Finding Favor: Exodus 11 and the Fight Against Antisemitism
In Exodus 11, God is preparing the Jews to leave Egyptian slavery – en route to being a free people in the Promised Land. He tells the Jews that there will be one last plague- the slaying of the first born- after which the Pharaoh will send them out of Egypt.
God then gives the Jews an assignment for our exit. He tells Moses to “speak, please, in the ears of the people: Let each man request (vayishalu) of his fellow and each woman from her fellow silver vessels and gold vessels.”
One tantalizing ambiguity arises from the text: Who is God instructing the Jews to request gold and silver from – the Egyptians or each other? Those who believe that the text is referring to the Egyptians point out that the Egyptians have the silver and gold – and it makes sense that the Jews, after hundreds of years of slavery, deserve it. Those who believe that the text is referring to the Jews point out that the term “fellow” indicates a close and friendly bond.
Millennia of commentators have wrestled with the question, with no resolution. We can safely conclude two things: We won’t figure it out, and it doesn’t matter. The Torah is not a history book, presenting a chronicle of events. It is a guidebook, intended to teach us lessons to facilitate a happier, healthier, better and more meaningful life. One of the ways it efficiently guides is through strategic ambiguity, where it yields profound lessons from each of multiple interpretations.
Here, both interpretations of Exodus 11 yield multiple lessons – and converge on one unifying teaching.
If the passage refers to requesting from Egyptians, a question arises. Why are we requesting anything from Egyptians? Given that we were slaves, a demand would be in order – for years of services rendered, with no pay. Yet, God commands us to request.
Why would God tell us to request the gold and silver? For the same reason that God elsewhere commands us to remember that we were “strangers” – rather than the more obvious and technically accurate designation of “slaves” – throughout the Torah. God did not want us to think of ourselves as victims demanding reparations, but as free and dignified people completing a transaction.
If the passage refers to us requesting from fellow Jews, two questions arise. First, how much gold and silver could the Jews – emerging from slavery only hours before – actually have? Second, what could be the economic purpose of everyone borrowing the same things from each other?
But Exodus 11 is not about economics. It is about God preparing the Jews for the hard work of freedom. A free people, we learn, has an abundance mindset – and is therefore willing, and even enthusiastic, to lend to one another. This mass lending and borrowing – without any contracts or collateral, which are conspicuously absent in this passage – consecrates us as a community of individuals who trust each other and who remain dignified even when we don’t have material wealth. We are commanded to leave Egypt not as powerless victims, but as dignified people who have the capacity to help others.
Regardless of whether the Jews are requesting from the Egyptians or from each other, God’s instruction is counseling us away from a victim mentality and towards a dignity mentality. This meta-theme of the Torah – the imperative to a dignity culture over a victim culture (and an honor culture) – is explored in my forthcoming book, “God Was Right.”
The rejection of the victim culture that God commands in Exodus 11 has a fascinating result in the following chapter.
The Egyptians admire and even like the Jews – and revere our leader!
What happened?
God just taught us an important lesson. The Jews, even as emerging slaves, do not win favor by identifying or presenting as victims. We do so through Jewish self-determination, community solidarity ,strength and dignity.
Fast forward to a news item from Washington last week – the Holocaust Education and Antisemitism Lessons (HEAL) Act in the House, which was co-sponsored by a bipartisan group of 61 members. There are many reasons why Holocaust education is vital. The Holocaust is a massively important historical event, and should be universally studied for that fact alone. The Holocaust showed that the most “civilized” people could be the most barbaric – which should lead students to ask about the expectations for education. Holocaust studies illustrate the concepts of bystanding and upstanding, and enable students to consider their applicability in their lives.
There are many others.
(Hall of Names in Yad Vashem- The World Holocaust Remembrance Center; Credit: Dr. Avishai Teicher, 4/11/11)
The Congressmen behind the HEAL Act, and other advocates of Holocaust education, agree with those reasons. But they led with another – which almost always leads the discussion. This is that studying the Holocaust will diminish antisemitism.
A reader of Exodus 11-12 would question the very theory behind it. The Egyptians come around to “favor” the Jews – but not because we were victims. They do so because we showed strength and dignity.
Dara Horn, my landsman from Millburn High School, published a remarkable book in 2021 – “People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present.” The theme of her book: the sympathy that people have for dead Jews in no way translates into favor (or even absence of dislike) for living Jews. She told the Australian Jewish News last year of a common sentiment she came across in her research: “Oh, it’s so sad that Jews died in the Holocaust, and it’s so gross that people live in Israel.”
The data overwhelmingly shows that Dara is right. For example: Germany has both Holocaust education and a law criminalizing Holocaust denial. Yet a 2022 survey by the Bertlesmann Foundation found that 36% of Germans believe, “What the State of Israel is doing to the Palestinians today is in principle no different than what the Nazis in the Third Reich did to the Jews.” Only 40% disagreed with that statement.
Many American universities became hotbeds of antisemitism in 2023-24, despite probably every professor and administrator knowing about the Holocaust – with perhaps none denying it.
If appeals to victimhood do not generate “favor” towards the Jews, what might? Enter Bishop Robert Stearns, the leader of the Evangelical para-church ministry Eagles Wings.
Bishop Stearns often says: “antisemitism is a solvable problem.” And he knows how to do it. Eagles Wings identifies primarily young, influential Evangelical pastors with either large church memberships and/or social media followings – few of whom know much about the Israel or the Jewish people (as Evangelicals and Jews generally live in different parts of the country). Eagles Wings takes these Pastors on a 12 day trip to Israel. The Pastors regularly say a variant of: I came to Israel as a tourist and I left as a Zionist. They express their Zionism and their love of the Jewish people in their sermons, in their community activism, in meetings with policymakers and editorial writers, on social media and at events that they host in their churches. Each Pastor will influence tens of thousands of Christians to love Israel and the Jewish people throughout their ministry.
And it only costs $6,000 to send a Pastor to Israel.
The philo-semitism of these Evangelical leaders is so profound, and their influence is so vast, that it has informed how I conceptualize antisemitism. Whenever I hear someone remark on rising antisemitism, I point out that we are doing great on a net basis.
Some of Erica and my closest friends are these Christian leaders who we have met through Eagles Wings – on the trips, in our home and at their churches. We have had thousands of conversations with these Pastors about Israel, the Jewish people, and this great Christian-Jewish friendship. The Holocaust has come up a few times, but only in passing and never as anything that informs their favor towards the Jews.
What does account for the favor? We have asked many Pastors over the years about the most meaningful part of the trip. We originally expected to hear about walking where Jesus did, climbing Masada, touring Ir David, getting baptized in the Jordan River, shooting at Caliber 3, driving up to Jerusalem, seeing United Hatzalah in action or visiting the Kotel. Those were all significant. But the most consistently meaningful part of the trip: Shabbat dinner at a Jewish home in Jerusalem.
It is at Shabbat dinner, numerous Pastors explained, where the strength of the Jewish family, the vibrancy of the Jewish community and the living truth of the Land comes to life. It is the strength that resonates from Shabbat dinner – of course combined with all else that the Pastors experience in the Land – that seeds what I think is the widest and deepest philo-semitism we have ever experienced. And I think it must be very similar to the fellowship and dignity that the Jews demonstrated in Exodus 12, leading to the “favor” shown by the gentiles who witnessed it.