Living with the Parsha
Escape!

Benjy could feel himself getting angry. That was the third time David had cheated in this game. He was doing it on purpose! Benjy felt the rage grow inside him, and explode.

"That's it, l told you before! Those dice added up to nine, not eight! You should have landed on Fleet Street, on my hotel, but you cheated as usual, just because you're scared of losing!"

He threw his street cards onto the board, upsetting the pieces. Getting up, he stalked out of the room.

Rachel and David gazed after him in amazement. "Benjy, I didn't do that on purpose, I'm just not so good at adding, you know that," David pleaded. But his older brother ignored him.

Stalking into the kitchen, he went to get himself some orange squash. By the time he had finished, he had already calmed down. Rachel came into the kitchen.

"Benjy, now David's very upset. Why did you do that? He didn't mean to cheat."

Benjy reddened. "I don't know, I just have such a bad temper. I just can't help it. I know I'm getting angry, and that I shouldn't, but there's nothing I could do, and then I say things that I regret later."

As he said this, he suddenly remembered what he had been taught in school that day. They had been learning about the plagues that G-d brought upon the Egyptians because Pharaoh would not let the Jewish people leave.

Their teacher told them that we are supposed to relive the going out of Egypt as if we were there ourselves. "How is that possible?" a boy had asked, "It all happened so long ago."

"Well, that's why we're studying this topic now," their teacher explained. "For example, do you know we are in Egypt now?" The class looked a bit blank. Wasn't Egypt a long way away?

"Look at the Hebrew word for Egypt, Mitzrayim." The teacher wrote it on the board. "If you read it a different way, it can also be read as Mitzrayim, meaning boundaries or limitations."

The teacher gazed around the class. Robert at the back in the corner was looking out of the window. Simon the captain of the house cricket team seemed to be writing something, probably cricket scores. The teacher sighed. A few pupils did seem to be listening. Then he went on.

"We all have limitations - we might be lazy by nature, or very shy, or lose our temper easily, but we must work to get out of these limitations, in order to have our own personal escape from Egypt. It might not be easy - but nor was getting out of Egypt."

Now, remembering this, Benjy realized what his limitation was. The teacher had said it: losing his temper! Could he really get beyond this limitation? Benjy frowned, and then he smiled. It might not be easy to control his temper, but it could be done. He would escape from the limitation of his temper, his own Egypt - and Pharaoh wouldn't be able to catch him.