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JANUARY 14, 2021 | The Jewish Home OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home
From the Fire Parshas Vaeira
Belief in G-d, Belief in One’s Self By Rav Moshe Weinberger Adapted for publication by Binyomin Wolf
T
he beginning of the parsha is infused with the spirit of Pesach. Hashem assures Moshe that He will take the Jewish people out of Egypt. He promises to redeem them with the four expressions of redemption (Shmos 6:7-8) upon which the mitzvah to drink four cups of wine at the Seder is based. But the Jewish people were not ready to hear it (ibid. at 6:9). They had no room in their hearts for the hope for redemption. So, the pasuk says (ibid. at 6:13): “And Hashem spoke to Moshe and to Aharon and commanded them to regarding the children of Israel and regarding Pharaoh the King of Egypt to take the Jewish people out of the land of Egypt.” In other words, the Jewish people were not ready to hear about the redemption. The time for talking was over. It was time to take them out. But inexplicably, in the very next pesukim (ibid. at 14-16), the Torah interrupts the story of redemption with “These are the heads of the fathers’ houses: the sons of Reuven… the sons of Shimon… And these are the names of the children of Levi…” Why the interruption? Rashi first gives the simple explanation for the interruption. Because the Torah is about to recount the exodus through Moshe and Aharon, it first tells us their “credentials,” their ancestry from Levi, the son of Yaakov. But it would be disrespectful to Levi’s older brothers Reuven and Shimon if the Torah would have skipped them and began recounting Moshe and Aharon’s ancestry from Levi, so the pesukim begin with Reuven and traces Yaakov’s sons’ ancestry until Levi. But Rashi offers a second explanation. He says, “I saw in Pesikta Rabasi that because Yaakov rebuked
these three tribes at the time of his death, the pasuk returns here and traces their lineage alone in order to show that they are of high esteem.” This is beautiful, but why would the Torah emphasize that these three tribes are important here at this point in the story? Yaakov died almost two hundred years earlier! Perhaps we can understand this by studying the Meshech Chochma on our parsha (“V’yitzavem” and “Vayitaken”). He explains that the Egyptians made the members of the tribes of Reuven, Shimon, and Levi taskmasters over the members of the other tribes who were enslaved. The members of those three tribes were not enslaved and lived a relatively easy life in Egypt. Hashem’s providence saw to it that they would not be enslaved for the following two reasons: The Meshech Chochma first explains that they were disheartened as a group because, rather than blessing
them as he did with his other sons, Yaakov Avinu’s last words to them were an expression of sharp rebuke. In addition, none of the three tribes which came from Reuven, Shimon, and Levi inherited a proper portion in Eretz Yisroel. Reuven inherited a portion with a lower level of holiness, the trans-Jordan. Shimon did not inherit a proper portion of the land in fulfillment of Yaakov’s curse (Bereishis 49:7), “I will separate them throughout Yaakov and I will scatter them throughout Yisroel.” And Levi did not inherit the land because his descendants were the kohanim and the levi’im. The members of the tribes of Reuven, Shimon, and Levi were disheartened by their father’s rebuke and lacked the hope for a proper portion in Eretz Yisroel to get them through the suffering of the Egyptian exile. The Meshech Chochma explains that Hashem knew they would not have been able to withstand enslavement
like the other tribes because of the rebuke and their inability to cling to the hope for a portion in the land of Israel. Hashem therefore relieved them of the burden of slavery, and they were taskmasters instead. With the Meshech Chochma’s explanation, we can now understand something that happened somewhat earlier. Following Moshe’s initial meeting with Pharaoh, after which he made the Jewish people’s slavery even more unbearable, the pasuk (Shmos 5:14) says, “And the Jewish taskmasters were beaten…” Soon after that (ibid. at 20), these taskmasters met Moshe and complained to him about their suffering. This affected Moshe deeply, and he approached Hashem (ibid. at 22) with the “complaint,” “Why have you hurt this people?” At first glance, this is somewhat difficult to understand. The Jewish people were unfortunately already accustomed to beatings and hard work. What was the qualitative change that shook Moshe to the core and caused him to complain to Hashem? Based on the Meshech Chochma, however, we can understand. The taskmasters were from the tribes of Reuven, Shimon, and Levi who felt little self-worth because of Yaakov’s rebuke and lacked the hope for the future because they would not inherit regular portions in Eretz Yisroel. In addition, as taskmasters, they were not used to the beatings. When they began to experience the torment to which their brothers were accustomed, they were immediately broken. When they complained to Moshe, he saw this brokenness and asked Hashem, “Why have you hurt this people?!” This is along the lines of Yirmiya-
