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as we all know, when a Pharaoh came to power who no longer knew Joseph, that Pharaoh became concerned about just how well the Israelites were doing in Egypt. There were a lot of them, and they were prosperous. He feared they might rebel, or join with enemy forces. He worried about their links to terrorism and Al Qaeda, or the Egyptian equivalent way back then. So, he imprisoned and enslaved them.

Eventually, 400 years later, Ha'Shem hears the cries and moans of the people, remembers the covenant made with Abraham and Jacob, and takes action. Ha'Shem speaks to Moses, persuades Moses to lead the people out of Egypt through Ha'Shem's deliverance. Redemption.

This brings us to Mt. Sinai. Ha'Shem has chosen the Israelites to bring monotheism into the world. Ha'Shem has chosen the Israelites to find meaning and significance in creation. Ha'Shem has "chosen" the Israelites for redemption from Egypt and deliverance to a promised land. In accepting this covenant of redemption and deliverance, in order to accept Ha'Shem, the Israelites must choose Ha'Shem, experience revelation, and follow the law (mitzvoth). In the Torah, revelation occurs at Mt. Sinai. The rules of society are given to the people. Ha'Shem shows Ha'Shem's self to the people, speaks in a thundering voice, leads the people in the form of a column of smoke and fire.

The people aren't so sure. They struggle with their fearsthat they will die in the desert, that other peoples will overwhelm and kill them, that they have made a mistake in choosing freedom and its uncertainties over the known quantity of servitude and slavery. We all struggle with some form of these fears in our lives. Strike three?

Well, not quite. Moses intervenes, stands in the breach, in fact, argues with Ha'Shem (not for the first time). Moses warns that if Ha'Shem destroys the Israelites who left Egypt, the Israelites whom Ha'Shem had delivered from Egypt, then the rest of the world would say, "Ha'Shem sent them to the desert to destroy them." The rest of the world would come to despise Ha'Shem, in other words.

The result of the argument? The more the people fear, the more Ha'Shem provides structure: rules, the Tabernacle, the Levitessolid assurances, certainties, known quantities. Still, the people are so "stiff-necked" and rebel so often that Ha'Shem condemns their generation to wander in the wilderness, leaving the Promised Land to their progeny. Strike three. For it takes a re-generation, true renewal, to move from slavery to a place

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