Parshas Bo 5786 "You too shall give into our hand sacrifices, etc." - Taking a path in the service of Hashem from every single thing

00:00 Here is a story about the Baal Shem Tov that the Rebbe told many times. Once, the Baal Shem Tov’s students were sitting and learning in the beis midrash. Outside, rain was falling, the wind was blowing, and the ground was full of mud and puddles. A wagon driven by a non-Jew passed by and sank into the mud. He tried to pull it out but could not; it remained stuck. The horses tried too, but they could not get free. He tried again and again, without success. The non-Jewish wagon driver saw a beis midrash nearby, with people sitting inside and learning. He put his head through the window and asked them to come help him: his wagon was stuck, and they could lend a hand to pull the horses and wagon out of the mud. The students said, “What can we do? We can’t do it; we don’t know about these things. We’re not capable of that kind of work.” The non-Jew became very angry and replied, “You can, but you don’t want to.” That is approximately what he said, in Russian or Ukrainian, the language he spoke. The Baal Shem Tov repeated his words, which meant: You can, but you don’t want to. Afterward, when the non-Jew had left, the Baal Shem Tov called his students and told them that the non-Jew had come into the world to teach us a lesson in the service of

02:10 Hashem. For the Baal Shem Tov taught his students that they must learn a lesson in the service of Hashem from everything they see or hear. And since they had heard something like this, even from a non-Jew, they had to learn a lesson in the service of Hashem from it. The non-Jew came to teach us this lesson: When a person comes to fight his yetzer in matters of serving Hashem and tells himself, “I can’t, I can’t, it’s too hard, I can’t,” he is told, “You can. You have to want to; if you want to, you can.” If the desire is there, the ability will be there too, to the extent that the thing is possible. You can; only the desire is lacking. They learned this from the non-Jew who brought that message. When the Rebbe told this story, he explained that in it, the Baal Shem Tov teaches the meaning of the Mishnah: “Who is wise? One who learns from every person.” “Who is wise? One who learns from every person” does not mean learning only from Jews, but even from a non-Jew. That is, from anyone, even from the nations of the world, one can learn a lesson and a directive, something about serving Hashem. This is based on the Baal Shem Tov’s teaching about Divine Providence: every detail of everything that happens is by Divine Providence. It follows that when a person sees or hears something, even if he hears it from a non-Jew, it happened by Divine Providence so that he would learn

03:40 from it a lesson in the service of Hashem. And in the weekly parsha, Parshas Bo, the Torah tells of the Exodus from Egypt. Moshe Rabbeinu goes to Pharaoh time after time and engages in a whole struggle with him to make him send the Jews away: “Let My people go, so that they may serve Me.” In this week’s parsha, we find that after the plague of darkness, Pharaoh could no longer bear it. He called Moshe Rabbeinu and told him he would allow them to go. Yes, everyone could leave, the people; but the animals—“Only your flocks and cattle shall remain”—leave the flocks and cattle here, with us. Moshe Rabbeinu told him that not only would all the people leave, but “our livestock too will go with us”—our flocks and cattle. As it says later in the parsha, not a single animal belonging to us will remain here in Egypt; everything will leave. More than that, Moshe Rabbeinu says, “You too will give into our hands.” You yourself will yet give us some of your flocks and cattle. “For we do not know with what we will serve Hashem until we arrive there”—we do not know with what or how we will serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu until we get there. So you yourself will yet give us animals. Rashi addresses this and explains: Moshe Rabbeinu told him that not only would our animals go with us,

05:17 but you too would yet give us some of your animals. Why? Because “we do not know.” Rashi says: We do not know “how burdensome the service will be” for us. We do not know how demanding Hakadosh Boruch Hu will make our service, what that service will be, or what He will want from us. We do not know “how burdensome the service will be”; perhaps He will ask for more than we can provide, more than we have. So not only will we take our own animals, we will take some of yours as well. That is the verse in this week’s parsha. And we need to understand this verse: What is going on here? What does it mean? At first glance, there are things here that make no sense at all. First, what does it mean that the service may be “burdensome” for us? Why did Moshe Rabbeinu think the service might be so difficult, that Hakadosh Boruch Hu would make it hard for us? Why would that happen? Does Hakadosh Boruch Hu want to make things hard for Jews? After all, “Hakadosh Boruch Hu does not make unreasonable demands of His creatures.” Everyone understands that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is compassionate and gracious, and He asks a person to serve Him according to his ability. “I do not ask according to My strength, but according to theirs.” This is perfectly straightforward. Why did it occur to Moshe Rabbeinu to say that perhaps He would make it burdensome for us? Why “burdensome”? And why that particular word? He could have said: how much He will ask for, how many offerings we will have to bring. What is the significance of the word “burdensome” here? And then, what does he say?

06:50 That perhaps we will have to take some of yours too. Why? Because we do not know how much we will have to serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu. We do not know how much, or how, or how hard it will be. But how will taking some help? Even if we take some, perhaps He will ask for still more. And secondly, why do we need to take anything now? If He asks for it, we can go and buy it. What is this all about? What is Moshe Rabbeinu saying? What is his answer, his argument? He says, “Perhaps it will be burdensome for us.” And therefore, if Hakadosh Boruch Hu asks for more than we have, we need to take some from you right now. But how will that help? How do you know it will be enough? What is this whole story about? In fact, the entire verse seems completely unnecessary. It is not clear why the Torah needs to include all of this, everything Moshe Rabbeinu thought to obtain from Pharaoh. What did he want from him? And here comes the explanation. This is a sicha of the Rebbe’s, I’m sure, from forty years ago, on 12 Shvat, Shabbos Parshas Bo. The Rebbe held a farbrengen; it was Shabbos Parshas Bo, the Shabbos before Yud Shvat. It was a fascinating farbrengen. And as was his holy practice, the Rebbe discussed Rashi at the Shabbos farbrengen. Here he dwelt on this Rashi and asked all these questions. The Rebbe explained that this is where Moshe Rabbeinu’s wisdom lies. He did not simply mean that Hakadosh Boruch Hu

08:16 would make things hard for us. The difficulty was not that Hakadosh Boruch Hu would demand that we do more and more in our service, and so on. Where did we find this wording before? Not long ago, in Parshas Shemos, Moshe Rabbeinu said, “Let the work be burdensome for the men.” What was the added burden Pharaoh decreed? They had to go and search elsewhere. They had to search throughout Egypt to find straw for the bricks: “The people scattered throughout all the land of Egypt to gather straw for the bricks.” What we have is not enough, and we need to take from somewhere else. That is the wording of the verse there: “Let the work be burdensome.” And here Rashi uses the same expression, “the service will be burdensome.” In other words, this is not about the service becoming harder. Moshe Rabbeinu knew that the service was the service of offerings. He understood that this was the service Hakadosh Boruch Hu wanted from the Jewish people: that we should take animals, [unclear], and all these things, because one aspect of serving Hashem is the service of offerings. When Moshe Rabbeinu said, “It may be burdensome for us,” he meant that the Jewish people might bring their own animals, but Hakadosh Boruch Hu might want us to take animals from the Egyptians. For that gives Hakadosh Boruch Hu special pleasure. The whole idea of offerings is that we take things from the world, physical things—we take animals and make them an offering to Hashem, and this is a pleasing aroma to Hashem. Hakadosh Boruch Hu takes pleasure in our offering a physical animal and placing it on the altar,

09:48 And in this way, we give it to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. So Moshe Rabbeinu thought it possible that Hakadosh Boruch Hu would require us, in carrying out this service, to go and look elsewhere. Perhaps Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants the offerings to come not only from animals belonging to the Jewish people, but from a greater, higher, deeper level: to take animals from Egypt itself, animals that belonged to the Egyptians, and make offerings of them. We would transform the darkness, transforming those animals into offerings for Hakadosh Boruch Hu—something that brings Him great pleasure. That is why he says, “We will not know with what we are to serve Hashem until we arrive there.” This is not about quantity. Quantity is one of the things we can know. Certainly Hakadosh Boruch Hu will not ask for more than a person can give. What you have, you can give; what you do not have, He does not ask of you. Moshe Rabbeinu had no doubt that Hakadosh Boruch Hu would not ask us for what we did not have. The question concerned only the nature of the service itself: would we make do with the animals we have, or would we go looking for the Egyptians’ animals? That we do not know—“with what we are to serve.” So we want to take some of your animals too. You, too, will give, so that we have both kinds, and we will offer whichever Hakadosh Boruch Hu asks for. And here the Rebbe brought out that from this comes

11:09 a wonderful lesson in serving Hashem, from what Moshe Rabbeinu wanted to tell Pharaoh. After all, the whole point of the Exodus from Egypt is, as the verse in the parsha says, “You will serve G-d on this mountain.” “When you bring the people out of Egypt, you will serve G-d on this mountain.” The entire purpose of the Exodus is for the Jewish people to be able to serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And there are different ways to serve Him. What is serving Hakadosh Boruch Hu? A Jew serves Him through Torah, through avodah, through holiness, and through all the things the Torah and mitzvos have given us. But we, the Jewish people, also have the service of “You, too, will give into our hands”: a person must take something from Egypt, from the world, from this physical world, and make an offering to Hakadosh Boruch Hu from that as well. This applies not only to offerings, but to every detail of serving Hashem. A Jew must act in the spirit of “From my enemies I gain wisdom”: take from the enemy, from the yetzer hara, from the one who opposes him, from the opposing side, and transform that very thing—transforming darkness into light and bitterness into sweetness. This is the ultimate purpose of serving Hashem: to take from the world and, through the world, come to serve Hashem. Moshe Rabbeinu alluded to this when he told Pharaoh, “You, too, will give into our hands.” We will receive the Torah, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu will give us Torah and mitzvos and holiness, and everything He wants. But you should know that we will not only receive gifts from Hakadosh Boruch Hu. “You, too”: we will take from Egypt, from the world itself, from every thing, a way to serve Hashem. “Who is wise? One who learns from every person”—even from a non-Jew, even from an

12:59 Egyptian, one can go and learn a way to serve Hashem. “From my enemies I gain wisdom”—from the enemy, the opponent, the yetzer hara, from Pharaoh, we learn a way to serve Hashem. And this is a general lesson in serving Hashem according to the Baal Shem Tov’s approach. The Rebbe likewise taught us to learn from every person and everything in the world. As the Baal Shem Tov says, from everything a Jew sees, he must learn a way to serve Hashem. When we look at the world—“When I behold Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and stars that You have established”—a Jew looks around and sees physical things, sees the world, sees stars. And what must he see in them? “The work of Your fingers.” He learns from them a lesson in serving Hashem. “How manifold are Your works, Hashem”; “How great are Your works.” A Jew contemplates the world and worldly matters, and must draw from them a way to serve Hashem. Of course, a person needs to be removed from worldly matters while he sits and learns in yeshivah, and the same goes for everyone who sits and learns. Each person needs to learn for himself, to gain an understanding of the whole world. He needs to learn maamarim of Chassidus, learn Mishnah, learn a verse in Chumash, learn Torah, fulfill mitzvos, and occupy himself with holy matters. But when you happen to be walking down the street and encounter something, see something somewhere, something that happened, or hear a report of something that happened elsewhere—there is a way to serve Hashem in it. This is what the Baal Shem Tov taught us, and this is the meaning of the verse “You, too, will give into our hands”: we take from there itself, from worldly matters and the things in the world, and learn from them a lesson in serving Hashem and about the greatness of the Creator. We also learn from events and from what we see happening. The Rebbe, the leader of our generation, and our Rebbeim told us many times, delivered maamarim, a whole world of stories and sichos, that our Rebbeim...

14:56 He teaches us how, from everything in the world—even something that seems to have no connection to Torah or wisdom—we can learn a way to serve Hashem. And the Rebbe spoke about how to learn ways of serving Hashem from such things. One example was in 5729, when the spacecraft flew to the moon. 5729. It was a major event at the time; the whole world was talking about it. People asked whether, according to the Torah, it was consistent with faith, whether it was possible to reach the moon. The Rebbe drew an entire lesson from it. In Tammuz 5729, the Rebbe answered all those questions. The Rebbe did not dismiss the whole thing as foolishness. He did not say that millions of dollars were being spent on something with no value or purpose, just to reach the moon. He said that we must learn a lesson from this event. And the Rebbe said that we can learn a way to serve Hashem from it, too. The Rebbe devoted an entire sicha to it and discussed details of the spacecraft, the spaceship. This was one of the lessons the Rebbe spoke about. The people flying in it have to stay alert at all times and know what is happening where they are. People of great intelligence come and sit inside that spacecraft, that spaceship. And they must know that every movement, every button, everything they are about to touch, requires attention to every detail. If even one detail is not done as it should be, it could overturn the whole undertaking. And that is the lesson from the flight,

17:00 in serving Hashem, as the Rebbe says: Hakadosh Boruch Hu loves the souls of the Jewish people. He places a soul in a body and gives it a special task in the world—to make the world a dwelling place for Hashem. A person needs to be wise and understanding, perceptive, and endowed with every good quality. But he also needs to obey. There must be kabbolas ol of the Kingdom of Heaven: obedience to Hakadosh Boruch Hu in every detail, every point, every mitzvah, and every enhancement of a mitzvah. That is the idea: to learn from worldly matters how to serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And that is what the parsha teaches us. In Tiferes Shlomo, there is a teaching in which he interprets the verses as a path in serving Hashem. Concerning Moshe Rabbeinu’s words to Pharaoh, “You, too, will give sacrifices and burnt offerings into our hands,” he says, along these lines, that a Jew must learn from the non-Jew, from the opponent, from the yetzer hara, from his own desires—from those very things he must learn a way to serve Hashem. He puts it this way: when a Jew gets up early and wants to sleep a little longer, the yetzer hara tells him, “Sleep a little more; what are you doing getting up?” He should say to it, “I’m learning from you yourself. If you, the yetzer hara, come to me so early, with such enthusiasm and such promptness, then from that very thing I must learn to get up early and serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu with promptness.” And so it goes: from every matter, from bad character traits, from the animal soul, one must learn how to use that very thing to serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And so he writes in Tiferes Shlomo that this was the point of Moshe Rabbeinu’s words: “You, too, will give into our hands,” “for we will not know with what we are to serve Hashem until we arrive there.” He asks: What does “until we arrive there” mean? We do not know how to serve Hakadosh Boruch Hu until we get there? And...

19:08 Until we get there, how will we know what to do? What does “until we arrive there” mean? He explains it based on the verses in which Moshe Rabbeinu says that when we are at the beginning of our avodah and need to know how to serve Hashem, we can learn ways of serving Hashem from the yetzer hara itself. At the beginning of our avodah, we need to look at how things work in the material world, take methods and examples from them, and learn from them. But when a person is already deeply immersed in serving Hashem, he does not need to go to a non-Jew to learn from him how to serve Hashem. “Until we arrive there” — until we reach the very highest levels, we still need to be able to learn even from a non-Jew. But once a person has reached the very highest levels in serving Hashem, he serves Hashem on his own and does not need to take from him. That is how he explains it. In any case, as it relates to our discussion, the point is that this is a fundamental principle of serving Hashem and the way of Chassidus: we need to learn a way to serve Hashem from everything in the world. This is connected to the first Rashi in Chumash, where Rashi says that the entire world was created for the sake of the Torah and for the sake of the Jewish people. So it is clear that every detail in the world is [unclear]. We need to learn how to serve Hashem from everything, and make the world — the entire world and every detail in it — into a G-dly world, a holy world, a dwelling place for Hashem. And this must happen and be fulfilled in the manner of “As in the days of your going out of the land of Egypt, I will show him wonders.” May we merit

20:46 to soar into the complete Geulah through Moshiach Tzidkeinu.