Knowing How It Feels

Do not oppress a foreigner. You know how it feels to be a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt.                  Exodus 23:9

While these words were addressed directly to the Children of Israel, for whom Egypt had been a personal experience, we who believe Torah to be God’s expressed words, read the verse (and all verses) as being addressed to us as well.

In essence, the Torah mandates that the lessons of Israel’s national history must become part of the national psyche. Though we may be a hundred generations removed from our nation’s sojourn in Egypt, we must continue to feel compassion for the foreigner, knowing what it is like to be one.

Retaining and maintaining a first-hand attitude towards the Egyptian enslavement is mentioned in the repetition of the Decalogue [Deuteronomy 5:14] as the basis of the mitzva of Shabbat:

You must remember that you were slaves in Egypt, when God your Lord brought you out with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. It is for this reason that God your Lord has commanded you to keep the Sabbath.

As well, the words “you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt” are used by the Torah as the underpinning of other mitzvot: giving severance pay to one’s emancipated Hebrew slave [Deuteronomy 15:15]; celebration of the pilgrimage festivals [Deuteronomy 16:12]; social justice [Deuteronomy 24:18]; gifts for the poor from one’s fields in the Land of Israel [ibid.22].

All of these verses provide the practical meaning of the Haggadah’s statement that one must always see himself as having left Egypt. The feeling of personal experience must be translated into compassion for those who suffer as our ancestors suffered in Egypt.