5785 - Parshas Beshalach: How could it be that only a small part of the Jewish people left Egypt while the rest died and remained there? By Rabbi Shimon Zonnenfeld, at the conclusion of the daily Daf Yomi class of Rabbi…

00:00 Speaker 1 The Gemara relates that before Rabbah began his lesson, he would say something humorous and then open the discussion. Why? Because a mitzvah should be performed with joy, and he saw that his students were not in such a joyful mood. So he would tell them something amusing and then begin the lesson. They tell of a rabbi from Jerusalem who once traveled abroad to collect money for the poor of Eretz Yisroel. He arrived in Istanbul, where there was a wealthy Jew. He approached him and asked him to donate to the poor of Eretz Yisroel. The wealthy man said, “I’ll give you a substantial sum, but on one condition.” What was the condition? He had a question. He had already asked several rabbis, and none had answered him. “If you answer my question, I’ll give you a generous sum.” The rabbi said, “All right. What’s your question?” He said, “When I say—” This Jew was unlearned; he didn’t—“When I say Bameh Madlikin on Friday night, it says there that we don’t light with pitch or with... all sorts of things, and it says, ‘not with fat.’ Nachum the Mede says we may light with fat.” But he didn’t know how to read it correctly. He read it as “not with Nachum’s milk.” What had Nachum done wrong that we couldn’t use his milk? The rabbi immediately understood whom he was dealing with. He said, “I’ll tell you. It’s written in the Torah, in the weekly parsha: ‘When Pharaoh sent the people away’—Pharaoh, not Nachum. Nachum didn’t want to leave Egypt, so he was penalized, and we don’t use his milk.” It says—later on it says, “The children of Israel went up armed from Egypt.” What does “armed” mean? Rashi brings several interpretations. One interpretation is that one in five left Egypt. That means twenty percent of the children of Israel left Egypt; eighty percent remained in Egypt, and they were buried during the three days of darkness. Why? So that

02:03 Speaker 1 the Egyptians wouldn’t see them burying the—and wouldn’t see. Here’s my question: eighty percent of the children of Israel didn’t leave Egypt, and there’s an opinion that it was far more than eighty percent. It wasn’t one in five who left Egypt, but one in fifty. First of all, this was something that would become obvious. The Egyptians would see that only a small portion of the Jews had left. So why were the three days of darkness needed for that? And it’s hard to grasp that the vast majority of the children of Israel remained in Egypt and were buried there. This is a very, very difficult question on the plain meaning of the verse. How can we say that only a small percentage of the children of Israel left Egypt, while all the rest remained in Egypt and were buried there? There are various answers. One answer, which we’ll explain, is that in the Book of Bereishis, Hakadosh Boruch Hu asks Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” He replies, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Hakadosh Boruch Hu says to him, “His blood and the blood of his descendants cry out to Me from the ground.” In other words, when Cain killed Abel, he killed not only Abel himself, but also his descendants and every generation that would have come after him, until the end of time. The same applies here. Those who died during the three days of darkness—it was not only they who died, but also all their descendants, and their descendants’ descendants, to the end of all generations. When we make the calculation, it comes to a very large number indeed. We’re counting not only those who died there, but everyone who would have come from them in the generations afterward, to the end of all generations. That really was a large number. So that answers the question. And since the measure of goodness is greater, when a Jew brings another Jew closer to his Father in Heaven, he is not only bringing

04:10 Speaker 1 that person closer, but also all his descendants, to the end of all generations, and everyone they, in turn, will bring closer. Since the measure of goodness is greater, and since we are on the eve of Yud Shvat, the day of the Frierdiker Rebbe’s passing and the day on which the Rebbe accepted the leadership—when all their work was to bring about the coming of Moshiach and bring the Jewish people closer to their Father in Heaven—when someone brings a Jew closer, he brings closer not only that Jew, but also all his descendants, to the end of all generations. May it be Hashem’s will that the complete Geulah come soon, with Hashem’s help.

04:46 Speaker 2 Amen.

04:46 Speaker 1 Speedily and soon.