The Hollywood Portrayal of The Exodus Of Egypt Is Wrong

0:04...because anyone that has been exposed to these influences may carry a certain scar within them. Especially those who have engaged with movies that claim to depict biblical events, such as those about Moshe Rabbeinu or Noach. does not end there. From all the movies and the shows that are out there, there is a certain scar that each of us has, having spent any amount of time watching movies, especially the ones that are so-called biblical movies, such as the movies of Moshe and Noach... Even though they're full of corruption of the text and distortions, still many of us don't realize that even the things that people who are not involved or connected to Torah—things that have to do with what happens under the ocean, what happens in the heavens, aliens, whatever it is—all of that stuff has a certain amount of effect. And many times, that effect is damaging, damaging to the person's...

1:18Imagination is damaging to a person's perspective, and most critically, it is damaging to their understanding of the miracles that took place 3,333 years ago. Why? Because most of us who have spent any amount of time seeing visuals... Visuals of the Jewish people, of course, as personified by Hollywood — whether the Hollywood of 50 years ago or modern-day Hollywood — not much of a difference, as has happened throughout the years. The damage is significant, and many people don't realize how significant it is until they take things and think about them deeply. One of the reasons why people don't necessarily have a natural excitement when it comes to discussing the miracles of the Exodus is because, quite frankly, after you're told the story the first time, it becomes familiar.

2:25it's no longer a big deal. Why? Because once you have told a story and you've been told a story through something visual, such as watching a Hollywood film showing all of these people leaving Egypt and all of these people crossing the ocean, it loses its impact. That, even if it is exciting for a second, it loses its value very quickly, especially when it's repeated a second, third, or fourth time on a daily basis, needless to say, on Pesach. Most people are not so excited about the Exodus. Why are they not so excited? Because it's something that their minds can fathom. they can put that in a box, and see, when you tell me Exodus, when you tell me "yetziat Mitzrayim," I could already imagine what it looks like and it fits in a certain box. And anything that I know what it looks like and I could put it in a certain box, I get used to it. And if I get used to it,

3:28By default, that means I'm not excited about it. If a person could have the same woman every day, little by little, that beautiful woman who's beautiful to everybody in the world becomes ugly to him. If a person has the same delicious food every single day, within a short period of time, that delicious food that's delicious to everybody else in the world becomes disgusting to him. Why? Because he has too much. This is what Shlomo HaMelech says: that a person who finds something delicious, like honey, should not eat too much of it because eventually, you'll vomit it. So, when we have too much of a certain good thing, it's not to our benefit. Needless to say, when we get used to something, when we get used to something, so when somebody has the same image of what the Exodus was, that image loses its value very quickly. That image loses its value very quickly. And how does a person eliminate that? First and foremost, know that all of the visuals that you have ever seen about the Exodus, about the Avot, about the Tzaddikim, whether of Tzaddikim of the previous generation, the generation of Baal Shem Tov, Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov—all of it is wrong.

4:50All of it. Why? Because the way we picture the Avot, whether it's Avraham, it's just simple, lowly people. You know, perhaps they look more like the Afghanis today. Each one of them walks around with some type of goat. Maybe if they're wealthy, they have a cow. They go into the market. Maybe they'll get a melon, perhaps a cucumber, because that's all they can afford, and they live in some tent or hole in the wall, and that's their life. Everybody's just a simple person. Yes, they're righteous and holy, but it's not something anyone really aspires to be. Needless to say, everybody is damaged, everybody doesn't feel so good, everybody has some blood on their face, some wounds, some scars, but it's not that many people. Perhaps it's, I don't know, 30,000 people, 40,000 people, something that I could quantify because I've seen it before in a sports event, like a football arena.

5:56or soccer or some type of show. I've seen that amount of people enter and exit a building before, and that's really what they show you in the movies. It's a quantifiable number of people. There lies the big mistake. You see, a human mind can... quantify and visualize 30,000, 40,000, 50,000 people because you've seen it. It's possible to see. You go to a football arena, you go to a stadium of some kind, you see a lot of people and you say, okay, this is, you know, 50,000, 100,000 of you. You can quantify it. But the reality is that one of the extraordinary things about the Exodus is that it was so extraordinary, it is impossible for the human mind to quantify it, to visualize it, because of the massive scale that it was, where even if someone is going on the most conservative estimate,

7:02most conservative estimates of the number of people that left Egypt, which we're talking about, is several million. Of course, some of the less conservative estimates are in the tens and hundreds of millions. But the point being is, even if you want to say, okay, it was only five, six, 10 million people, that number of people is not possible for a human mind to visualize and quantify in their mind and actually see the correct image of it. If it's simply too big, you won't be able to see the beginning or the end of it. So when you visualize the Exodus, you're visualizing something that's, quite frankly, impossible. It's not just your neighborhood leaving, it's not just your community leaving. It's not merely a game of baseball leaving. In this way, it loses its value very quickly. So it's very important for us to know that the only way to undo that damage, that spiritual scar we all have in our mind, is through delving deeply into the Torah and understanding that whatever image we have that's not coming from the Torah is wrong.

8:13it's wrong, and it's important for us to arrive at the seder with that type of mindset. That's what makes it easier for us to understand the significance of the sages, how beautiful they were, how great they were, how simply different they were than anything we could ever imagine. As a rabbi, I must emphasize that this mitzvah is mandatory for every Jew, as it ensures all members of Israel can properly celebrate the holiday with dignity and joy. The importance of kimcha depischa stems from the fundamental halacha that one must ensure everyone can experience true simcha, happiness, during the holiday.