In this episode, Rabbi Reinman discusses the purpose of the enslavement of the Jewish people in Egypt and how it transformed them. 

Chapter Nineteen: Bondage and Redemption
The need for the length and severity of the Egyptian bondage was to prepare them to receive the Torah. Had they arrived at Har Sinai as farmers, traders, teachers, rabbis, soldiers, sailors, craftsmen, grocers, bakers and so forth, people with property, reputations, social status and other accomplishments and identities, the Torah would have been superimposed on all those layers. There would not have been an unobstructed connection of the Jewish soul and the Torah. The two would not have been perfectly fused together. In order to receive the Torah, the Jewish people had to be reduced to raw human beings, stripped of possessions, of status, of honor, of dignity, of liberty. Only in this state would their very souls be connected with the Torah.
The combination of their long bondage that stripped away all the outer layers of their humanity and the spectacular exodus that etched their experiences into their collective memory prepared the Jewish people to arrive at Har Sinai and receive the Torah from God. The deterioration of the state of the Jewish people in bondage, however, extended far beyond being reduced to raw human beings, as a close reading of the text reveals.
When God sent Moshe to redeem the Jewish people, there was a need for Moshe to establish his credentials as a divine messenger. How would they know he was not an impostor? Therefore, God gave him the following instructions:
“Go assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, ‘The Lord God, the Lord of your ancestors, appeared to me, the Lord of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov, saying, ‘I have surely remembered you (pakod pakadeti es’chem) and … I will bring you forth from your suffering in Egypt.’ And they will listen to you, then you and the elders of Israel shall come to the king of Egypt and say to him, ‘God … came upon us, and now, please let us go …’ But I know the king of Egypt will not let you go … And I shall stretch out My hand and strike Egypt … and then he will let you go … and when you leave you will not go empty-handed. Let each woman borrow from her neighbor silver objects … and you will drain Egypt.”[1]
The unusual phrase pakod pakadeti were the secret code words that would assure the elders he was not an impostor. God had promised Yaakov and Yosef that He would redeem the Jewish people, and He had given them the code word that would signal the impending Exodus. The code was a closely held secret that Moshe, who had been away from Egypt for sixty years, could not possibly have known. When they heard these words, they would listen to him and accept him as their redeemer.
But then we read, “And Moshe responded and said, ‘But they will not believe me, nor will they listen to me, for they will say, ‘God has not appeared to you.’” And then God told Moshe that he should show them a specific series of supernatural signs, and then all doubt would be removed.[2]
The commentators are amazed that Moshe would object that they would not believe him after God had assured him that they would. The explanation, I believe, is as follows.
God told Moshe to assemble the elders and to go together with them to Pharaoh and demand that he emancipate the Jewish people. There was no need for the people themselves to be involved in the process. They could carry on and await their redemption. Would the elders accept Moshe? God assured Moshe that when he spoke the code words they would listen to him.
But later in His instructions, God told Moshe to have the people drain Egypt of its wealth, because He had promised Avraham that his descendants would merge from their bondage with great wealth. This then was also part of the redemption process. God instructed Moshe effectively to enlist not only the elders but also the common people.[3]
Therefore, Moshe appropriately objected, “But they will not believe me, nor will they listen to me.” God had only assured him that the elders would listen to him when he mentioned the code words, but He had not assured him that the people would listen to him. But why wouldn’t they listen to him? Why wouldn’t they accept the guidance of the elders? Furthermore, what is the meaning of the double language − they would not believe him and they would not listen to him?
This leads us to an understanding of the level to which the Jewish people had sunk during their century of bondage. According to the Kabbalists, there are fifty shaarei tumah, gates of defilement. The Jewish people descended to mem-tess shaarei tumah, forty-nine gates of defilement, but they never descended to the fiftieth. Had they descended to the fiftieth, they would have been unredeemable.[4] What does this mean? I am not a Kabbalist, but I would nonetheless like to offer an explanation.
People in deep antiquity needed to relate to a deity. Atheism did not appear until the time of the Greeks, which will be discussed in a later chapter. As discussed in Chapter 10, the Rambam, in his description of the origins of paganism, writes that in the beginning all people believed in the one God. In the time of Enoch, however, people could no longer relate to a totally transcendent, totally unknowable God. They believed that He created the world and turned it over to the stars and the lower gods, and that they could worship God by worshipping His emissaries to whom they could relate. In the fullness of time, however, “the honorable and holy Name was forgotten by all of civilization,” and they forgot that God exists.[5]
The last thread of their connection to God was the knowledge of His honorable and holy Name. This refers to the Tetragrammaton, composed of the four letters yud, heh, vav and heh, which is His actual Name and not a Name that identifies a particular power. This Name is so holy that it may not be pronounced as read but as Havayah, a rearrangement of the letters. Once the Tetragrammaton was forgotten, the world descended into full-blown paganism.
The forty-nine gates of defilement are increasingly lower levels of paganism. Descent to the fiftieth level comes when the Tetragrammaton is forgotten. The Jewish people in Egyptian bondage in their sorrow and agony also embraced the Egyptian gods who were more approachable, thinking that perhaps they would ease their condition. They sank lower and lower until they reached the forty-ninth level of defilement. Bu they never sank to the fiftieth level. They never forgot Havayah.
Moshe, knowing the level to which they had sunk, objected that he could not convince the common people to join the redemption process. First, he said, “They will not believe me.” The people were not privy to the secret code words. They were also mistrustful of the elders who might just be trying to extricate them from paganism.
Moreover, said Moshe, “They will not listen to me, for they will say, ‘Havayah has not appeared to you.’” They would not listen to him, because they would say that it is not possible that Havayah sent him. Havayah is far too transcendent to appear to a human being. He may have fooled the elders, but they were convinced that Havayah would never speak to a human being or have any other contact with the material world. They would see him as an impostor. Therefore, God showed him a series of supernatural signs and assured him that the people would be convinced.
This explanation is practically explicit in two later verses. “And Moshe and Aharon went and assembled all the elders of the people of Israel. And Aharon conveyed all the words God had spoken to Moshe, and he performed the signs before the eyes of the people.”[6] The message was to the elders, and they accepted it because of the code words. The supernatural signs were performed for the benefit of the people…
Read full chapter and earlier chapters at www.rabbireinman.com.
[1] Shemos 3:16-22.
[2] Ibid. 4:1-2.
[3] Rashi, Shemos 11:2.
[4] Ohr Hachaim, Shemos 3:7.
[5] Mishneh Torah, Avodah Zarah 1:1-2.
[6] Shemos 5:29-30.