48 | APRIL 6 • 2023
P
esach is a night of
questions, but there
is one we do not ask,
and it is significant. Why
was there a Pesach in the
first place? Why the years of
suffering and slavery? Israel
was redeemed.
It regained its
freedom. It
returned to the
land its ances-
tors had been
promised cen-
turies before.
But why the
necessity of exile? Why did
God not arrange for Abraham
or Isaac or Jacob simply to
inherit the land of Canaan?
If the Israelites had not gone
down to Egypt in the days
of Joseph, there would have
been no suffering and no
need for redemption. Why
Pesach?
The question is unavoid-
able, given the terms of the
biblical narrative. The Torah
indicates that there was
nothing accidental about the
events leading up to Pesach.
Centuries before, Abraham
had been told by God in
the “covenant between the
pieces,” “Know for certain
that your descendants will
be strangers in a country not
their own, and they will be
enslaved and ill-treated for
four hundred years” (Genesis
15:13).
We make repeated ref-
erence in the course of the
Haggadah to the fact that the
whole sequence of events was
part of a pre-ordained plan.
God “had already calculated
the end” of suffering. When
Jacob went down to Egypt
he was, we say, anus al pi
ha-dibbur, “forced by Divine
decree.”
God Himself told Jacob,
“Do not be afraid to go down
to Egypt, for I will make you
into a great nation there”
(Genesis 46:3) without giv-
ing him an intimation of the
sufferings his children would
endure. The Sages say that at
the end of his life, when Jacob
wanted to tell his children
what would happen to them
“at the end of days,” the gift
of prophecy was taken from
him. Without knowing it, the
Israelites were part of a nar-
rative that had been scripted
long before.
A Midrash — one of the
few places in which the Sages
expressed their disquiet about
this strange stratagem of
providence — expresses the
problem very acutely:
The Holy One blessed be
He sought to bring about the
decree He had spoken of to
Abraham, that “your descen-
dants will be strangers in a
country not their own.” So He
arranged that Jacob should
love Joseph more than his
other sons, that the brothers
would be jealous and hate
Joseph, that they would sell
him to the Ishmaelites who
would bring him down to
Egypt, and that Jacob would
hear that Joseph was still alive
and living there. The result
was that Jacob and the tribes
went to Egypt and became
enslaved.
WHY SLAVERY?
Rabbi Tanhuma said: To
what can this be compared?
To a herdsman who wishes
to place the yoke on a cow,
but the cow refuses to have
it placed on her. What does
the herdsman do? He takes a
calf from the cow and leads
it to the field where plough-
ing is to take place. The calf
begins to cry for its mother.
The cow, hearing the calf cry,
rushes to the field, and there,
while its attention is distract-
ed and it is thinking only of
its child, the yoke is placed
upon it. (Tanhuma, Vayeshev,
4)
The script God writes for
His people is sometimes cir-
cuitous and terrifying. The
Sages applied to it the point-
ed phrase: “How awesome
is God in His dealings with
humankind” (Psalm 66:5).
Why did He want His people
to experience slavery? Why
was exile in Egypt the nec-
essary prelude to their life
as a sovereign nation in the
Promised Land?
The Book of Jonah tells
a strange story. Jonah has
been asked by God to con-
vey a warning to the people
of Nineveh. Their ways are
corrupt; the city will be
destroyed unless they repent.
Jonah flees from his mis-
sion, and in the course of the
book we learn why. He knew,
he says, that the people of
Nineveh, hearing the words
of the prophet, would repent
and be forgiven. For Jonah,
this was unjust. When people
do wrong, they should suf-
fer the consequences and be
punished.
This was particularly so in
the case of Nineveh, a city of
the Assyrians who were to be
the cause of so much suffer-
ing to Israel. God’s forgive-
ness conflicted with Jonah’s
sense of retributive justice.
God decides to teach Jonah a
moral lesson. He sends him
a gourd to give him shade
from the burning sun. The
next day He sends a worm
that makes the gourd wither
and die. Jonah is plunged into
suicidal depression.
God then says to him: “You
have been concerned about
this gourd, though you did
not tend it or make it grow.
It sprang up overnight and
died overnight. But Nineveh
has more than 120,000 people
who cannot tell their right
hand from their left, and
many cattle as well. Should I
SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH
The Unasked Question
Rabbi Lord
Jonathan
Sacks