He [Pharaoh] summoned Moses and Aaron in the night and said, “Up, depart from among my people, you and the Israelites with you! Go, worship the Lord as you said! Sh’mot / Exodus 12:31
Our teacher Rabbi Yitzchak Zelig Morgenstern of Sokolov (1) quotes his grandfather Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk:
Worship God as you have said. Do not merely say that you will worship God but actually do so seriously and faithfully.
In what is a remarkably ironic twist, our teachers put into the mouth of Pharaoh, the Egyptian monarch who has repeatedly dismissed the authority of God, an exhortation that the Israelites not just pay lip service to their commitment to worshipping God but actively and consistently demonstrate their service to the Holy One.
Shabbat Shalom –
Rabbi David M. Eligberg
1 Rabbi Yitzchak Zelig Morgenstern of Kotzk-Sokolov (1866 – 16 October 1939) was a leader of Hassidic sect Rosh Yeshiva (Head of the Academy), a member of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah (Conference of Eminent Torah Scholars, and a leader of ultra-Orthodox Polish Jewry before the Shoah, dying shortly after the war began.
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