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Dear TBZ Community,
In this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Vaera, God speaks to Moses and promises that the people of Israel will be taken out of Egypt, freed from slavery, and brought into a covenantal relationship with God:
לָכֵן אֱמֹר לִבְנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל אֲנִי ה’ וְהוֹצֵאתִי אֶתְכֶם מִתַּחַת סִבְלֹת מִצְרַיִם וְהִצַּלְתִּי אֶתְכֶם מֵעֲבֹדָתָם וְגָאַלְתִּי אֶתְכֶם בִּזְרוֹעַ נְטוּיָה וּבִשְׁפָטִים גְּדֹלִים
Say, therefore, to the Israelite people: I am Adonai. I will free you from the labors of the Egyptians and deliver you from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and through extraordinary chastisements (Exodus 6:6).
It is a moment that, on the surface, should sound like hope, good news, the beginning of redemption. And yet, when Moses brings this message to the people, the Torah tells us something deeply unsettling:
וַיְדַבֵּר מֹשֶׁה כֵּן אֶל־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְלֹא שָׁמְעוּ אֶל־מֹשֶׁה מִקֹּצֶר רוּחַ וּמֵעֲבֹדָה קָשָׁה
But when Moses told this to the Israelites, they would not listen to Moses, their spirits crushed by cruel bondage (Ex. 6:9).
The people were not able to hear the promise of redemption. They were not able to listen to words of hope or even to words of comfort. The Torah explains why: mikotzer ruach u’mei’avodah kashah – because of shortness of spirit and the crushing weight of hard labor.
Kotzer ruach literally means a “shortness of breath”. Their ruach, their “spirit,” was constricted. They could not breathe deeply. And because they could not breathe, they could not listen.
The medieval commentator Rashi deepens this moment with his commentary. On the words “they did not listen to Moses,” he writes:
וְלֹא שָׁמְעוּ אֶל מֹשֶׁה – לֹא קִבְּלוּ תַנְחוּמִין
Lo kibl’u tanchumin – they were unable to receive words of comfort.
God’s message, Rashi suggests, was not only a promise of future liberation; it was an attempt at comfort in the midst of unbearable suffering. And still, the people could not take it in.
Rashi then explains kotzer ruach in bodily terms:
מִקֹּצֶר רוּחַ – כָּל מִי שֶׁהוּא מֵצֵר, רוּחוֹ וּנְשִׁימָתוֹ קְצָרָה, וְאֵינוֹ יָכוֹל לְהַאֲרִיךְ בִּנְשִׁימָתוֹ
Anyone who is in a state of anguish – meitzar rucho – has short breath and cannot draw long breaths.
When a person is crushed by fear, exhaustion, trauma, and despair, their breathing becomes shallow. Their body tightens. Their world narrows. And in that state, even words of love – even the presence of God – can feel inaccessible. The tragedy here is not only that redemption is absent, but that the people are too depleted to receive it.
This is only the second parasha (portion) of the book of Shemot (Exodus), the great narrative of liberation from slavery. And already we are taught something essential: before there can be freedom, there must be breath. Before there can be redemption, there must be enough spaciousness in the soul to imagine that something else is possible.
Egypt in Hebrew is Mitzrayim – מִצְרַיִם – a word that comes from the root meitzar – מֵצַר – meaning a narrow place, a place of constriction. The Exodus, then, is not only a physical journey from one land to another; it is a spiritual and emotional journey from narrowness to expansiveness, from holding one’s breath to breathing freely again.
The Psalmist gives this language to our ancestors, and to us:
מִן־הַמֵּצַר קָרָאתִי יָּהּ עָנָנִי בַּמֶּרְחָב יָּהּ
Min hameitzar karati Yah; anani bamerchav Yah
From the narrow place I called out to You; God, answer me with spaciousness (Psalm 118:5).
In God’s promise to Moses, God instructs him to tell the people:
הוֹצֵאתִי אֶתְכֶם מִתַּחַת סִבְלֹת מִצְרַיִם
I will bring you out from under the bondage of Egypt (Ex. 6:6)
The word sivlot, often translated as “burdens” or “bondage,” holds multiple meanings. It comes from the Hebrew root ס־ב־ל which carries a wide emotional and spiritual range. Other words from this same root include sevel, meaning “suffering” or “pain;” savlanut, meaning “patience;” and sovlanut, meaning “tolerance.”
I once learned a teaching – I have not been able to find its original source – that reads this verse in a striking way. God is not only saying, “I will free you from the suffering of Egypt,” but also, “I will free you from your tolerance of Egypt.” The people had begun to accept their slavery. It had become normal. It had become life. And God intervenes at this precise moment because the danger is no longer only the cruelty of oppression, but the possibility that the people will grow so accustomed to it that they will no longer imagine anything else.
This is, I think, a frightening and important teaching in Torah. Redemption is threatened not only by pain, but by numbness. Not only by despair, but by adaptation. When the unbearable becomes bearable, when injustice becomes routine, when cruelty becomes policy, and when fear becomes a guiding principle, something essential in the human spirit is at risk.
These two teachings – kotzer ruach and sivlot – speak powerfully to our own time. There are moments, both personally and collectively, when reality becomes so overwhelming that our breathing grows shallow. We are flooded with fear, grief, anger, and exhaustion. And then, as a result, we may grow used to what should never be normal. When we say, “this is just how it is,” or “there’s nothing we can do,” or “that’s the world we live in now.”
We are living in a time when cruelty and fear shape policies and rhetoric. A time when immigrants and asylum seekers fleeing violence and poverty are met with suspicion, and dehumanization – echoes of Pharaoh’s hardened heart in our own day. A time when war, loss, devastation, and violence feel endless; when images of suffering accumulate faster than our hearts can process; when many of us feel the urgency and pain in our daily lives, while many of us can only recognize the impact on our neighbors, on other bodies, in other states, in other countries; and when many of us feel both overwhelmed and strangely numb at the same time.
Kotzer ruach. Shortness of breath. Narrowness of spirit.
Parashat Vaera does not judge the Israelites for this. It does not blame them for their inability to listen. It names their condition with honesty and compassion. And in doing so, it offers us a mirror. It asks us to notice where our own breath has become shallow; where our spirits feel constricted; where fear, exhaustion, or habituation has made it difficult to imagine redemption.
The process of liberation in the Torah is not immediate. It takes ten plagues. It takes confrontation, resistance, uncertainty, and risk. Redemption is not automatic, and it is not easy. But it begins with a refusal to accept slavery as the final word. It begins with the slow, deliberate work of widening the narrow places – inside ourselves and in the world around us.
Perhaps our task in this moment is not to pretend that we are not afraid, or not tired, or not grieving. Perhaps it is to notice where we need help breathing again. To ask: What helps restore my ruach? Who or what helps me remember that this is not the only possible world? Where do I find moments of spaciousness – of connection, courage, and imagination – even when the path to liberation feels long?
Parashat Vaera reminds us that redemption begins not with miracles, but with breath. With the courage to resist numbness. With the insistence that suffering should never become acceptable, and that injustice should never become normal. From the narrow place we cry out – and we hold on to the hope that an answer, spacious and life-giving, is still possible.
May we find the courage to pause and breathe deeply, to soften what has tightened inside us, and to reclaim the imagination that allows us to see beyond what is to what might yet be.
May our breathing open our hearts, and may our open hearts move us toward compassion, responsibility, and action.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rav Claudia