Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888), Talmudist, scholar, philosopher, prolific author and Rabbi of Frankfurt am Main, passed away on this date. He was instrumental in revitalizing German Jewry, bringing thousands back to the teachings of the Torah at a time when assimilationist trends threatened to extinguish Jewish life in Western Europe.
Your mind is held hostage and cannot speak with your heart.
That is how the master of the Kabbalah, the Ari, describes the enslavement of Ancient Egypt as it plays out within the human soul.
You understand very well how you should be. You envision all that you could become. But your heart does not hear of it, and runs wild.
So nothing changes. You remain a mindless slave to the moment.
Indeed, the Hebrew letters that spell Pharaoh are the same as those for the Hebrew word oref, "the back of the neck."
Pharaoh grabs you from the back of your neck and strangles your wisdom.
He hijacks your mind so your thoughts are devoted to building pointless structures up to the sky, chasing ephemeral pleasures, wasting time on nonsense, and swelling the ego, not allowing more than a trickle of your higher mind to enter your dry, sleeping heart.
How will you escape?
Go out of yourself and do something purely good, a mitzvah that feels far beyond your self-image.
Forget yourself, the limits of your understanding, the coldness of your heart.
Wrapped together within a light utterly beyond them all, mind, body, heart and soul will surrender and bond in perfect union.
With one small deed, you have liberated yourself from bondage.