Lead Tidbit
More of the B'Chol Dor VaDor Thing
The Book of B'reishit gave us our first opportunities to learn from the events, trials and tribulations of the lives of the Avot and Imahot and "the Tribes", and to put ourselves into the various situations and imagine what we might have done, if... But the fact is, we are not Avraham or Sara, nor are we Yosef or any of his brothers. We are their descendants and spiritual heirs and we see patterns in our own lives that were shaped by their deeds, but we are not them.

Now we find ourselves at the beginning of the Book of Sh’mot, the first sedra of the rest of the Torah. The giant personalities from this point on are now Moshe Rabeinu and Aharon HaKohein, but there is a big difference between the rest of the Torah and B'reishit. That difference is not measured by comparing Moshe to Avraham Yitzchak, and Yaakov. The difference for us is that the Avot were alone. It was only them. From Sh'mot on, we are there too. Bnei Yisrael. The multitude of the former small family soon to be nation. And with that, the challenge of reliving the events, of putting ourselves into the situations, become much more real, much more possible to do. Certainly, we take note and hopefully internalize Moshe Rabeinu's concern for his fellow Jews, his chivalry with the daughters of Yitro, his humility... and much more. But there are also thousands of "plain" Jews we were enslaved to Par'o and who were confronted with the day to day struggles and challenges.

"They didn't change their language, method of dress, their names." But many did. And those became lost in one way or another in Egypt, to Egypt. What about each of us? When the Hagada "commands" us to relive the experiences of the Exodus, at least on a K'ILU (as if) level, we are also being asked if we are the types of Jews who would have left Egypt, or would we be among the countless Jews who perished during the plague of Darkness - literally and figuratively. Would we call out to G-d; would we rally to Moshe's call; what kind of Jews are we?