I once heard an idea expressed by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, who said that even though we may think we were redeemed from slavery in Egypt in the spring to correspond to the time of nature’s renewal and revitalization, it’s actually just the opposite – spring comes back to life and is rejuvenated because the Jewish people came out of Egypt during this time! Now, at first glance, this statement flies in the face of normative logic – the cycles of the seasons certainly preceded the historical exodus from Egypt, not the contrary, as this teaching suggests. For many years I was unable to grasp his meaning, until the following comprehension finally came to me.
As the Jews were leaving Egypt the Torah states: “It was at the end of four hundred and thirty years, and it was on that very day that all the legions of God left the land of Egypt. It was a night of anticipation for God to take them out of the land of Egypt, this was the night for God; a protection for the Children of Israel for their generations” (Exodus 12:41-42). Rashi explains the phrase “on that very day” to mean that on the 15th of Nisan [the day of Pesach and the exodus from Egypt], many years earlier, the angels had come before Abraham to announce that he would have a child [with Sarah]; exactly one year later, on the 15th of Nisan, Isaac was born; additionally, it was on the 15th of Nisan that God first revealed to Abraham, at the “Covenant of the Pieces” (Genesis 15:1-20), that his descendants would be slaves in the future for a period of four hundred years. Based on these events, all occurring on the 15th of Nisan, Rashi comments on the words, “a night of anticipation for God,” that God had guarded and anticipated this day as the eventual day He would fulfill His promise to take the Jews out of Egypt.
From these verses and Rashi’s commentary we may understand that there was something intrinsically special about this date; that the drama of the Israelite’s exile and redemption from Egypt was “sealed” into the fabric of this particular day by design. Thus, the terms “on that very day” and “a night of anticipation for God,” represent a certain potential energy within this specific day, just waiting to be activated and fulfilled. This teaches us that, in a sense, days don’t only become holy and special due to the historical events that happen on them, but rather, on a deeper level, that events occur on certain dates because those very dates contain within them a corresponding supernal energy waiting to be revealed through the events of human history.
To further illustrate this dynamic, the song of Ha’azinu, in the book of Deuteronomy, states: “When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of Adam, He set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel” (Deuteronomy 32:8). Yet, chronologically, the seventy archetypal nations appear on the world scene before the seventy souls of Jacob/Israel! From this we understand that the archetypal model of the seventy souls of Jacob, in a spiritual sense, preceded the seventy nations. The archetypal nations are seventy because the souls of Jacob would be seventy in the future.
As stated earlier, the Midrash teaches that when the thought arose in the “mind” of God to create the world, the thought of Israel arose first (Bereishit Rabbah 1:4; Tikunei Zohar 6). Just as God looked into the Torah and created the world, when creating humanity, He first thought of Israel, the archetypal ideal nation/man, and only then created Adam, from whom all peoples and nations descend, in order to manifest His initial prototype and ultimate purpose.
Similarly, on the first letter of the first word of the Torah, bereishit, “in the beginning,” Rashi explains that the letter beit can be interpreted to mean not only “in the beginning,” but also, “for the sake of the Torah, which is called ‘beginning’, and for the sake of Israel, which is called ‘beginning’” – for that reason God created the world.
Another intriguing Midrash states that when God was creating the seas He created them only on condition that when the people of Israel would reach the Reed Sea, pursued by the advancing Egyptian army, the waters would part for them.
If we take the above teachings (and many more in our tradition), describing the purpose of creation as being for the sake of man in general and Israel in particular, and apply them to the concept of cycles, an amazing notion comes to light. It appears not simply that we were created in order to be in tune with nature and the cycles all around us, but rather that the seasons of nature and the specific cycles of time as revealed in the Torah were created in order to be in tune with us! In other words, the cycles of time are ingrained and encoded within all levels of physical creation because these cycles are based on the Torah’s sheet music or soundtrack of humanity’s epic destiny — to actualize our potential to truly become an “image of God in the world.”
In light of these teachings, it becomes evident that even though on one level we were redeemed from Egyptian slavery in the spring to correspond to the time of nature’s renewal and revitalization; on a much deeper level, spring comes back to life and is rejuvenated because it was destined and “guarded” that the Jewish people would come out of their constricted reality in Egypt at that very time of the year.
