Ned Krasnopolsky
“‘We remember the fish [we ate in Egypt freely].’ But were fish granted to them freely in Egypt? Even straw was not granted to them freely in Egypt. Rather, they were free of comman dments.” Sifrei Bemidbar 87
“‘Inscribed on the tablets.’ Do not read ‘inscribed (harut),’ but ‘freedom (herut).’ For there is none who is as free as one who engages in Torah study.” Avot 6:2
“The Torah was only given over for interpretation to those who ate from the manna.” Mekhilta Beshalah 16[1]
I. Slavery and Selfhood
Instinctually, we recoil at the idea of relating to ourselves and others as slaves. Slavery violates our deepest intuitions about the depth and weight of personhood. The will of the master subjugates that of the individual; the subject becomes an object.
This discomfort influences our study of Humash. When the Torah commands that the Israelite bondsman must be freed, “ki avadai hem,” I have observed that people are quick to render the phrase as “for they are My servants,” as opposed to “slaves” (Vayikra 25:42). The same word which refers to the Israelites’ status in Egypt—avadim hayyinu—is sanitized in its new covenantal context. We do not want to relate to ourselves as God’s slaves, either.
Is this instinct justified, or does Judaism demand radical servitude? Is there something that distinguishes our relationship with God from that of the human master and slave? To put it plainly: In leaving Egypt, did we simply exchange one master for another? R. Kook, in his collected comments on the Haggadah, suggests that the experience of slavery in Egypt was designed to instill this exact notion:
Although the enslavement surely caused many evils and led to the development of destructive traits — and we need not mention the evils and pain inflicted on those who suffered at the time — it also inculcated the trait of submissiveness and the value of submitting oneself to whom it is proper to submit: To be an eved of God in truth, to nullify one’s independent will and inclination for the sake of accepting the yoke of Heaven.[2]
If so, then our service to God is superior to our enslavement to Pharaoh inasmuch as God deserves our submission, while Pharaoh does not. It appears that we are slaves, after all.[3]
Must our relationship with God be limited to this conception, or is there something more going on beneath the surface? In an essay previously published in Lehrhaus, I argued how we might see the trial of the Yam Suf as educating the Israelites in matters of faith. Following their experience at the Sea, the Israelites had trust in God’s ability to help them in their conquest of the Land. Here, in advance of Shavuot, I would like to pursue a similar line of inquiry with regard to some of the subsequent events that occur on the way to Sinai. This will hopefully speak to our primary question regarding the nature of Divine service.
II. Mitzvot at Marah
The Israelites depart from the Sea and set off into the wilderness. For three days, they wander without finding water. Eventually, the people arrive at Marah, where they complain against Moshe. God, in turn, directs him to cast a piece of wood into the bitter waters to sweeten them:
So he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a piece of wood; he threw it into the water and the water became sweet. There He made for them a fixed rule and law (hok u-mishpat), and there He put them to the test. (15:25)[4]
The immediate crisis is resolved. But the Humash does not suffice with a simple description of its resolution. Instead, it emphasizes that this action established a fixed rule and law, a hok u-mishpat, and constituted a test. Moreover, on a seemingly unrelated note, the next verse presents a set of conditions that follow from the Israelites’ observance of the Divine will:
He said, “If you will heed the Lord your God diligently, doing what is upright in His sight, giving ear to His commandments and keeping all His laws, then I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians, for I the Lord am your healer.” (15:26)
What is this “fixed rule and law,” how may the incident at Marah be considered a test, and what is its connection to the following verse about the people’s observance of the law?
Rashi reads the entire narrative as a revelation of Divine law. The people are given their first mitzvot, including those of Shabbat, the Red Heifer, and civil matters. In his elucidation of Rashi’s view, Ramban argues that our verse does not describe a full-blown act of Divine legislation, which would require the Humash to explicitly detail the mitzvot that were given. In the absence of any such mention, the incident at Marah should rather be understood as a preliminary stage on the way to the actual event of law-giving at Sinai:
Now Rashi’s expression, “He gave them… sections of the Torah so that they might engage in the study thereof,” indicates that Moshe did inform them of these statutes and that he taught these statutes to them, [saying], “In the future, the Holy One, blessed be He, will command you so,” in the same way as Abraham our father learned the Torah. The purpose of it was to make them familiar with the commandments and to know if they would accept them with joyfulness and with gladness of heart. This was “the test” of which Scripture says, “and there He tested them,” and he [Moshe] informed them that God would further command them the precepts of the Torah. This is the intent of the verse, “If you will heed the Lord your God diligently, doing what is upright in His sight, giving ear to His commandments, which He will command you [in the future].” (15:25, s.v. sham sam lo, Chavel translation)
According to Ramban, we are not dealing with the acceptance of specific laws at this time. Rather, Moshe tests the people to see if they will be able to eventually summon the proper level of joy that befits mitzvah observance. Ramban further approvingly cites Ibn Ezra’s observation that the sweetening of the water is an inversion of the first plague, which turned the waters of Egypt into blood. If the people accept the mitzvot with joy, then they will be saved from the plagues that God brought on Egypt.
Ramban’s interpretation is of interest as it casts a spotlight on the ideal attitude people should take toward the mitzvot. But why should that attitude be one of joy, given the feeling of compulsion that accompanies our obedience to the Divine law? The law is imposed from without; it limits the individual’s freedom. As R. Soloveitchik describes in his seminal work U-vikkashtem Mi-sham, the revelational experience entails “the consciousness of necessity and subjugation; it is an absolute awareness of the revealed duty that preempts man’s will” (And From There You Shall Seek, Ktav 2008, 43). It is the consciousness of the slave who blindly submits to the will of his master: “Man appears as absolutely subordinate… The acceptance of the command does not contain any feeling of freedom” (Ibid., 35). Where, then, is there room for joy?
III. Manna and Memory
Following a short stint at Eilim, the people travel to Midbar Sin, where they are left without food:
In the wilderness, the whole Israelite community grumbled against Moshe and Aharon. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots, when we ate our fill of bread! For you have brought us out into this wilderness to starve this whole congregation to death.” (16:2-3)
This is a rather rose-colored recollection of their time in Egypt. Faced with the challenge of hunger, the people revise their history. Their memories of persecution and slavery fall away — Egypt was nothing short of Eden, where food was readily available.
God responds to the people’s complaints and gives them manna — bread from heaven. The people claimed that Moshe and Aharon took the people out of Egypt of their own accord. The manna teaches them that it was God who orchestrated the exodus:
Moshe and Aharon said to all the Israelites, “By evening you shall know it was the Lord who brought you out from the land of Egypt.” (16:6)
But the “history lesson” does not end here. God also carefully designs the experience of the manna to address the people’s ‘nostalgia.’ In Egypt, the people were ordered (vayetzav Par’oh, 5:6) to go out to collect straw to meet a daily quota of bricks (devar yom be-yomo, 5:13, 5:19). Likewise, the Israelites are commanded (zeh ha-davar asher tzivvah Hashem, 16:16) to collect their daily portion of manna (devar yom be-yomo, 16:4). Rebellion in both instances results in bi’ush, spoiling: “You have spoiled (hivashtem) our spirits in the eyes of Pharaoh” (5:21); “Some of them left of it until morning, and it became infested with maggots and spoiled (vayivash)” (16:20). Even the color of the manna, lavan (white, 16:31), echoes the bricks (leveinim, 5:14, 5:19) that the people were forced to produce. In other words, God makes the people relive their experience of slavery.
At first glance, this seems to confirm R. Kook’s thesis. Divine service is quite similar to the enslavement in Egypt: avadai hem. But there is a key difference between the two stories. Unlike the collection of straw, which was designed to defeat the spirits of the Israelites, the collection of the manna was for their benefit. God utilizes their experience in Egypt to teach them this important lesson. Pharaoh’s decrees were issued to subjugate the people. In contrast, God’s laws contribute to their well-being. This is also evident in the role Shabbat plays in the manna narrative. While Pharaoh complains that Moshe had caused the people to cease working (hishbatetem otam misivlotam, 5:5), God grants the people a day of rest (shabbaton shabbat kodesh laHashem, 16:23). This kind of social morality is later expressed as one of the reasons for Shabbat: “Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall cease from labor, in order that your ox and your donkey may rest, and that your bondman and the stranger may be refreshed” (23:12).
IV. Teleology and Talmud Torah
If we take the events of Parashat Beshalah as preparing the people for their full acceptance of the mitzvot at Sinai, then we should emulate their journey. “The Torah was only given over for interpretation to those who ate from the manna,” who were taught to view God’s Law as different from that of Pharaoh. We, too, must learn to view Divine law in this light. One potential avenue for such insight is offered by the study of ta’amei ha-mitzvot, the reasons for the commandments, which assume the rational nature of God and His law. Divine service, when viewed in this way, aims to instruct humanity in its quest toward intellectual and moral perfection.
However, the search for halakhic teleology has its detractors. Their criticism extends beyond the fear that ta’amei hamitzvot may lead to shaky observance, inasmuch as halakhic practice sometimes deviates from what we take to be the reason behind a given commandment. For these thinkers, the experience of commandedness as a dialogical encounter with God demands a sense of His otherness and the discontinuity of reason and revelation.[5] Hukkim, which are commonly taken as having no rationale (although both Rambam and Ramban held otherwise), may engender this sort of perspective. But while there is certainly room for ‘blind’ obedience in religious life — after all, per Rashi’s account, one of the first mitzvot given is that of the Red Heifer, the quintessential hok — there is a tendency today to view the total negation of teleology as an expression of piety. The application of this attitude to all of Torah falls prey to Rambam’s criticism of those who claim that God’s will is arbitrary:
There are people who find it difficult to give a reason for any of the commandments, and consider it right to assume that the commandments and prohibitions have no rational basis whatever. They are led to adopt this theory by a certain disease in their soul, the existence of which they perceive, but which they are unable to discuss or to describe. (Guide for the Perplexed III:31, Friedlander translation)
How might modern anti-teleologists respond to this charge? For one, it might very well be that we are living in a post-Maimonidean world, in which reason is not granted as much weight as it was in the past. Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, forcefully accepted by R. Soloveitchik and others,[6] limits our ability to posit definitive reasons for the commandments. Indeed, post-Kantian theories of cognition accentuate the “otherness” of Divine law — reason cannot fully capture the contents of the transcendental realm.
But this does not mean that we are doomed to the disinterested service generally associated with Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who declared that mitzvah observance cannot be subordinated to any other system of value. Rather, we may have to shift the project of ta’amei hamitzvot to the more subjective realm of meaning.[7] Instead of seeking a definite cause for each commandment, we should constantly engage in a process of never-ending interpretation to explore the meaning of our practice.
V. Avodah She-ba-lev and Inwardness
This brings us back to Ramban, who understood Moshe as testing the people at Marah to see if they would eventually accept the mitzvot with joy. But it takes time to train the people to relate to God’s law as qualitatively different from that of Pharaoh. The experience of collecting the manna — similar to yet so very different from the collection of straw — teaches them about the benevolent nature of God and His service. It is this understanding that should lead the people to accept God’s rule with joy and gladness. As R. Soloveitchik writes:
Nahmanides as well as Maimonides emphasized time and again that the element of avodah she-ba-lev—worship of the heart—must be present in every religious act. The ritual as well as moral actions must be endowed with emotional warmth, love and joy, and the mechanical act converted into a living experience. Of course, all this is unattainable if there is no message to deliver, no idea to suggest, no enriching meaning. In order to offer God my heart and soul, in order to serve Him inwardly, one thing is indispensable—understanding, the involvement of the logos. (Out of the Whirlwind, Ktav, 2003, 43-44).
The servant of God is not a slave, inasmuch as avodat Hashem demands the cultivation of inwardness — an understanding of the depth and meaning of one’s service. The feeling of total compulsion falls away once we recognize that the Divine law has something to say to us. This is a lesson of the manna, and it would do us well to learn it as we approach Zeman Matan Torateinu.[8]
[1] Translations my own.
[2] Olat Reiyah, Maggid, www.sefaria.org/Olat_Reiyah%2C_Haggadah.5?lang=he&with=all&lang2=he.
Translation my own.
[3] Cf. R. Kook’s comments in Da’at Elohim, printed in Eder Hayakar (Mossad Harav Kook, 145-149) and translated by Ben Zion Bokser in The Essential Writings of Abraham Isaac Kook (Ben Yehuda Press, 1988, 49-50), in which he argues against a slave-like conception of Divine service: “The concept of serving God, when it is defined in lowly terms, corresponds to a person’s limited understanding of what he means by God. It is the service of a slave. It rises in stature to the same extent as his understanding of God will rise. If a person should reach a state where his moral and intellectual powers have been duly developed, in accordance with his potentialities and the cultural climate of his time, yet his understanding of God remains on a low plain, then there will necessarily emerge into him a fierce opposition to the whole idea of serving God. The only remedy to overcome this is to elevate his concept of God through deep feeling and comprehensive understanding of ever-increasing scope, at least paralleling his other perceptions of the great and the sublime. The affirmation of God, however, is preliminary to everything else.”
[4] All verse translations are adapted from the JPS Tanakh (1985).
[5] For an expression of this view, see R. Aharon Lichtenstein’s Henry More – The Rational Theology of a Cambridge Platonist (Harvard University Press, 1962, 173-185), where he argues for the necessity of a “numinous” experience of Divine revelation that stands outside of the rational sphere: “Belief in revelation does not consist merely in the acceptance of certain revealed truths, but also—and chiefly—in the concomitant realization that these truths are of a supernatural order of knowledge surpassing the range of human reason—undiscovered and undiscoverable. And this not simply because they happen to be hidden by a screen, upon the removal of which they are seen on our level, but because they are essentially beyond our ken, as deriving from an absolutely different plane of truth. It is in the recognition that the content of revelation is qualitatively unique that the essence of revealed religion consists. Furthermore, the sense of revelation as an experience and a power, as an active factor transfusing and transmuting human personality, can be fully appreciated only where the unique character of revelation is recognized” (174-176).
Yet, elsewhere, R. Lichtenstein advances that “from a traditional Jewish perspective, there is no doubt that there surely exists a system of standards and values that may serve — and, to a large extent, serves as — a source and foundation for the will of God in general and its expression in Torah and mitzvot specifically” (Halakha veHalakhim Ke’oshayot Mussar, https://asif.co.il/wpfb-file/%D7%94%D7%9C%D7%9B%D7%94-%D7%95%D7%94%D7%9C%D7%9B%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%9B%D7%90%D7%95%D7%A9%D7%99%D7%95%D7%AA-%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%A1%D7%A8-%D7%94%D7%A8%D7%94%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9D-%D7%9E%D7%97%D7%A9%D7%91/, 15). Also see R. Lichtenstein’s “Formalism vs. Teleology: Circumvention and Adaptation in Halakha” in Values in Halakha (Reuven Ziegler, ed.; Maggid Books, 2023) and R. Tzvi Goldstein’s recent Lehrhaus article, which discusses R. Lichtenstein’s position.
[6] See And From There You Shall Seek (Ktav Publishing House, 14) and Aviezer Ravitzky’s “Rabbi J. B. Soloveitchik on Human Knowledge: Between Maimonidean and Neo-Kantian Philosophy,” Modern Judaism, vol. 6, no. 2, 1986, 157–88.
[7] This approach is generally associated with Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Cf. Kolbrener, William. “Towards a Genuine Jewish Philosophy: Halakhic Mind’s New Philosophy of Religion.” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought, vol. 30, no. 3, Spring 1996, 21–43. Tradition Online, https://traditiononline.org/towards-a-genuine-jewish-philosophy-halakhic-minds-new-philosophy-of-religion/.
[8] Thank you to Josh Brafman, Yaakov Grunsfeld, and Michael Kay for their helpful comments on an early draft of this essay, and to Drs. Erica Brown and Shira Weiss, as well as the entire Sacks-Herenstein Research Scholars Cohort, for their continued guidance and insight.
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