#blogexodus : getting beyond the straits and narrow

how could so many people leave at one time?

Amaz­ing­ly, in our own day we have already for­got­ten that “Hun­dreds of thou­sands of… refugees streamed home­ward…” [Rwan­dan refugees; James C. McKin­ley Jr. of The New York Times in the Los Ange­les Dai­ly News. Sat­ur­day, Novem­ber 16, 1996.] Refugees all over the world seek shel­ter and comfort.

And when our ances­tors left Egypt, they were pur­sued by Pharaoh, his horse­men and char­i­ots. We found our­selves trapped between the Egyp­tians and the sea. The Hebrew name is ים סף Yam Suf or pos­si­bly Yam Sof: a Sea of End­ings. At times each one of us becomes a refugee, per­haps not polit­i­cal, but emo­tion­al. We flee pain and dark­ness that threat­en us. We stand before the sea, pur­sued by our fears, either imag­ined or real.

Then, the Midrash tells us, one man, Nachshon by name, dis­played his com­mit­ment to free­dom by walk­ing into the sea. Only at the moment when the water reached his neck, when he could go no fur­ther on his own, did the sea part. His act of faith and courage opened the way from Egypt to free­dom. He enabled us all to be reborn into freedom.

where is this place “Egypt,” is it the Egypt we know?

Yes, though only the name of the place is the same, the peo­ple have changed. In fact we are at peace and allied with the Egypt of today.

The Egypt of the Hag­gadah is more than a place, it is more than a nation state, it is a state of mind.

Our Hebrew word for that place is “Mitzra’yim” מִצְרַיִם, that is: the straits, or nar­rows. The geo­graph­i­cal Mitzra’yim is a pinched green strip of land in the midst of desert along the shores of the Nile Riv­er, which through­out his­to­ry has pro­vid­ed the min­i­mum 2.5 gal­lons of water per day to sus­tain life. The metaphor­i­cal Mitzra’yim is any restriction.

think of all the thirsts we have.

We have all come through that tight pas­sage, split the waters of what seemed to be an end­ing, only to begin anew, to search for a new way, often strug­gling for as long as forty years.

As with Nachshon, so also for us, we can only achieve our sal­va­tion through our own will­ing­ness to take risks.

what risk might I take to help us achieve our goals?

what is “#blogexodus”?

My friend and col­league Phyl­lis Som­mers has thought of yet a new cre­ative way to pre­pare for Peasach. You can learn more here.

blog­ging the exodus