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In this week's parsha, Hakadosh Baruch Hu begins the process. Parshas Vaera Hakadosh Baruch Hu begins the process of bringing the makos, bringing the plagues upon Mitzrayim. Which ultimately redeems Klal Yisrael. The plagues are a curriculum; they're educational material. They're meant to teach us. How one extricates themselves from bondage, how people stay in slavery, how people leave slavery So every ma'ala tells us something about the nature of what it looks like to leave our own inner slavery. Or the opposite, to tell us what it looks like to remain enslaved when we feel this state of mitsrayim, this state of constriction within ourselves. Tonight, I just want to focus on the Maka of Barad, which is the Maka of hail. Two features that I want to discuss. The first is the Mitzrim, the Egyptians were told that this plague of hail was coming And the Torah tells us a very fascinating thing: Hayare as Devar Hashem Meavde Paro, those servants of Paro.
That at this point, they already have begun to fear the word of God. As they understand, this is serious business. If Hashem says a makkah is coming, a makkah is coming. So there were those that were at this point, they were repentant Egyptians, and they said, "We know that this plague of hell is coming." So what did they do? So then, what they did. They brought their servants and their livestock into the house. They protected them because they understood this makkah of hail was going to have exceptionally destructive capacity. When we speak about the hail that was coming down, which we'll speak about in a moment, imagine meteors coming down and just destroying everything in its wake. So obviously they weren't massive. It was not like planets were coming down on Earth. But these things were destructive, in every sense of the word. Anything that was outside was going to be destroyed. It seems like at this point there were already Egyptians that understood that Hashem was serious.
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And so everything is going to be destroyed. So what they do? They said, "Let's go get everything inside." And then the Torah tells us something unbelievable. The Asher losam libu el dvar Hashem. What about those people that they did not What does samlibo mean? It means they did not take it to heart. It doesn't mean that they didn't know about it. It means they knew about it, but they didn't take it to heart. So there were those people that the Dvar Hashem, the word of God, they didn't take it to heart. They left their servants and their cattle out in the field. The obvious question is, how in the world could they have done that? How in the world could they have done that? We're talking about this again. Imagine what it would be like today. Let's say you live in a place where hurricanes are very common. You get a hurricane warning. The hurricane warning says it's going to be massive. It's going to be a hurricane that's going to destroy everything in its path.
So people who live in places with tornadoes, people who live in places with hurricanes. They're already set up. They know exactly what they need to do. I saw a video of this guy in Florida that latched these enormous ropes over his house, like the ropes that you know keep your thing on top of your car. He had specially designed ropes to keep his roof on his house, and so he had them deep in the ground over the house. And he had these ropes to keep his house from flying away. The exact opposite happened. The house needed to come up. The ropes were holding it down, so the entire house split in half. It was like the worst possible thing. But it tells us something unbelievable. If on the Weather Channel it says that a hurricane is coming, what do we do? Lock it up. Nail it down. If you knew that a twister was coming, you get these warnings. If you knew that a twister was coming, seek shelter. If a tornado is coming, seek shelter. I remember I was once walking through the airport in Denver. I had been on so many flights in a row. I was so jet lagged. I forgot which airport I was walking through.
Because at some point you're going from Seattle to Denver to L. A. to San Diego to Chicago. At some point you partially forget where you are. And I'm walking through this airport, and it's occurred to me I don't know what city I'm in. And then in the Denver airport, there's a tornado shelter. So I'm walking past the sign and I see tornado shelter. Did I end up in Kansas? How did I? I didn't know there's a like. I don't think in JFK they have a tornado shelter. They have an ice detention center, but they don't have a tornado shelter. Hello. How was she? You said that they brought their servants and slaves into their house. That's Egyptian. The Egyptians brought everything inside. The Egyptians brought everything inside, and they said this giferlich. This is going to destroy us. Not mimanoshach. They've already had a couple of plagues. Either they're fools, and if they're fools, then the Torah has no need to tell us about them. Or these people have some sort of hashkafa, some sort of philosophy, some sort of worldview that we must also have.
Because the Torah is telling us, this exists and it needs to be deeply understood. That means that every one of us in this room has the capacity to do exactly this. There are those people that take the word of God seriously, and there are those of us that don't. The Torah does not need to tell us about an Egyptian society that's already defunct. If the Torah is telling us about an Egyptian society, it must be that Egyptian society is still playing itself out in our world. Which means this crazy thing that on the weather report, if it says a tornado is coming, you'll run. But if Hashem would come to us today and say the makkah of Barad is coming, the hail is coming, and there were people that said "Nah Nah, it's not possible And they're not taking this seriously. That means that's a real thing that could happen today. How in the world is that possible? That's question number one.
Question number two is Rashi here. Tells us an unbelievable thing. Might have heard of this Rashi before. It's Rashi himself quoting a medrash. What was the nature of this hail? Remember that no miracle in the Torah is extraneous. Every miracle has a quality to it that clearly sends a message to us. If Akolishbarhu wanted to destroy Mitzrayim with regular hail, he certainly could have. But the nature of this hail is fundamentally different than any of the other hail that we've ever experienced in the history of the world. Let's look at what Rashi says. Rashi says, "Mitlakachat betocha barad," what was blazing inside of this hail "Nes betoch Nes." We have a miracle within a miracle. It's not just that there's a miraculous thing that happens. That this hail comes down and destroys everything—that by itself would have been miraculous. We have a miracle within the miracle. What's the miracle within the miracle?
So he says, "Va'ha'esh va'ha'barad me'oravin." The fire and the hail were intermingled. In other words, this was not regular hail. This was balls of ice that were on fire. That's a very unusual thing. That there was ice and fire together. Normally, what happens when you put fire and water together? Either the water extinguishes the fire, or the fire boils out the water. Here we have an unbelievable. Rashi calls it a nes betoch nes. Interesting language of Rashi. Rashi doesn't say that we have two miracles occurring simultaneously. He says we have a miracle embedded within a miracle. What's the miracle embedded within the miracle? The miracle that's embedded within the miracle is you have balls of ice that are on fire. And the water, the barad, the hail was made of water. Be lasosretzon konum, also shalom beynehem. In other words, the hail is made of water. And Rashi tells us an unbelievable thing. This mamish, it should boggle our minds. Girls, every word of Rashi is precious. Every word of Rashi is life-changing. A person could spend their life just learning Chumash with Rashi and never stop discovering new things within this Rashi. Fascinating Rashi! Look what Rashi is saying for the Medrash. Rashi is saying as follows: The hail is made of water. Normally, what would happen? The water would extinguish the fire.
Or the fire will boil out the water. Yet in this case, to do the will of their Creator They made peace between themselves. This is a fascinating concept. The water and the fire—we never thought of it like this. I never knew that water and fire had a fight. How would you have said it? Would you have said that water and fire have to make peace? I wouldn't have said that. I would have said there's a miracle within a miracle, which is a funny language of Rashi. But more than that, what's Rashi saying? In order for this miracle, within a miracle, to occur that the water and the fire could coexist, it wasn't enough just to say, 'puts his magic spell on the fire and the water, and now they could coexist.' Something unbelievable has to happen here. The water and the fire have to make a treaty. They have to make peace. And why do they make peace? In order to do the will of Hashem.
What is Rashi talking about? We have two questions on Rashi. Rashi doesn't say that this hail is miraculous. Rashi says it's a miracle within a miracle. It's a miracle embedded in another miracle. What is the miracle embedded in another miracle? That in order to do the will of Hashem The water and the fire made peace with each other. What does that mean? So I want to share with you an idea here. I want to share with you an idea here And the idea is this. It's not a pleasant thing to think about But once something is not absolutely, tangibly obvious to us We have the ability to not pay attention. And I want to express what I mean. There are people in this world. Nobody in this room. But everybody in this room, if you know what I mean, nobody in this room. I'm not speaking to anybody specific, but everybody in this room, including myself.
We all have the ability to live life without paying attention to reality. In fact, I would say most of us struggle with this on a daily basis. We live within a reality that is absolutely different than the person next to us, and there are things about ourselves that we simply don't know. There are ways we all have crafted stories about ourselves and the world around us, which are not at all the way that other people experience us. Nobody is the villain in their own story. Nobody is the villain in their own story. A husband and a wife get into a fight. Each one of them is convinced that they're absolutely right. And in the moment of that fight, what is each one of them convinced? The other person is wrong, and people create unbelievable narratives. A wife might come to me and say something. I'm not joking. A wife might come and say something like this: 'You have to understand my husband. His mother gave him everything he ever wanted. He was the crown prince of the family. He's never been told no in his life. So if I say that I can't do something for him, because of the way that his mother raised him.'
So now I become the villain, and it's like, lady, we don't need you to play Freudian armchair psychologist to tell me that your husband is dysfunctional, because the truth is, most people don't realize that when they tell those stories, they're saying much more about themselves than they are about the other person. If you show up to a conversation about somebody else and your voice is not compassionate, if you don't know how to give a complex worldview of another person or another situation, if you don't have a level of sophistication to explain the way that things are. Then it's very difficult for people to take you seriously. We all have blind spots. We have things in our lives that we're not paying attention to, and no matter how many times life comes and smacks us in the face, we tell stories about ourselves that are absolutely not aligned with reality.
One time, a guy in yeshiva came to me, and he said, "I've worked on myself very much. I know my blind spots now." Do you hear it? You know your blind spots. It's impossible to know your blind spots. If you knew your blind spots, what wouldn't they be? Blind spots. We're all walking around on some level, saying, "No! I know what's going on. I'm santi live. I'm paying attention to reality" And it's not true. Reality is very difficult to pay attention to. I'll prove it to you. And again, not from a situation like this. If you're doom scrolling Because remember, what attracts your attention when you're swiping through all these stories on Twitter, Instagram? It's hurricane, earthquake, famine, war. Terrible car crash. Child murdered his father. All these, like crazy. The Venezuelan president was abducted. Every time you're scrolling through your phone, you're hearing about horror after horror. What do you think the ratio is that you've curated on your feed, positive to negative stories? The reason why your feed curates towards negative stories is because naturally, we're more likely to stop and pay attention to negativity than to positivity.
So imagine the following scenario: a girl here in Beirut, Miriam. She's having her morning cereal. She's having her morning cereal. She's doom scrolling through her phone, going like this: earthquake Another bite of cereal. Plague, another bite of cereal. Famine, another bite of cereal. And people are living their lives, including myself. We're living our lives totally. Insensitive to the reality that's happening everywhere around us We have to do that because reality is so exceptionally painful that we become insensitive. That's the nature of how a human being lives. There are people that maintain their sensitivity to reality because every time something happens, they're intelligent enough to ask themselves How can I show up differently to this present moment? Most people put it on somebody else. Most people just go. It's everybody else's fault. There are husbands walking around, people who are divorced, people that have no relationships with their children, people who were fired from their jobs, they're alcoholics, they're drug addicts, their entire lives are falling apart. And if you talk to them for five minutes, they'll tell you why everybody else is wrong. My boss is an idiot. My wife was cruel. My children are absolutely ungrateful. That might be true.
But there's one common denominator to all of those things. You. You're the common denominator. You're walking through life not paying attention at all, and as a result, your life isn't working. But you're the only one that doesn't know why. That's an unbelievable thing to think about. There are people, and listen carefully to how the pasuk phrases it. There are servants of Paro. What does it mean to be a servant to Paro? To be a servant of Paro means I'm someone who works for the dark side. Meaning I'm someone who's living my life in the state of constriction that is Mitzrayim. That's the way they live their lives. Some of us living in this galus, living in this exile called Mitzrayim, some of us are smart enough to go. I think I might be the cause of my own destruction. That's what some people do. What does it mean to listen to the words of the pasuk Hayare as Dvar Hashem? To be afraid of the word of God. There's three words, girls. They all mean the same thing.
There's a world. There's a word called Hashem. There's a world called self, and there's a word called other. Hashem, self, and other. Three words. They all mean the same thing. Because who am I if not a piece of Hashem? And who are you if not a piece of Hashem? And we are all in some way part of this cosmic oneness that is Hashem. So when the pasuk says Hayare as Dvar Hashem, what does it mean to become a God-fearing Egyptian? To be a God-fearing Egyptian means, listen carefully. To be a God-fearing Egyptian means for you who are stuck in the state of constriction The word of God has come to you, meaning you finally became self-aware enough to be able to say, 'I am the cause of my own destruction. I see destruction coming towards me.' I can see that the way that I'm behaving is being megalgel. It's rolling towards this place of my own destruction. Some people are yareis v'ra Hashem. They hear the word of God and they go, 'It's time for me to turn inwards.' What does it mean to turn inwards? I take my servants, I take my livestock, I take myself, I move into my own house.
What does that mean when the plague is coming? How do I show up to the plague? I move into my own house, meaning I take responsibility for what's coming, and I behave differently. If the destruction is coming, I'm not participating in this anymore. I'm not participating in this anymore. There are those people. There are those people who, when they see destruction is coming, go. There's nothing I could do. I have no agency. I have no responsibility. You know what the word responsibility means. Responsible. Responsibility means I have the ability to respond. When they see the destruction coming, they go, "What do you want me to do?" "What do you want me to do?" It's everybody else's fault. They externalize the problem. I'm going to take my livestock and my servants, and we're all going to go inside the house. You're blaming me for what's coming.
No. So what happens in the process? Destruction is what happens in the process. People are living out this plague, and it's happening to every one of us. Girls, it's a crazy thing. October seventh, everybody that I know was changed by October seventh. When October seventh happened, the entire world saw some new light. We started paying attention. All of a sudden, we heard people talking about Achdus and Klal Yisrael and Yachan and Natsayach. We're only going to win together. We have to be. We have to change the way that we're behaving. Everyone took their messages until what? Until we didn't. Until the threat was over. And once the threat was over, we went right back to behaving the way that we behaved because we were santi levi. We paid attention until we didn't need to anymore, and we're literally right back to the same behavior that we had before October seventh. I gave shirum after October seventh. I'm embarrassed to go back and listen to them. I gave shirum and said, "Moshiach's coming. You don't understand. We learned something in Eretz Yisrael. We will never go back. We know that the whole cause of this war was our lack of achdos." And we are right back to where we started.
You remember in COVID? You're probably too young to remember in COVID. You were in seventh grade in COVID. You remember in COVID? Mrs. Kasten can back me up on this. The Jewish community we did tshuva. We said it turns out that you don't need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a wedding. You could have had a halavai. Our children would have gotten married during COVID. We could have saved a fortune. Could you imagine? You were a fetus, so I'm glad you didn't. But could you imagine? Could you imagine going back? People got married in backyards. People got married in backyards, and you know who came? You all married in yards. Close that I'd never heard of before, but. I'm sorry. Oh yeah, and then afterwards, a very beautiful On my block, this is true. On my block, there's two houses that are literally back to back. There was a minion on the block. The mother was davening on her mitzvah. She was watching one of the boys daven very nicely. She made a shulah for her boy, for her son, for her daughter, and that boy. True, they dated. They dated in her basement. They got engaged in the park. They hung signs up in the neighborhood. It was beautiful. It was not. They couldn't go anywhere. It was COVID, and I remember reading all these articles. The Jewish community—we finally figured it out.
You could be married, making a wedding like a bar mitzvah or less. You're still halachically married. And where are we now? It's not that long afterwards. The weddings are at least as extravagant, maybe more. We're doing the craziest things that we promised ourselves we would never do. Most of us are agents of our own destruction, not paying attention, even though life has already smacked us in the face. Dams for day a kingdom are of desert, but it doesn't matter. You can have so many makos over and over again, and there are people that they're not yarev to tvar Hashem. They're not looking inwards. They're not afraid. They see the word of God and they go, "It's not going to affect me." This is not mine to take responsibility over. And they become the agents of their own destruction. And what is the destruction? Rashi quotes the Medrash. It's worth it to travel six thousand miles just to hear these words of Rashi. Rashi, every word is precious. Listen to these words of Rashi.
What's the nature of the destruction? Remember, there's no miracle that's extraneous. It's not a nes. It's a nes betochnes. It's not nes simultaneously. It's not two nesim happening at once. It's a nes within a nes. What does that mean? I think what Rashi means is as follows. The reason we write things off and go, 'nah, this is just the way the world works' It's easy to look at things and just go. Even though you're looking right at it, it's easy to look at something and not see deeper what's happening. You could look at the outside and say it's hailing. It's hailing. Do you understand what this means? It means that you see the agent of your own destruction coming, but rather than looking at it and going, it's hailing, because then you go, it's hailing. Like it hails. Did it hail this week in Yerushalayim?
My kids were. We don't get snow in Ramat Echemish. And you know when it hails, that's the closest thing we have to snow. So when you hear the pellets on the window, all the kids run over. They got to see it, and somebody made a snowball. It's not a snowball. If you come from New York, remember the old where'd you grow up? I'm from the Five Tens. I'm better than you. My wife's from Queens. So what was your maiden name? Ros Not related to anyone. Not related to anyone. My wife is a full related to everyone. So it goes like this. When were kids growing up, I knew her husband when I was in elementary school. We ran in similar circles when we were kids growing up. There was this big snowstorm in the '90s. Remember that big snowstorm? School was closed for three days. It's the one where my dad's bar mitzvah was and no one came.
Oh man! I see the intergenerational trauma. Baruch Hashem, your father passed it on very nicely to me. Now I feel badly. I didn't go to his bar mitzvah. Tell your father I wasn't invited to the bar mitzvah. It's not true. We were in different schools. There was no reason for him to invite me. You're still salty. I'm still a little salty. That I didn't get invited to a bar mitzvah of a friend, 35 years later. Maybe I'm still salty. That's my own trauma that I have to unpack. So it goes like this: When we were kids, you see snow. My kids see hail. When you see hail, what do you see? You see hail. It's a natural event. How come Hakadosh Baruch Hu didn't just send monster balls of hail to kill everything in its wake? The answer is, Hakadosh Baruch Hu says I got to get this message across to these people that are living in this constricted state of reality that they won't be able to say that this wasn't coming from the word of God.
It's not enough to be able to say, destruction happened, it's what happens sometimes. It hails. And sometimes everything you have gets destroyed in a natural plague. And what does the Rambam say? That's cruel. That's a cruel way to live your life. To not pay attention to what's going on is cruel. Hashem says it's not two nisim happening simultaneously. There needs to be a nase within a nase so that the people that are living life this way smacks them in the face and wakes them up. Every one of us has moments in our lives where we have the opportunity to wake up. And yet, most of us are still sleeping through. Here's where it gets very cool. How does this work? There's fire And there's water. And they have to make peace in order for them to coexist and do the will of Hashem. This is the secret. This is what Hashem is telling. Because remember, Hashem is it's a curriculum. It's an educational message. So listen what Hashem says.
If you want to be a person who wakes up, I'm gonna smack you with the lesson. Hakadosh Baruch Hu doesn't just smack us with a plague; he smacks us with a lesson, because he wants us to learn. So here's a big secret: life will hit you exactly the way that you need it to hit you. You know this line from Rav Gav: Don't live your, don't don't be, don't be upset if life turns out exactly the way you lived it. Love that line. Don't be upset if life turns out exactly the way you lived it. Life punches you in the face with what? With your own hand. That's what life does. Listen how Hashem punishes the Midrash with Barad. He says in Kevra You know how you arrived in this moment, servants of Paro Servants of the darkness, living with this constricted reality. It's because you weren't serving Hashem.
Who were they serving? How do you end up in the darkness? You end up in the darkness when you serve yourself. That's the entire Yisod of Egypt. The entire Yisod of Egypt is self-centeredness. I am the center of the universe. I do what I want. I serve nothing greater than me. To be a dignified person means I stand beneath something. And I say it's a privilege to be a part of something that's greater than myself, and I know how to align my will with the will of something greater than myself. I like this line. I heard it many years ago from one of my rebbeim. Don't be married to your spouse. Be married to marriage. And because you're married to marriage, you'll be an unbelievable spouse. What did he mean? When a person gets married, they have to understand you're no longer a woman, and he's no longer a man.
You've become a wife. He's become a husband. You transcend your natural desires, and you're willing to live for the sake of another. It doesn't mean you lose yourself to that. You find yourself within that. When a husband says to a wife "I'm ready to give up for you." There's I know you want things. I want, even though I have things that I want, I much more deeply want what you want. So when we're choosing a restaurant in a healthy marriage, you'll have like, tell me, I want to go where you want to go. I want to go where you want to go. I want to go where you want to go. There's a beautiful story with Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky, Zeir Chetzadik Levrachu, was one of the Gedolei Hadar Is a Rosh Yeshiva of Tarvadas. That at a wedding, he went over to his wife by the mechitza, and they moat. How you do that thing where you meet at the mechitza to decide what time you want to leave. So he comes over to the mechitza, and she says, "What time does the Rosh Yeshiva want to leave the wedding?"
That's how she referred to him. So he said, whenever the Rebbitzin wants to leave. So she said back to him. She said, "What I want most deeply is to leave when the Rosh Yeshiva wants to leave." The Rosh Yeshiva said, "What I want most deeply is to leave when the Rebbitzin wants to leave." She said, "If the Rosh Yeshiva wants to leave when I would want to leave, then I would want to leave in half an hour." That's a beautiful marriage. It's not about when I want to leave. It's about when you want to leave it because my deepest will is to do what you want. I wake up in the morning. Do any of us want to get out of bed in the morning on the freezing cold floor, even though we're wearing? For I guess I don't know if they did a shanalef, but for those who are shanabed, the bear Miriam comfy. Have you seen that bear Miriam comfy shanalef? You must do this. I got one last week. I was so excited. I came home. I came home last week. It was ten thirty on a Wednesday night. I walked in. I'm carrying this package.
I went into the kitchen. My wife was learning with somebody in the dining room. I put on this enormous. I look like a black bear with a bear. Maryam pink, bear. Maryam two thousand twenty five. I came into the room where my wife is learning with this girl. And my wife at this point she's used to me, so she's just like. So excited to wear. You wear it to sleep. It's so warm. You want to get up and put your feet on the cold floor. I'm gonna go to Davin. You better marry someone. Absolutely. By the way, all I want—I'm so deeply Jewish. I just want to be adorned in free swag. That's my entire. I just want everything else to be. That's why I wear LL socks all the time. It's a story for a different time. This is the trauma of growing up in Farakway with no money. I just want to live for free.
The crazy thing is that we say so. I don't want to get up in the morning. I don't want to daven. I don't want to do that chesed. I want to do what I want to do. And we live that way, not knowing. That because we prioritize our own needs, because there's nothing greater than ourselves, the days of John F. Kennedy going, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country," are gone forever. And so now your president gets up and he's like, "I'm the best, I'm the greatest," you know, like great like you've never seen before, and this is the leadership of a country reflects the state of the country. We didn't elect a narcissist for no reason. We did that because that's the way we're living today. We put ourselves at the center of the world.
Hakadosh Baruch Hu says, 'I'm going to smack you.' Anes betochanes. The fire and the water are going to coexist. Hell, they're going to make shalom. I didn't know they were in a fight. I didn't know that fire and water were in a fight. Turns out they were. You know what the fight was? Fire says, 'I demand to be fire.' Water says, 'I demand to be water.' They submit themselves to the will of God, and once they do, an unbelievable miracle occurs. Even though the nature of fire is to turn water into steam, and even though the nature of water is to douse out the fire, that's only because the ego of the fire says, 'I can exist, and in my space nothing else can exist.' And water says, 'I exist, and nothing else in my space exists.' And when they decide to live for something greater than themselves, fire and water can coexist.
Because the nature of fire is not to douse out water, and the nature of water is not to douse out fire, they actually can coexist. It's only because of the arrogance of fire and water that they can't. But once they humble themselves and say, "I want to do the will of God," everything changes. Now all of a sudden, fire and water can coexist. There's a nes betoch nes. What's the first nes? The first nes is smack in the face. Pay attention. You are the destruction. In your own life, you're choosing to be avde paro. You're choosing to be the servants of the darkness. That's an insane way to live your life. Level number two. What's that smack that comes at you? You get smacked with your own hand. What's the hand that smacks you? It's your own arrogance. You're getting destroyed by your lack of shalom. Why don't you live in harmony with people?
Remember, let's go back to the beginning. Why does that husband sit there analyzing his wife, and the wife is sitting there analyzing the husband because they place themselves at the center of their universe. And what happens when you place yourself at the center of your universe? Then nothing else has space in your life to exist with you, and that makes your life a miserable place to live. Then you're restrained by Mitzrayim, and remember, girls, nobody leaves Mitzrayim under the rule of Paro. Not one slave ever left. It was impossible to leave. Because as long as you're living that egotistical paro life, you're trapped in it. What's the secret to freedom? The secret to freedom is humility. Why? Who's the agent that takes us out of Mitzrayim? It's Moshe Rabenu. How is Moshe Rabenu described? He's Anav Mikol Adam. He's the most humble of all men. Why does it have to be the most humble of all men to take us out of Mitzrayim? Because it's only humility that can set you free from the bondage of your own arrogance.
That's an unbelievable thing to know. That you wake up in the dorms and you're ready to blame everybody else for everything that's going on around you. Just remember, that's you imprisoned in your own darkness. And there are people that are miserable. They're in miserable marriages. They are miserable parents. They have no relationship with their children. They can't hold down a job, and they don't realize it's because of their own gaiva. They're living in av de paro. They're the servants of ego. They're not afraid of the word of God. They have no idea that they're causing their own destruction. But it is possible. It is possible to free yourself from bondage and to realize the plague is coming. Turn inwards. Move inside of your house. Live life differently, and you will be spared from destruction. Girls, have a beautiful Shabbos.
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