So, we've got to ask: How does the redemption process start? What gets this ball rolling? The Slonimer Rebbe tells us that it all begins with the outcry of the people. In last week's parsha, "The Children of Israel groaned because of their work and cried out... God heard their moaning... remembered his covenant... and God knew." Right after this, the geulah (redemption) begins. The Slonimer explains that the four terms here (crying, moaning, remembering, knowing) and one more used later on (totalling five), express the peoples' calling-out in despair, and are reflective of the five levels of the soul which had begun, for Israel in Egypt, to awaken to the devastating thought that they were distanced from their Creator. This very calling out, an acknowlegement of their misery in being detached from Hashem, was what it took for God to hear and initiate the coming out of Egypt.
We need to understand that this groaning, moaning, and crying out comes from the deepest place within, and requires a profound and essential faith on the behalf of the groaner that God is listening, that He is there (even in China!) and that one's calling-out will never be in vain, because when God hears this, He knows. What does it mean, that "He knew?" We find that the word "to know," in Hebrew, describes a coming together, a unification, as in, "Adam knew Chavah." When the Torah says that Hashem is stirred to knowing us again, it means that a realignment is happening. Our attachment is being restored. Geulah is beginning.
So what happens to me now, I ask, as I'm being inspired by these words, inevitably finding myself crying out to my Creator, feeling myself so far away, caught within my own ego trappings? At this very moment, something "randomly" falls out of my book. We all know there is no "randomly" in life (in fact, the Hebrew word for "chance occurrence" is but an acronym of the phrase "Only From Hashem!"). So, what I reach down to pick up turns out to be a pamphlet advertising some kind of stereo sound equipment, and on the front cover, there's this old guy dressed as a doctor, wearing a stethoscope in his ears, his arm stretched-out, holding the sensory piece out, as if to say, "I'm listening, I can hear you." In bold Hebrew writing it says: "This gift you will listen to it well!" Now this may sound silly, but when you're caught in a moment like that, it is really happening. In a moment, it was a small redemption, and it felt huge.
The Netivot Shalom continues that Moses, and not the other Forefathers, lead us out of the constraints of exile precisely because of who he was, the most humble man in the world. We didn't get out because we earned it, or because we developed our characters and refined our personalities like our Forefathers did and taught us to do. If that were the case, I suppose we might never have gotten out! Our exodus was a pure gift, and only humility like Moses' will let us know this. Only humility allows us to know that Hashem grants redemption not because we deserve it, but as an absolute gift! I may act in the world, but things really only happen because of Hashem.
I pray for us all to be blessed to hear the yearning of all levels of our beings, to tap the wellsprings of faith within ourselves and to call out to Hashem that He save us from whatever confines us as an Am (peoplehood) and as individuals, and that He hear us and know us again so that we experience a complete redemption every day, within each moment, wherever we may be on the physical and spiritual map of the world. Shabbat Shalom!