secure ethnic equality [under Pharaoh] of all sections of the populace including the newly-arrived family of Israel. Joseph was indeed a visionary!

!The Egyptian populace were delighted with the arrangement. They said to Joseph “you have saved our lives; may we continue to find favour in your eyes. my lord, so that we can continue to be avadim to Pharaoh (Gen. 47:25).

 How shall we translate avadim here? Surely “servants” not “slaves” .  (Eved can mean both.) The Egyptians were extremely proud of their status as serfs.  Egypt was, at root, a culture of subservience.

So the culture remained.  And so it is that in the early chapters of Sefer Shemot  there are several references to Pharaoh’s “servants”.  “Aaron cast down his staff before Pharaoh and his servants and it became a snake” (Ex. 7:10).  “He held the staff aloft and struck the water … in the presence of Pharaoh and his servants” (7:20). “The frogs will depart from you and your houses, and from your servants” (8:7). So it continues, throughout the episode of the plagues. The servants are mentioned as if on a par with Pharaoh. As stated, it was a benign serfdom.  Before the eighth plague of locusts, Pharaoh’s servants even assume the role of advisers. They have the temerity to say to Pharaoh “until when will this (that’s how they disdainfully refer to Am Yisrael!) continue to be a thorn in our side. Send out the men .. do you not know that Egypt is lost?” (10:7)

Slaves dare not speak to their master like that.  These courtiers of Pharaoh are avadim but in a very benign sense. In the same sense that the whole nation of Egypt had became avadim, benign servants of the former Pharaoh, under Joseph.

So they remained after that Pharaoh died.   All except one section of the population who were not accepted as members of Egyptian society at all and were relegated to avadim in a very non-benign sense. Because “there had arisen a new king who didn’t [want to] know Joseph” (1:8) – neither him nor the nation to which he belonged.

Singled Out For Discrimination

So we arrive at the cause of the real hurt, the heartache that made the Egyptian slavery so unbearable for Am Yisrael,

Am Yisrael alone were discriminated against,  They alone became ignoble avadim, bondsmen, slaves unlike all the other avadim, the noble servants of Pharaoh.

Rabot machashavot be-lev ish … “The human mind devises many plans but only the counsel of G-D will prevail” (Proverbs 19:21). Man proposes but G-D disposes! Joseph’s aim was to create social equality for the family of Am Yisrael. G-D planned differently. All Pharaoh’s subjects were honourable avadim, servants – except the Bnei Yisrael who had to experience the nadir of discriminatory degradation as slaves in order to be able to reach the zenith of becoming G-D’s faithful and noble emissaries, His chosen nation. (The harder you bounce a ball downwards, the higher it will reach!)

Pharaoh initiated the difference subtly but graphically. The Midrash known as the Yalkut Shimeoni relates that in the beginning Pharaoh himself, as well as his royal courtiers, joined in the city-building project.  Am Yisrael worked with all their might to prove themselves loyal servants. Unbeknown to them, Pharaoh’s accountants were keeping a beady eye on how many bricks each of the Israelites made on that first day. The next day it was announced that this would be his daily quota. Maybe it took a while for the penny to drop that Pharaoh’s other servants gained early honourable discharge from the back-breaking work.

During the period when Am Yisrael were slaving to the bone, the Egyptian population were revelling in the prosperity that had been sustained ever since Jacob’s arrival in Egypt. How else are we to explain the massive reserves of silver and gold possessed by every Egyptian, largesse which they ultimately had to surrender to our nation  (Ex. 12:36) when G-D saw fit to at last redeem us from the discriminatory injustice and the abject slavery.

Here lies the key to why the redeemed Bnei Yisrael would even consider returning to Egypt as they pleaded to in their weaker moments. Having been adequately compensated for their years of back-breaking slavery, the Bnei Yisrael no longer felt uniquely discriminated against by the Egyptians.  Hence they were able to recall only the good things – the fish, the fresh vegetables, the fact that they were allowed to remain as families in Goshen and procreate, that they were permitted to retain their livestock, that they were able to remain a nation. They far too easily forgave and forgot.

A Signpost For Their Descendants

As Rambam and others famously declare ma’asei avot siman la-banim, the experiences of our ancestors are repeated ad infintum throughout the generations. Am Yisrael have experienced many persecutions in the long exile it has endured. Common to all of them has been the indignity and injustice of being singled out for discrimination.

Vayei’anchu Bnei Yisrael min ha-avoda. “The children of Israel groaned because of the slavery” (Ex 2:23).  In the eleventh blessing of the weekday Amida we say: “Restore our [true] judges as in the earliest times, and our [faithful] counsellors as in days of yore, and remove from us sorrow and groan (anacha, from the  same root as vayei’anchu in the verse just cited).

When people feel they are not being judged as fairly and truly as others, they feel embittered.  A person, a populace even, can endure hardship, penury and even dictatorship without rising in revolt (as we see up to the present day) as long as they don’t feel that they, as a segment in a society, are not being unfairly and uniquely taken advantage of.

May we very soon witness the day when “the redeemed of Zion shall return ….with everlasting joy …and sorrow and anacha shall entirely flee away!” (Isaiah 51:11)