It’s Time to Get Out the Swimming Pool!
(the waters of the Nile/denial)
By Rabbi Shimon Raichik
In this week’s parsha of Va’eira the Torah begins the description of the plagues and the exodus from Mitzrayim. We have been reviewing the exodus for over three and a half thousand years. We mention yetzias Mitzrayim twice a day every day and celebrate the Yom Tov of Pesach every year, which commemorates yezias Mitzrayim. What do we gain from all of this repetition?
The Rebbe explains that the word Mitzrayim is from the root metzar, which means a narrow place or a constriction. It can also mean distress or anguish. Some people live within the difficulties of physical hardships while others suffer from spiritual anguish or distress. Some may be constrained in that they may not even know what it means to be a Jew or the purpose of the Torah and mitzvos. There is also a Mitzrayim for those of us who keep the Torah but are just going through the motions without motivation and without any life. If our mood is up then we do everything, if not we miss a mincha here and a shiur there. So, how do we break out of our personal Mitzrayim? How do we break through the vicious cycle of following our moods?
The Rebbe explains that the cause for our constraints comes from being cold. This is the message of the first plague, the turning of water into blood. Water is a cold liquid. There may be a hot spring here or there but in general, water is cold. Blood is warm. A person who has a heart that pumps blood through his body is alive and warm. That’s the difference in the way we live as well. Are we keeping Torah and mitzvos but coldly cutting corners, are we frum in that we are doing but not really living what we do? We need a transfusion. We need to get out of Mitzrayim by injecting blood, life into everything and transform this coldness. Where does this life come from? We get life from the Torah that we learn, especially Chassidus, the neshama of the Torah. The inspiration of a Chassidishe vort, a Sicha or a Mamar gives us the strength and the desire to do a mitzvah with vitality. Whether it’s the next Shabbos or Tefillin we are always looking forward toward the next opportunity to do a Mitzvah.
The second plague was frogs. The frogs came out of the cold wet water and jumped to the hot dry ovens of Mitzrayim and cooled them down. The Rebbe says that this is a lesson us; that at times we also need to be cool. We need to be cool in order to cool off our desires for worldly pleasures. We need to be cold toward the attractions and the flash of the physical world, the cars, the restaurants and all the electronic gadgets. Instead we focus our warmth in kedusha.
When we look at the world today and see what is happening in Europe we see that it is cold passivity that has brought them to where find themselves surrounded by terror. They looked the other way and didn’t face the dangers when they we smaller and not their own backyards. They avoided the truth by saying that what’s in the Mid-East will stay in the Mid-East. Israel, Iran, Iraq and Syria were viewed as conflicts that were unrelated to the civility of Europe. It’s the same world and now they are engulfed with the same problems. They were cold and indifferent. This is true today in the United States with the present Administration. If the world would have stayed awake after 9/11 it could have been different. They needed to have blood, the energy and focus to address and stay involved and awake until they neutralized the danger. So too in Israel, people still stubbornly cling on to the failed idea that something good will come from appeasement. If we would only fix the Palestinian problem then all the terrorism in the world would suddenly vanish; thank you Jimmy Carter.
All of this teaches us an important and timely message. We need to wake up and to warm up to the reality that the Torah of Hashem is emes every area of our lives. Most politicians are phony in what they say because their primary concern is to assure their personal careers and legacies, and are therefore sheker. We don’t look to politicians for truth or depend upon them to follow through because we’ll be disappointed. The lesson is to realize the importance of not compromising and what happens when we bend to the world. After Shabbos some run with such a ‘koch’ to their twitter feeds, their face book accounts and their web sites to find out what they’ve missed out on for the last 24 hours. We need to cool off to these things. If we are concerned about the condition in the world that live in and the safety of the Jewish people in Eretz Yisroel, Europe and America etc., then why not say an extra kapitol Tehillim, give extra Tzedaka and go out and put Tefillin on people and all the other mivtzoyim. The Rebbe says that this shields and protects us. Also, we must put warmth and vitality into educating our children and learning and teaching others. All of this will break the final darkness of galus and cause the revelation of the light of Moshiach.