Exodus/Shmot

The book of Exodus tells the story of the adolescence of the Jewish people. The Israelites leave behind everything they know and embark on an uncharted future. God, as parent, constantly reminds the Israelites of everything that God has done on their behalf. The Israelites are constantly unappreciative and rebellious. At times they want to go back to the undemanding simplicity of childhood. At other moments, they refuse to be patient in waiting to get to the Promised Land and decide to rush foolishly and dangerously ahead. The Exodus story of the Israelites and God is reflected in the story of every parent and child

Michale Strassfeld (Contemporary)

For Jews, love in the covenant begins with God’s desire for Israel. Indeed, that desire is what founds the covenant. We are continually reminded of how God showed His love to his people Israel; the point constantly emphasized is that its beginning is the exodus from Egypt…Love inherently makes claims upon those whom it intends, and they make claims in return upon those who have loved them first. It is a gift given at a definite time at a definite place. It is specific, not general. Accordingly, love must always originate in human time, which is history…How are the people to respond to God’s love of them? Optimally the response should begin in feeling…(kavvanah)…love should originate in desire, but when that is not yet possible, then it must originate in willful obedience.

David Novak (Contemporary)

The Exodus from Egypt was a redemption in the sense of a divine act of deliverance. It came short of being redemption in the true sense because it was ineffective in the hearts of men….No act of deliverance becomes a redemption unless he who is delivered participates in the act with a religious intention. If he is merely passive, the deliverance is not truly a redemption. The people who regarded the golden calf as their god who had brought them out of Egypt were not redeemed. Only many generations later, when the people of Israel committed themselves truly to the observance of the Torah, could the Exodus acquire the nature of redemption.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz (20^th Century)

Judaism applies to history and indeed emerges from history, from the “basic orienting experience” of the Exodus. God cares about human life, in the end human life will be redeemed from suffering, poverty and indignity. The result of these facts is that “events happen in history which change our perception of human fate, events from which we draw the fundamental norms by which we act and interpret what happens to us

Irving Greenberg (Contemporary)

Another way of viewing the significance of the Exodus is as a founding memory that creates the psychological grounds for a personal relationship. The Exodus is then comparable to early childhood experiences in which helpless children learn to trust their parents. The trust developed in early dependency relationships often serves as the psychological basis for mature love relationships entered into during adulthood…the founding moment is transcended, however, when theism is increasingly filtered through mitzvah…the exodus story is never negated or denied, it is now retained as a memory…

David Hartman (Contemporary)