Machshavot HaLev - Yeshivat Lev HaTorah

251
בלה תובשחמ
Take away the idea of a just, compassionate, free and powerful G-d who reveals
Himself in nature and history and gives guidance to human life and substitute it
with blind forces controlling the world and human destiny according to a predetermined
and unchangeable pattern, then no one, however free from physical
labour they are, is free. This is how it was in Egypt. We don’t just say avadim
hayinu be-Mitzyrayim – we were slaves in Egypt, but le-Pharaoh, we were slaves
in Egypt to Pharaoh – with no free will and dependant on man. In fact all of
Egyptian society was enslaved to Pharaoh with even the taskmasters having
people above them who could beat them. Yes, they had it easier than us, but they
were still enslaved. Greatness is what you were born into and so was slavery, you
could not change things in Egyptian society and your role in life was an accident
of birth.
Since that time we have had nations try and convert us by force or assimilate with
them. Our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents went to the stake and
the gas chambers singing AM YISRAEL CHAI and SHEMA YISRAEL – dying as
free men and women unafraid of mortal man.
This is why we drink the second cup – in honour and praise of the One who
delivered us from THEIR bondage, freeing us form relying on man or fear of
nature, reminding us that their exists within each of us a G-dly spark that can
never be extinguished.
8. Cup 3 – Ve-ga’alti (after bircat ha-mazon before hallel).
This cup is parallel to the phrase, “I shall redeem you with an outstretched arm
and with great punishing judgment” (Shemot 6:6).
Based on Rav Hirsch - Relief from burdens and suffering is, as we said, the “root”
of freedom. Deliverance from slavery, reliance on man and fear of nature is the
trunk, but redemption alone is the branch from on which the fruit completing
the “tree of life” can ripen.
A liberation which merely removes hard labour and the enforcers of that labour
is a negative attainment at best. It removes the blocks preventing a person from
finding their true purpose in life, and allows G-d to enter into them as their mind