The Torah column is supported by a generous donation from Eve Gordon-Ramek in memory of Kenneth Gordon.
Beha’alotecha
Numbers 8:1-12:16
We eat unleavened bread on Pesach. Why?
In this week’s Torah reading, we are commanded to eat matzah. Elsewhere, the Torah explains it simply: “Because you left Egypt in haste.”
But pause for a moment and reflect: Whose haste? Why the urgency?
The Talmud records a profound debate between two of Judaism’s greatest sages: Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya and Rabbi Akiva.
Rabbi Elazar sees the haste as Pharaoh’s. He calls it “chipazon d’Mitzrayim,” the rush or urgency of Egypt.
Battered by plague and ruin, broken by the hand of God, Egypt could no longer endure. In a final act of desperation, Pharaoh ordered: “Leave. Now.” Egypt’s gates, once iron and impenetrable, swung open. But such moments in history can be fragile and short-lived. Had the Israelites tarried, had they waited until dawn, the gates might have closed once more.
Rabbi Akiva, however, saw it differently. The haste was not Pharaoh’s, but Israel’s. “Chipazon d’Yisrael,” the rush or urgency of Israel.
After centuries of slavery, oppression had seeped into the Jewish souls. It dulled their dreams, narrowed their horizons, atrophied their will. To be free is not simply to walk away; it is to believe that one can. And that is never easy for those long accustomed to chains. Thus the urgency. Had they hesitated, had they paused to ponder, their courage might have faltered. Slavery may break the body. But worse, it breaks the spirit.
Only by moving swiftly, without delay, could they cross the threshold from servitude to freedom.
Thus, the two interpretations of one profound event:
Sometimes, it is the world that drives us to act — the pressure of history itself.
Sometimes, it is we who must find the courage to act — the call from within.
We live now, I believe, in such a moment.
For two centuries, Jews, more often than not, were able to flourish in the West. We built homes, communities and lives of dignity and purpose.
We became full citizens of nations that championed freedom, reason and justice — values deeply rooted, though often unacknowledged, in the Biblical vision of human dignity.
But today, the foundations of that civilization tremble.
Truth has become subjective. Morality, negotiable. Freedom, once the birthright of all, is now questioned and qualified.
The ideals that lifted the modern world are eroding before our eyes.
And history is not kind to vacuums.
If those who cherish freedom and human dignity do not stand to defend these ideals, others will rise to replace them with ideologies far less forgiving.
This is our chipazon d’Mitzrayim, the urgency of the world propelling us forward. It is a moment of peril, but also of possibility.
The gates are open, but they will not remain open forever. The question is not whether change will come. It will. The question is: who will shape it?
But there is a second haste, one more intimate and personal. It is chipazon d’Yisrael, the urgency of Israel itself.
For too long, young Jews have walked away, not out of rebellion but out of indifference. Not because they rejected Judaism, but because they never truly encountered it.
Yet something is changing. Antisemitism is again no longer a distant echo but a present reality. Students on campuses. Professionals in workplaces. Young men and women on city streets. They are confronting hatred not in textbooks, but in their lives. And many are asking, perhaps for the first time: Who am I? What does it mean to be a Jew?
This is our moment. Their hearts are open. But windows close as quickly as they open. If we do not offer them a Judaism that is proud, profound and passionately alive, what will remain in a generation’s time?
There are moments in the life of a people that are not accidents of history, but calls from heaven. This is one of those moments.
If not now, when? If we do not answer, the call will pass us by.
So once again we ask: Why the rush? Whose urgency was it?
It was Pharaoh’s. The world’s urgency.
It was Israel’s. Our own inner urgency.
Both still echo today.
The world needs our voice. Our people need our soul. Let us not delay. Let us not hesitate. Let us light our lights in the streets of the world.
And may this moment become not merely another page of history, but the beginning of a new exodus, a new awakening, a new future.
For the Jewish people. For the world. For us all.