Yetziat Mitzrayim, the Exodus from Egypt, which we are currently reading about in the Torah, is not only a national historical event, but, as Rabbi Nachaman of Breslov put it, something that we as individuals, emotionally and spiritually, must engage in every day.

For hundreds of years, the Israelites were born into a slavery, not just of backbreaking labor, but of complete submission, smothering the human will. How can redemption emerge from such an exile in which even the idea that things might be different is unfathomable? What can possibly prime the pump of change when access to the spiritual and emotional tools of reimagining the self and personal transformation are eclipsed?

The Torah writes: “And it was after a long time the king of Egypt died, and the Jewish people groaned from the labor, and they cried out and their cry ascended to God from the slavery. And God heard their cry…and God knew.” (Exodus 2:23-25) There is an exile that is so deep that one does not know they are in exile at all. To groan, to cry out, is at least to know that things are amiss, thus creating a doorway. It is from this existential realization, the ability for a moment to stand outside of oneself as one is, that the first groan emerges.

The human is made in the image of God. God is perfect, lacking nothing and needing nothing, and so represents the ultimate freedom—the freedom to act not out of desire but by dint of will alone. No matter how deep the exile a human finds themselves in, that Godly freedom is always deep within us. One may only have the strength to groan, but that act, any act of rebellion or crying out, is enough to reveal the individual self with its Divine will.

What holds us back from that first groan of emerging?  Fear, of course. When the individual has been blessed (or cursed) with some new awareness of their plight, but they have not yet started the process of leaving that state for a new one, they are now both free and slave. This is a painful, conflicted state.

We know what slavery is and we know what freedom is, but exodus is much harder to put one’s finger on.   When does it begin and end? What does it consist of? What causes it? Is it a separate reality or only the blink of an eye between slavery and freedom? The same is true on an individual plain. Exodus emerging is scary because it is a liminal moment which stands on its own, unprompted by our dark past which often can not see beyond itself, and without a clearly understood future.
Perhaps this is why the Exodus is compared, in the Medrash, to birth (Mekhilta d’Rabbi Yishmael, 14:30).   Birth is the grand emergence, the creation of something entirely new, but in reality, it is merely a transition from one state to another and a painful transition which involves much groaning. “Birth is that primordial moment which brands us and forms us forever, it is that painful transition that makes the next stage, life, one which is creative and filled with desire.”  (Otto Rank, Art and Artist, 1923) The pain of change thus facilitates our personal exodus and makes possible a brighter future. May we learn from the grand Exodus in these parshiot to find the path to our personal exodus.