Removing the Sparks from Egypt

 

Summarized by Rav Yosef Zvi Rimon

 

"And God said to Moshe, One more plague shall I bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt - thereafter he shall banish you from here; when he lets you go he will banish you completely from here. Speak then, please, in the ears of the people, and let each person ask of his neighbor, and each woman of her neighbor, vessels of silver and vessels of gold. And God will give favor of the nation in the eyes of Egypt..." (Shemot 11:1-3)

 

            Rashi, quoting the gemara (Berakhot 9a), comments: "The word 'na' (literally 'please') always implies a request. [God is saying here] Please give them this message, so that the righteous Avraham will not have grounds to claim that I kept My promise of 'And they will enslave them and they will torture them' but did not keep My promise of 'and thereafter they will leave with great treasure.'"

 

            At first this seems to present a problematic scenario: Does God really need the nation to request silver and gold vessels from the Egyptians? Does God lack the power to obtain these vessels on His own, as it were, in order not to have to break his promise to Avraham?

 

            We must obviously pay attention to the literal meaning of the words, but at the same time another aspect of this request may carry its own message. Of course, the significance here is more far-reaching than simply the financial level. (As the well-known joke goes: Why, on the Seder night, are we so careful to recreate and remember the 'maror,' but make no such tangible memorial to the wealth which we took out of Egypt? Because the 'maror' has remained in our memory, but nothing at all has remained of the wealth...)

 

            Bnei Yisrael had reached the 49th level of impurity. The holy ARI (Rabbi Isaac Luria) z"l explains, "They could not wait. Had they waited any longer, they would have reached the 50th (and lowest) level - and would not have been redeemable, God forbid." The issue of the physical, material wealth which Bnei Yisrael were to take out did not present any problem. The problem was trying to get them out with some measure of spiritual wealth.

 

            The Gemara in Megillah 6a teaches:

 

Rabbi Yossi ben Hanina said, "Why is it written: 'And I shall remove his blood from his mouth and his abominations from between his teeth, and he too shall remain unto our God' (Zekharia 9)? [The explanation is as follows:] 'And I shall remove his blood from his mouth' - this refers to their house of worship of Karia (an Edomite idol); 'and his abominations from between his teeth' - this refers to their house of worship of Bamia (another Edomite idol). 'And he too shall remain unto our God' - these are the synagogues and study halls of Edom, in which the princes of Yehuda are destined to study Torah publicly."

 

            A simple understanding of the Gemara would indicate that the princes of Yehuda are destined to study Torah in places which formerly served as temples for idol-worship. But this is not the only message which Chazal are trying to convey. They are teaching us in addition that even amidst the culture of the non-Jews there are positive elements which may be extracted. Even from the non-Jews it is possible to remove the abominations and to be left with the positive - "and he too shall remain unto God."

 

            Each nation has something positive to offer (except Amalek). These positive aspects are called "sparks" (nitzotzot). Rav Kook expounded at length on our obligation to extract these sparks from among the nations.

 

            On the verse which reads, "You too shall give us sacrifices and offerings and we shall make them for the Lord our God ... for from Him we shall take", the Ari comments: We shall take the Pesach sacrifice from that which is good in Egypt.

 

            Today, too, with respect to western culture, there are those who take everything - the good along with the bad - while others carefully refrain from taking anything. The correct balance is to select carefully and take only the good.

 

            These sparks, God tells Israel, must be taken with you from Egypt. God wants Israel to take the good of Egypt with them. But the nation shrinks from anything that is Egyptian, from the entire culture, and therefore God phrases His wish as a request to Moshe to be conveyed to them: "Speak now, please...".

 

            This request comes after (or during) the plague of darkness. During this plague the evildoers among the nation of Israel died. As Chazal explain on the verse, "'And Bnei Yisrael went armed (chamushim) out of the land of Egypt' - the word 'chamushim' alludes to the idea that only a small number of the nation - "ehad le-hamisha", one in five - actually left Egypt." We could understand this on a simple level, i.e., that eighty percent of them died while twenty percent left the country, but it would seem that this is not the point that is being emphasized, as evidenced by the fact that Chazal also quote an opinion that only one in five hundred went out. (From here we could possibly deduce that one in five hundred 'went out' while the rest were simply dragged along with them.) In any event, it is clear that the spiritual situation of the nation was disastrous, and therefore they needed to take the sparks that they could with them from Egypt.

 

            There was a danger involved in taking too many sparks, for it could easily have degenerated into an assumption of the entire Egyptian culture. When the Egyptians died during the splitting of the Red Sea, there was an opportunity for all the rest of the sparks to be taken from them. And so Chazal comment on the verse, "We shall make you strings of gold with silver studs" (Shir HaShirim 1): The booty acquired at the sea was greater than that acquired in Egypt. Because when the Egyptians died in the sea, Bnei Yisrael were able to extract all the sparks that had remained in Egypt.

 (Originally delivered at Seuda Shelishit, Parashat Bo 5750.

 

Translated by Kaeren Fish.)