Chapter 47: Leaving Egypt Every Day

Chapter 46 built love for G‑d on what He did when He took us out of Egypt and gave us the Torah. But that was more than three thousand years ago. How can it stir a person’s heart today? The answer is that the Exodus happens every day. The Mishnah says “in every generation”. The Alter Rebbe adds “and every day” and “today”. One way to understand the addition: there is a mitzvah to remember the Exodus every day, and this tells us how. Not as history, but as something happening to me now.

What is the inner Egypt? The G‑dly soul inside the body. The body is called a “serpent’s skin” (chapter 31), because its life comes from kelipah. While she is confined in it, the soul cannot be her true self, like a prisoner. The “going out” is not a flight from the body. The soul rises above her confinement and is absorbed in G‑d’s unity, which is her real home.

How does that happen? Whenever a Jew learns Torah or does a mitzvah, because there G‑d’s will is present without any concealment. In particular it happens in the Shema, where he says it outright: Hashem is our G‑d, Hashem is One.

Chapter 46 explained the word “our G‑d” in the Shema. G‑d is everyone’s G‑d, so why do we call Him “the G‑d of Avraham”? Because Avraham set himself aside so completely that he was absorbed in G‑d’s unity. In a revealed way, G‑d became his. When we say “Hashem is our G‑d”, the same is said of us.

But there is a difference. Avraham earned it. He climbed level after level, and the verse “Avram journeyed, going on and on” describes his inner journey as much as his travels: he never stopped rising. The verse continues “toward the south”, which in Kabbalah alludes to the highest love of G‑d. Avraham reached that love through his own labor.

We did not climb like Avraham. For us it is an inheritance and a gift, given with the Torah. The Torah is G‑d’s will and wisdom put into words we can learn. A person’s ideas are not the person himself; he can change his mind. G‑d’s will and wisdom are one with His essence. So when He gave us the Torah, He gave us Himself, so to speak.

The Midrash elsewhere makes a similar point: someone who buys an object does not acquire its owner with it, but when Israel took the Torah, G‑d said, they took Him. The Zohar reads the same into our verse: “take for Me” means “take Me”. Another passage of the Zohar reads terumah (“offering”) as “Torah” plus the letter mem, whose value is forty, for the Torah given after Moshe’s forty days on the mountain. So the verse should have said “take Me and the Torah”. It has no “and” because they are not two things. Taking the Torah is taking G‑d.

The prayers say what the gift is. On the festivals we say “You, Hashem our G‑d, have given us in love”, and in Sim Shalom, “by the light of Your face You gave us, Hashem our G‑d”. Read inwardly, what You gave us is “Hashem our G‑d”: that G‑d Himself can be ours.

Because it is an inheritance and a gift, it does not depend on our level. An heir inherits whatever his standing, and a gift can be given to someone who did not earn it, unlike wages. If it depended on our service, a person could say, “I want to, but this takes an Avraham.” It does not. Only one thing can stand in the way: not wanting it at all. The moment a person wants, and says the Shema meaning it, his soul is absorbed in G‑d’s unity of itself. As the Zohar puts it, his longing from below awakens a response from above, which draws down added spirit upon him. That is his Exodus, today.

This explains a law. Recalling the Exodus is a mitzvah of its own, not part of the mitzvah of the Shema. Yet the Sages fulfilled it by placing the paragraph about the Exodus inside the Shema. They belong together because they are one thing: accepting G‑d’s unity is the soul going out of Egypt. And the paragraph ends “I am Hashem your G‑d”, because going out of Egypt is what makes Him your G‑d.