Shemot: Exile from our deepest Selves

Rebbe Nahman/prince forgets he’s a prince story
Prince wants to go out and see the world
Wastes away money
Sleeping outside
Biggest desire: have a real house, out of straw
King passes by, throws note into carriage:
Could I have some straw?
King cries: this is what's become of my son?

One of the hardest parts of exile: we forget who we are
Idea of that story: we are royalty
Bnei melachim—because we have a holy soul a neshamah
A pure part of us capable of amazing deeds

But we are in exile from our selves
We have many layers of our selves
There’s the face I show driving, or shopping
Totally impersonal, want to get things dome
Face we show at work
Hopefully skilled, knows a few things
Face we show at home
More loving, more honest
Face we showed when we met our beloved, when we are in love
Each level is closer to out Heart, what we truly love
These are the Layers over our neshamah
Each of them closer to it
deep down, our soul is an extension of the divine

To be in exile from ourselves means we forget our core
We forget the deepest things we care about
We forget ever having cared, about anybody, about anything
We walk mechanically through the world
We go to work
We make dinner for our family
But we lose what motivated us

I had a job where the cleaning lady was miserable
She had straight, moppy black hair, and blah round glasses
Didn’t care about appearance
She picked garbage out of bins with hands, instead of using bags
Didn’t care about cleanliness
Every day, she emptied the cans with a broken spirit
Complaining about her life
& Counting years until she could retire

Painful: she had given up on anything that made her passionate

Forgetting who you are, what you love
Is a sad process

Carlebach story about Moishele and Ivan the Magician:
Moishele was poor, Ivan the Magician earned thousands. I don't mean he was an ordinary magician with smart tricks like you see on television. Ivan knew the real secrets of heaven and earth, powerful secrets from the "Other Side" and he was not adverse to using them for his own personal benefit.
One day, Moishele couldn't bear his own poverty anymore. He went to Ivan and said: "Magician, I want to become your follower."
Ivan pointed to the couch. "Sit down. I'll have to hypnotize you first."
Moishele lay down and Ivan said: "Okay, now. Forget your name."
Forgotten
"Forget all the names you've ever so much as heard in the world."
Gone.
"Forget those you love, your wife and children."
Wiped out. Erased.
"Forget your father and mother."
Done.
"Forget there's only One God."
Moishele jumped out of his trance. "What! I can't do that!"
"Why not?"
"Because I'm a Jew!"
"So, forget you're a Jew!"
"How can I when there's only One God?"

Exile from ourselves is exile from being a Jew,
from remembering we have a holy soul that deeply yearns to serve God.

Zohar: our kol (heart) in exile from our dibbur (speech)
We talk, but don’t really feel deepest passions of our soul
We talk about weather, about what’s to eat
I know someone at end of meal, already planning the next meal

Trauma, especially, can cause our words and our heart to become disconnected
I talk, but it’s empty, and my heart is elsewhere
If I’ve lost someone, I act as if I’m functioning in the world
But my heart is obsessed with the person I love
That’s all I want to talk about but nobody would listen
And if I try, the words get stuck in my throat

When the Jews went down to Egypt, they knew who they were
They had their Hebrew names, they had Jacob, their patriarch there
But in the process of slavery, they forgot
They forgot they were anything but slaves
They forgot that life could be different, that there was any such thing as freedom
Maybe they forgot the prophecy that God would free them, or figured God had forgotten.

Pharoah starts this process by forgetting Joseph
1:8 vayakom melech chadash al mitzrayim asher lo yadah et yosef
Rashi: he made himself as if he didn’t know him—the first one never died
He forgot Joseph’s true being,
pretended not to remember what he had done—he saved country!
This was a weapon—dehumanizing the slaves, forgetting what made them great, forgetting they had a divine destiny.
Pharoah kills the babies en masse, like in the holocaust—just a number to put on the list

Compare that to when the jews go to Egypt, god counts them one by one
Each one precious as a star

One of the amazing moments this week, if it wasn’t a hoax
Was the letter found in Halloween decorations at Kmart
Claiming to be from a slave laborer in a Chinese prison
Asserting: I exist, I am here, don’t forget about us

China can only pass off a product made at a slave camps by pretending to the world they don’t exist
By effacing the identity and experience of people in these camps
Or in the sweatshops around the globe
They make it possible for us to buy their goods
Nobody would buy anything made by a slave if they could see it
If the store was a concession at the entrance of a slave labor camp
If every pieve of cheap toy or clothing had a letter from the laborer detailing labor conditions, all of us would make more careful decisions when we shop.

The amazing thing about the letter was that this person as a human broke through the wall of silence, a cry reaching across the ocean, breaking through the iron wall!

The Ari says: If the Jews had stayed any longer, they could not have been redeemed
They had reached the 49th level of impurity.
if they had stayed one second longer, couldn’t have been redeemed. 50th level means you’re lost—Like a deep ladder where you’ve descended past the last rung on the ladder, and fallen into the pit.
Meor Eynayim: exile so deep not only were bodies in exile, minds were in exile.
Exile is not just a physical process, it’s forgetting
They started to believe they were worthless slaves, they forgot their lives were worth anything.
I hear about a woman who was abused, and she lived outside in a doghouse. Imagine forgetting you deserve to live in a house, or perhaps losing the hope that you can live in a house like a human!

The haggadah says if God didn’t take us out, we’d still be there
It would have broken us: we would have forgotten our selves
Even though Egyptian pharaohs gone, we would’ve lacked the vision to yearn for anything else

America in many ways seems like it’s not exile
America is a great place to be a jew
Get very comfortable—want to fit in
On a pshat level, it is exile from Israel—from kind of religious community Torah envisions
Deeper: exile is making us forget we’re yearning for anything more
Easy to say, hey, I work, go to shows, that’s enough!
Think there’s nothing deeper in the universe other than going to work, coming home and watching tv
Gets us out of touch with our yearnings for anything deeper—with the depth of our soul


we don’t study torah—we rely on our own value judgments, don’t look for inspiration from the Torah, dond’t see the need for spiritual inspiration
we think That we don’t need shabbes—we start fitting in with American culture, doing things americans do on days off like going to baseball games or shows or working. The American
Think we don’t need to davven—
don’t need to connect with the divine for inspiration,
or to awaken our gratitude and self awareness.
Minyan not just about “duty”—daily spiritual practice. It pains me when people say you should go to minyan as a duty, or to help someone say kaddish, or it’s painful but at least it’s short. We davven because our souls need to be refreshed with a moment of deveykus, of deep personal encounter with the divine, on a daily basis.

There are some minhagim that constantly remind us we are in exile
Breaking glass at a wedding
Shney luhot habrit: leave house unpainted, don’t buy big houses,
Leave table unset

Also—we need to get in touch with our yearnings
With what our heart feels deeply-the place where our soul expresses something divine
Deep passions of our souls to relate to god,
to each other,
to experience holiness, and the divine,
to bring holiness and meaning into our lives,
to live lives which bring divine light into the world.

There are moments that awaken that passion, those deep stirrings of our soul.
Hurricane sandy did this, mobilizing people to feed & clothe each other,
To go and wash out strangers’ houses
I have seen too, in the hospital, when great tragedy strike,
The layers disappear
And people are at their holiest, most loving selves
In those moments, even of greatest tragedy, we connect with our deepest soul

We need to cherish these moments of being in touch with our deepest, holiest selves
What are we like in those moments? What are we capable of that?

And we can try to bring that part of ourself into our everyday life

I attended a wedding a few weeks ago
Wedding: like yom kippur, day of intense self-purification
Hattan danced with everyone
Dancing with me, he said “thank you for coming”
So sweet dancing together, with a pure smile on his face

This is what are we like when we are overwhelmed with compassion
When our defenses drop away
Whether because of simha or tragedy?
That is our deepest, holiest self

Those moments do drop away
Traditions advice:
We fight exile with that yearning
We can’t put always put words to what we’re yearning for
In Egypt, Redemption came from the inarticulate cry of the soul
3:24—god heard their cry—at that place, of the inarticulate cry, that is point of contact w/God.
We can’t get ourselves out-
Haggadah: if god hadn’t taken us out, we’d still be slaves
Zohar notes: what was heard was the cry, not the words
Because the cry is from the heart, which is closer to God.
The cry can express what’s missing even if we’ve forgotten

One way the Hassidim express this yearning is with melody
The kind of melody that expresses the soul’s yearning for closeness to God.
We can also do this with a kretch— “oy, I have forgotten who i truly am, what truly makes me joyous”
Help me remember how much more I can be
Help me remember how much more I can appreciate you, God, and those I love
Help me remember how much more I can do in this world