Mitsrayim

By Mark L. Berch

The Exodus is of such overwhelming importance that Jewish tradition says that it must be remembered every day. Thus, it appears in the prayers at the end of the Shema, where it says that I am the God who “Ho-tzasee Es-khem may-erets Mitsrayim”; who brought you out of the land of Mitsrayim. And it’s best, I think, to use “Mitsrayim”, rather than “Egypt”, since “Egypt” brings to mind the modern nation of Egypt, which is an rather different entity. Indeed, the suggestion that the Exodus be thought of as coming specifically from Mitsrayim is one of the reasons for this Dvar Tefila. The word Mitsrayim appears in a number of other places in the Shabbat service as well. In the “Nishmas” prayer, at the top of page 336, and in “Ezras Avosaynu” on page 350 is “me-Mitsrayim G’altahn-nu”, “From Egypt you redeemed us.” It appears three times in the brief introduction to the Song of the Sea. If A Holiday falls on Shabbat, as it did today, we say Hallel, and One of its Psalms begins “B’Tzaas Yisroel me-Mitsrayim”, “When Israel left Egypt.” And there are other places too.

But what does this word mean? The ending, the -ayim, is a dual, a plural for things that come in pairs. Thus, yad is hand, yadayim is hands. “Even” is stone; “ovnayim” is grindstones. “Ofan” is wheel; “ofanayim” is bicycle. The pattern here seems to follow the Egyptian, in which Ta means land. In Egyptian, the dual plural is taui, “two lands”. This is precisely the word that ancient Egyptians used to refer to Egypt. This reflects a distant historical reality. Egypt as a political unit appears in about 3000 BCE when the Pharoah Menes combined Upper and Lower into a single Kingdom. In Upper Egypt, or the Nile Valley, the Nile runs through a narrow valley, bounded by arid hills. In Lower Egypt, it spreads out widely into the Nile Delta. Egypt is The Two Lands, in Egyptian, and retains the dual, the plural, form in Hebrew.

But in Hebrew, two whats? A pair of what? Depending on the vowels, you have a pair of metsars or metsers. Both of these choices come from the Hebrew root tsar, meaning narrow. The former term is a narrow straight of land or water. The latter is a narrow path which forms a boundary between two fields, and more broadly, any boundary, and by extension, that which has boundaries. Either strait or region would seem to fit. The Nile Valley is very much a straight, a narrow place, and thus the word Mitsrayim could be translated as “The Two Straights.” However, Egypt is now called by Arabs as misr (or colloqually, masr). In Arabic, this means a region or province. That is, something that has boundaries. Thus, in this view, Mitsrayim would be “The Two Regions.”

In Jewish thought, however, it is very much the former view that is accepted. Mitsrayim --- slavery --- is a strait, a narrow place. The association of slavery with physical confinement is one that is deeply embedded in our Jewish pysche. I’ll close with a quotation from Victor Frankl’s book, “Man’s Search for Meaning” It appears in the Haggadah “A Different Night”, which enlivened the Berch family Seders this year.

“One day, a few days after the liberation, I walked through the country past flowering meadows, for miles and miles, toward the market town near the camp. Larks rose in the sky and I could hear their joyous sound. There was no one to be seen for miles around; there was nothing but wide earth and sky -- and then I went down on my knees. At that moment, there was very little I knew of myself or the world -- I had but one sentence in mind - always the same: ‘I called to the Lord from my narrow prison and God answered me in the freedom of space.” [Psalm 118:5 in Hallel, which starts:”Minn-Ha-may-Tzar karasee yah”]

How long I knelt there and repeated this sentence, memory can no longer recall. But I know that in that day, in that hour, my new life started. Step for step I progressed, until I again became a human being.”

Given at Tifereth Israel, April 1999.

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“MAH TOVU”

by Mark Berch

Right at the very start of the morning prayers, to be said even as one enters the sanctuary, is the Mah Tovu prayer. The prayer consists of five biblical verses, four of them from Psalms. I want to focus today just on the first verse, from Numbers 24, verse 5. It reads, {hebrew} “How lovely are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel.” Siddur Sim Shalom, which sometimes tends more toward the expressive than the literal, renders it, “How lovely are your sanctuaries, people of Jacob, your prayer houses, descendants of Israel.” It has an extraordinary source. It was recited not by a Jew, but by Bilaam. He had been sent on another mission by King Balak to see if he could get away with cursing Israel. Instead, he uttered this praise of the Israelite encampment. This story will be chanted in today’s Torah reading.

Indeed, there were those, such as Rabbi Solomon Luria who objected to using this verse, because it was uttered by Bilaam. The Talmud rationalizes its use by saying that the “tents” refers to synagogues; that the “dwellings” refers to religious schools. The Talmud also records an opposite suggestion, that the entire Balak section be recited --- Numbers chapter 22 through 24. But it was felt that this would be too great a burden.

The prayer seems to be giving a “feel-good” start for the morning davenning. It might even have a slightly smug touch about it, depending on your mood, and perhaps the general condition of the sanctuary.

Rabbi Rami Shapiro suggests that this prayer be approached from the perspective of Musar, which translates very approximately as ethics, or ethical examination. Instead of a declarative statement (which was presumably its original context), he suggests that that it be recast as a question: “How lovely are your Tents, O Jacob; your dwelling places, O Israel?” Introspection is a legitimate Shabbat activity, and the very beginning of the service, when things are still quiet, is an appropriate time for that.

He suggests that you consider the physical aspects first: How clean and orderly is your home? Are things where they belong, or do you accept too much chaos in your home? Does your treatment of the inanimate objects reflect poorly on your view of life in general?

Next, is emotional: order or chaos? As Rabbi Shapiro asks, “When you walk in the door of your home do you feel lighter or heavier? Do you relax and feel your heart open, or does your stomach knot...”

Next, intellectual: Is your home intellectually what it ought to be? Is it a place where you learn or where you hide from learning? Does it stimulate you, or is it a place where you numb yourself, “with drugs, both chemical and electronic.”

Finally, he asks us to take a broad view of what “dwelling places” ( the Hebrew is “mishkenotekha”) means now. We live in our homes, but also in our community and ultimately on planet Earth. Are we doing what we can to keep each of these “lovely”?

This is perhaps a lot to place on a single sentence of a prayer, but if we look at prayer the same way every time we recite it, we give up some of prayer’s ability to stimulate us, and to change us. Shabbat Shalom.

[If you are interested in a broader look at the ideas and tools of the Musar approach, you might want to read Shapiro’s essay, “Doing Justly: Fostering Ethical Living through Musar” in the book Worlds of Jewish Prayer (Shohama Weimer and Jonathan Omer-man, ed.), which is in the Isaac Franck Library in Rockville, MD.]

Given at Tifereth Israel, July 1998.