God makes a promise to Abraham that he will be the progenitor of a great nation. But before they can become a nation they will have to suffer 400 years of slavery. This was to teach us what it means to be a stranger in a strange land.

A Quick Dvar Torah: The Covenant Between the Parts — The Power of Hope

Parshat Lech Lecha

Good morning. And now for a quick Dvar Torah.

In this week’s parsha, Lech Lecha, we come across one of the most important events in Jewish history: the Brit Bein HaBetarim, the Covenant Between the Parts.

In this covenant, God makes some extraordinary promises to Abraham. He promises that Abraham’s descendants will become a great nation and that they will inherit the Land of Israel.

Now, we have to remember something. Abraham and Sarah are already getting older, and they have no children. God is promising them a great future, but they have no idea how that future will unfold. We know the rest of the story because we’ve read the Torah. Abraham and Sarah haven’t.

But there’s something else in this covenant that is very interesting.

God tells Abraham that his descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, that they will be enslaved and oppressed, and that this period will last 400 years.

Now, the obvious question is: Why?

Why did the Jewish people have to experience slavery in Egypt? Why was suffering part of God’s plan for the creation of the Jewish nation?

I think there are two very important lessons here.

The first is the importance of hope.

You know, one of the worst things you can do to a human being is take away his hope. A person can endure extraordinary hardship if he believes that there is something better waiting for him in the future. But when you take away hope, you take away one of the things that keeps him going.

There’s an interesting example of this in our daily prayers.

In the Shemoneh Esrei, the Amidah, we have a blessing that was added concerning those who seek to destroy or betray the Jewish people. It begins with the words Velamalshinim al tehi tikvah — let there be no hope for the informers.

Think about that. Of all the punishments we could wish upon our enemies, we begin by asking that they should have no hope.

Because to live without hope is a terrible punishment.

We saw the importance of hope during the Holocaust. There were people who, even in the most horrific circumstances, held on to the belief that one day the nightmare would end. Of course, survival depended on many factors beyond anyone’s control, and even those who maintained hope often did not survive. But hope could provide people with the strength to endure another day.

And this is something that has sustained the Jewish people throughout our history.

We’ve experienced exile, persecution, destruction, and suffering. But we have never abandoned the belief that there is a better future ahead of us.

God tells Abraham that his descendants will suffer, but He also tells him that their suffering will come to an end. They will leave slavery, and they will emerge as a nation.

In other words, even before the suffering begins, God gives us a reason to hope.

And that brings us to the second lesson of slavery in Egypt.

Why did we have to experience what it means to be slaves?

One of the answers is that we had to learn how to treat other human beings, particularly the stranger who lives among us.

The Torah repeatedly reminds us, Ki gerim heyitem be’eretz Mitzrayim — because you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

You know what it means to be powerless. You know what it means to be oppressed. You know what it means to be treated as an outsider.

Therefore, you have a special responsibility not to inflict that suffering on others.

Now, there’s an important distinction in Jewish law between different categories of non-Jews. The ger toshav, the resident alien, is traditionally understood as a non-Jew who accepts the Seven Noahide Laws, the basic moral principles that Judaism considers binding upon humanity.

These laws include prohibitions against murder, theft, and other fundamental violations of civilized society.

The idea is that a society cannot function unless its members accept certain basic moral responsibilities. People may have different religions, different customs, and different traditions, but there must be a common commitment to the fundamental rules that make peaceful coexistence possible.

And that is an important lesson for every society, including our own.

At the same time, the Torah’s concern for human dignity and its prohibition against mistreating others are not limited to the formal category of the ger toshav. We are commanded to behave justly toward other human beings.

The experience of Egypt was meant to teach us both sides of this responsibility: the importance of maintaining a moral society and the obligation to remember what it feels like to be vulnerable.

And this brings us back to Abraham and the covenant.

God does not promise Abraham that Jewish history will be easy. Quite the contrary. He tells him that there will be suffering, slavery, and exile.

But He also promises that the suffering will not be the end of the story.

And that’s the lesson I think we should take from this week’s parsha.

We don’t know what tomorrow will bring. Abraham and Sarah didn’t know what tomorrow would bring either. But they had faith in God’s promise.

Throughout Jewish history, we have faced situations that seemed hopeless. Yet somehow, we have survived, rebuilt, and continued.

Hope is not the belief that life will always be easy. Hope is the belief that hardship does not have to be the final chapter.

And perhaps that is one of the greatest lessons of the Covenant Between the Parts.

No matter how difficult the present may be, we must never lose sight of the possibility of a better future.

Something to think about.