Parashat Va'era: On the Process of Redemption

In this week’s parsha, God promises to save us from Egypt; He says it in 4 different ways, the daled leshonot ge’ulah, “the four terms of redemption”  -- 

(vehotzeiti) I will take you out from under the burdens of Egypt;

(vehitzalti) I will you save you from their work; 

(vega’alti) I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and mighty acts of judgment;

(velakakhti) I will take you to be My people and I will be your God.

There is also an additional post-redemption promise -- 

(veheveti) “I will bring you to the land that I promised to give to Avraham . . .  “  (Exodus 6:6-8)

Redemption is understood here to be a process of multiple steps, a process that encompasses not just physical removal from the difficult situation -- the initial yetziah itself -- but also a gradual psycho-spiritual recovery and transformation.    There is movement here, from a foreign land to home, from enslavement to a relationship with God.   Note the gradual disappearance of Egypt as a subject in these phrases -- the first one speaks explicitly of “the burdens of Egypt;” the second one obliquely refers to Egypt without mentioning its name, “their [the Egyptians’] work;” the third does not mention Egypt at all, but focuses on God’s might, with the implication, of course, that Egypt is the object of these divine chastisements.   Finally, in the fourth phrase, Egypt has entirely disappeared from the picture, leaving only God and Israel, alone and together.  It is no longer a question of moving away “from” something -- the preposition “from” is only in the first two phrases -- but instead, of completing the recovery by moving toward something else, toward a relationship with God and, in the fifth phrase, toward a sense of at-homeness.

It seems important in this process that ge’ulah, “redemption,” for which the whole process is named, actually only occurs at the third (and, counting all five, middle) stage.  Before the ge’ulah there is “removal” from the situation and a kind of physical “saving.”   Ge’ulah, though,  has a more holistic transformative connotation.  It implies a returning of full value to something that has lost its value -- to re-deem -- to deem worthy and whole once again, to return something to its original worth and mattering in the world, as in redeeming land that was lost to its original owners, to redeem a murder victim -- to return the value of that human being by requiring justice of the perpetrator -- or to redeem a woman whose husband died without heirs, as in Ruth.   In all these situations, the re-valuing, the returning of value, is done through relationship, by a close of kin, by someone who cares and is connected and therefore has the power to bring back the lost worth to its owner.  In a similar way here, the Israelites did not just need to be “saved” from slavery; they needed to be re-deemed -- to be brought back to their former sense of self worth in the world after a long period of denigration; to be reminded of their value, brought back into their own glory.  And this step only God could do for them; only God, as the closest of kin in a caring relationship, only God could -- through His own show of glory on their behalf -- bring them back to their former value and status.  

For the Israelites, true redemption from slavery was not just a removal from danger and suffering, but a movement into relationship with God.   In order to fully heal from any trauma, we need not only to let go, but to let go into something larger than ourselves.   The Torah beautifully refers to what the Israelites needed to let go of as sivlot, from the word sevel, which in the Torah literally means “heavy load” or “burden,” something very hard to carry.   This term helps to enlarge the sense of what the Israelites needed rescuing from.  It wasn’t just slavery, but the emotional “baggage” of slavery, the “legacy burden” (an IFS therapy term) of having been through hundreds of years of enslavement.    The Israelites would need to unburden such a heavy cultural load, but to do so on their own would be impossible.    When you let go of such a burden, you need to let go of into some larger force or container that can hold it.  In IFS therapy, the suggestion is that the burden be unloaded into air or water or fire or into a spiritual holder of the client’s choice, a divine or spiritual being of some sort.   Here, in the Torah, God offers Himself as the receptor of these sivlot, the legacy burdens of our slavery.    We don’t remove them alone; He is there -- with His outstretched arm -- to help unload them from our backs and to be there for us to let go into.  

In the process of IFS unburdening, one of the essential steps is mentally to remove the trauma victim from the site of the trauma and bring her into a safe place.   Here, God is doing just that -- beginning the process with vehotzeiti, taking us out of the scene of trauma, and ending the process with veheveti, bringing us into a safe home environment to rest and recover and renew our lives.   There is a homecoming here in many senses -- coming home to the land, coming home to our redeemed selves, and coming home to our only true refuge -- God Himself, who stretches out His arms to welcome us home from our trauma, from our journey away from ourselves in a hostile foreign environment.   In the end, having removed and released the heavy burden that took us away from ourselves, we return to our home in God.   Ashrei kol hosei bo.  Happy are those who take refuge in Him. (Ps 2: 12).

This process of redemption and homecoming is not over.  I believe that we are still suffering under the sivlot, the communal legacy burdens, not just of Egypt, but of the many persecutions throughout our history, and especially, of the Holocaust.   (We may also each have our own personal or familial burdens.)  We are obligated to remember the suffering, but the burden is not the remembering.  The burden is the terror and the dread, the hopelessness and the powerlessness, the constant gnawing sense of insecurity and the excessive worry and anxiety and the misaligned and devalued sense of ourselves that result from such a history of persecution.   These are burdens that have been placed on us from the outside world, foreign substances that can make us indeed feel like foreigners inside, not quite at home with ourselves.

There is work to do, the work of redemption, of each of us and of all of us, Jew and non-Jew alike, each group with its own legacy burdens, each individual with his own personal burden.  To make each life matter, to re-deem the value of every member of society, to release each of those burdens into the waiting arms of God, to bring each of us from the oppressive view of the outsider to the home of the divine spark inside us is to do God’s work of redemption, to bring us all home to God.    Tradition understands the first four phrases of redemption as having taken place during the exodus and the fifth to be a reference to a messianic time -- Elijah’s cup at the Passover table; we are not all home yet.  With the help of God, we can release the burdens, become re-deemed, and come home together.