"The Redemption of Israel from Egypt will forever stay the spring of the whole world"

"יציאת ישראל ממצרים תישאר לעד האביב של העולם כולו"

“The Redemption of Israel from Egypt will forever stay the spring of the whole world” Rav Kook in his Monthly Calendar for the Month of Nissan

In order to properly understand this saying from Rav Kook, we need to look at his words in another place. In his commentary on the siddur, Rav Kook explains that if God had not intervened in Egypt, and he had not brought us from slavery to redemption, then the whole world would be static, without change, and we would have stayed forever slave to Pharo.

What does Rav Kook mean when he says “the whole world would remain static”? Why does his intervention create a “spring for the whole world”?



By creating the world, God showed, in this world, his existence. However, this faith in the creator is not enough in Judaism! In the Kuzari, we are introduced with a philosopher who belives God created the world and then stopped caring about it, stopped participating in this creation. This perspective is swiftly rejected in the Kuzari.

Rather, we believe that God continuously participates in this world in order to ensure it’s direction towards the ultimate redemption. Where was the first time we saw this participation of God in this world? This was in the redemption from Egypt. At that point, God intervened in the already existing world and proved once and for all that he did not limit his participation in this world to the mere role of creator. Rather, he is a constant active participant.

This message of God’s constant participation in the world is the greatest message of Hope in this world! Our God is a good God and therefore his participation leads this world towards good. In the redemption of the Jews from Egypt, God took an oppressed nation and freed it from slavery thus giving hope to all the oppressed nations of the world! This day became “the spring of the entire world”, the hope for all oppressed nations, the hope for every individual knowing that God guides this world justly.

This is why the exile of the Jewish people is considered, by Yehezkel HaNavi, the greatest possible desecration of God’s name. Through this exile, God’s participation in this world is questioned. It is exile which prompted the Christian “Replacement Theory” according to which the Jewish People have been since replaced because of their inadequacy. Exile puts into question our vision of God’s participation in this world. It thus becomes a great blow to the hope of all nations and all individuals which yearn for a world guided by a just and loving God. It removes the message of hope for all oppressed nations created by the redemption from Egypt.

In 1948, we were blessed with the end of the physical exile of the Jewish People. Hope in a good world was once again re-instated. Oppressed nations could once again hope that salvation would come from a just and loving God. The constant participation of God in our world was re-affirmed.

I find it quite funny (at the risk of sounding political) that some people who claim to defend human rights are specifically fighting this reality of hope created by Zionism and the establishment of the State of Israel. When they fight the state of Israel, they are, in reality, fighting the very basis of the theological hope of all nations. They are, in some sense, fighting against human rights. They are fighting against the greatest ever testimony to justice.

As we approach the holiday of pessah, let us not just be thankful for past miracles but let us truly get inspired from the miracles our generation is going through which attest to the fact that God is still an active participant in our world and is slowly leading Klal Israel, and the world world, towards our final redemption, step by step, through our return to Torah, Eretz Israel, and one another.