In this week's affair, Israel goes out of slavery and sees the downfall of the great slave • The former slaves reveal the ability to see the future picture and strive for a different reality

• Photo by Getty Imagis

The boy came to us for an interview and after a few minutes of conversation you can see the potential of it. Looking a little beyond the neglected, somewhat wild visibility, one can sense the great personality hidden in it through layers of despair and frustration. I meet a smart boy, with emotional depth and proper thinking ability. I try to understand how he sees himself and what his self-image is. During our conversation I ask to enter his inner world a little and ask him "What is your dream?" He ponders for a second to understand what I want from him and replies in a feeble response "I don't know, I have no dream." A parable would tell me, don't go inside because you won't find anything in me. I let go and ask "You have been home for a while and you have two years left until your high school. What do you want to happen to you in those two years?" "Don't know, I'm looking for a place to have a good time."

The boy was injured in the past, his heart broken and therefore unable to hold educational settings. He feels captive within the failure, feels an identity between being an exploited victim and his personality. He can't see a future picture now. The only dream he can tell about him is the dream of the night that causes him to wake up in alarm. He wants to hear from me hope and faith that from now on will look different, but he is not at all free and unable to believe that his life can change. "And they did not hear of Moses with impatience and hard work."

The people of Israel are under the burden of bondage, almost completely losing their self and losing their independence within an identity-breaking space, disintegrating private and public. Real deletion under impossible decrees.

In this week's Parsha, Parsha Bashalah, after all the miracles, the ten plagues, the escape from Egypt, the tearing of the Red Sea and the Egyptian descent in the sea, Moses and the Israelites sing poetry, "The Song of the Sea".

The people of Israel go out of slavery, hard bondage, see the downfall of the great slave, see how the sea becomes reality in Egypt and the Egyptians "dived like lead in mighty water." The joy of getting out of bondage is perfectly understood. The joy of the fall of the heroes, their enslavers, is also perfectly understandable, but as we look at poetry, we see that there is a significant addition to poetry: the look to the future.

They do not have enough to get out of slavery and end the terrible suffering they suffered in Egypt, they do not suffice that the Egyptians were beaten, there is a reference to the future dream, the spiritual purpose for which the people of Israel intend to go, "... Your inheritance ... The temple of the Lord has been established by you. " These unfortunate slaves reveal a sacred aspiration that is at the center of praise that Moses and Israel sing and praise.

We meet a high capacity of slave people here, to see a "picture of the future" and to understand that even if it takes time, even if life's circumstances and complexities take place, there is ultimately a great purpose beyond such a complex contemporary reality, there is even a spiritual purpose, to which all this mighty move leading.

We know of difficult life situations in which the person is in severe distress, bondage, exploitation and severe injury. We look at it and see if he can see a future picture? Is there a chance that it will be connected to its spiritual purpose and to the point that it can and should reach? What is the process that Israel is going through here?

Already at the beginning of the Vara affair God sends Moshe to flesh out the slave people for his process of freedom and salvation and also where Moses places a future picture, which places the supreme spiritual vocation, to which the whole process is directed. However, the order of salvation must be noted:

"And I brought you out from under the misery of Egypt."

"And I saved you from their work."

"And I redeemed you with an inclined arm ...".

"And I took you to me to the people and I became to you God."

"And did you know that I am the Lord ...".

The order of things is that salvation begins with the emergence of suffering, the removal of bondage, horror and anxiety. By removing the terrible barriers of suffering and slavery, one can advance to a space of positive, active redemption, which at the end comes the connection between Israel and their Father in heaven, the realization comes that there is the generator of the process that "takes you out of Egypt's suffering".

This also seems to be the proper process of the individual's redemption in his distress: the cessation of mental suffering, the cessation of bondage and terror, the practical actions of the practical redemption, the full connection with the father figure (the upper or the biological ...).

Interestingly, the people of Israel hear the parasha and will read the gospel of salvation from Moses, but "have not heard ... short of breath and hard work." The condition in which the person is in deep depth, when suffering and existential distress closes in him, has no place to hear words, the optimistic words are so detached from the experience of his difficult life that they cannot be heard even when they proclaim salvation for him. When one is absorbed in slavery, when the ongoing trauma leads one's life, it is not free to hear words of comfort, words of gospel, and not to see a picture of the future, purpose and vision.

Rabbi Yonatan Shorz // Photo: Timura Association

Therefore, the Lord has to ask Moses in the affair that will actually ask the people of Israel to take property from Egypt "and asked a mortgaged woman ... silverware and goldware ...". But even this cannot be done naturally by the enslaved man, who goes "erased" in the attacker's environment and cannot believe that he can have salvation. In the first stage, he has no arsenal of thoughts, an option to charge an attacker, from his regular slave. He felt it was his life sentence to be trampled under the monstrous whims of the attacker.

Only after Moshe persuades the people of Israel to take a price from Egypt, after the attacker was able to feel even if control reigns, does a significant process begin. Only after seeing the Egyptians drowning in the sea, only when the attacker pays the price, can the people identify with even a little of his future picture, hear his future spiritual vocation, sing and thank him.

A future picture and a connection to spiritual vocation are essential in the growth and redemption processes of the people and man, but the ability to hear and identify with them depends primarily on the exit from suffering and practical bondage. Thus, slowly, with the fulfillment of the physical needs of man, with the removal of his peril, he is free to touch his mental needs and from there the person opens to the distant future image and the spiritual vision that expresses the whole process of going out to freedom, to life.

The writer is the director of the Neve Sariya religious youth village - Brosha Baka, Timora Association