01/04/2024 05:00:33 PM
In our culture, we love to lionize the hero. We tend to focus on the successful individual as the pinnacle example of being rather than the efforts of a group. We focus on the JJ McCarthy’s of the world rather than the defensive lines (who obviously won the game for Michigan). We love our heroes. In real life, individual heroes don’t exist. Life is a group effort. This fact is true even when it comes to our relationship with God.
As we start the book of Exodus or Sh’mot in Hebrew, the redemption process from Egypt also begins. God made promises in Genesis to our forefathers that their progeny would be brought up and out of Egypt, but it wasn’t until the Israelites reminded God that the process of redemption began. We might argue that God is the hero of the Torah, but this hero seems to have forgotten about the plight of the Israelites. In Exodus 2:23-25 we read, “The Israelites were groaning under the bondage and cried out; and their cry for help from the bondage rose up to God. God heard their moaning, and God remembered the covenant with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them.” The process of redemption only begins because the Israelites advocate for themselves. They raise their collective voice, and only then does God respond. Even redemption is a partnership process.
