BESHALACH
Your Place Your Mission
As the Jews leave their former enslavers behind, taking along their wealth and their pride, we find an interesting injunction by the Torah to the newly liberated people. They must never again live in Egypt.
What’s the Torah’s issue with Egypt? Is Egyptian soil any more soaked with Jewish blood than Poland, medieval Spain, or Germany? If the Egyptians were the first to enslave and oppress the Jews, they surely weren’t the last. So why the ban?
We are where we are because that’s where we are needed, and that’s where the Divine Hand has brought us. Our geographic location is an indicator of a mission waiting for us, and an invitation to fulfill it. You don’t happen to be where you are. You are there for a purpose, now go and carry out that purpose.
