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Our Miraculous Population Explosion!

The Haggadah in Depth, Part 8

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Our Miraculous Population Explosion!: The Haggadah in Depth, Part 8

In telling the story of the Jews sinking into slavery and deprivation in Egypt, we preface in the Haggadah how in the beginning, despite all odds, we prospered and experienced tremendous growth. This class covers the paragraphs that beginss "Few in number…" till the passage of "And numerous…,"
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Haggadah, Enslavement in Egypt

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2 Comments
Anonymous April 1, 2015

Rabbi Mendel Kaplan Please don't think I have something personal against you just because I commented on a few of your videos--I don't. Reply

Anonymous March 30, 2015

Rabbi Kaplan: Righteous Idolaters? You concede (citing Ezekiel) Israel committed idolatry in Egypt, but you claim these were still modest.

It is important to see that idolatry is not merely bowing before a no-god; rather, idolatry involves works performed in service of the no-god. Yes, just as men serve G-d by His Torah, so people serve idols by works (following which torot, men—as an inexorable "by-product"—are rendered "transgressors" of G-d's Torot Ez 20:16): the very fact idolatry was being committed by them proves they were also practicing wickedness.

One cannot cite Joseph's resisting temptation as proof for all Israel's righteousness in their day any more than Yeshua and Caleb's could be cited as proof of all Israel's in their day. There are many other such examples.

If the Egyptian situation was like the Holocaust (as you detail), what sort of insanity would had to have overtaken men who wanted to stay—or, later, to want to return?
"Sin happens only by a spirit of insanity"; idolaters are ipso facto sinners. Reply

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