**Thursday, 26 Tevet 5786** (with the translation of Gemini AI)
**Parshat Va’era**
Absolute Victory – How?
After Pharaoh, in his pride and insolence, refused to send Israel away and said, *”Who is the Lord… I do not know the Lord,”* our Torah portion arrives to describe the beginning of his downfall, blow after blow. The glorious end will be described in next week’s portion, when *”horse and rider He cast into the sea”* and the Children of Israel sang their song.
Our Sages (of blessed memory) already noted that Pharaoh’s downfall occurred in this gradual manner for a reason. The purpose of the Exodus was not only for God to take the Children of Israel as His people—which He could have done all at once—but rather that through this process, His Name would be sanctified before the eyes of all. As Moses told Pharaoh when warning him of the plague of pestilence (Exodus 9:15-16):
*”For now I could have sent forth My hand and stricken you and your people with pestilence, and you would have been effaced from the earth. But for this reason have I kept you standing, in order to show you My strength, and so that My Name may be declared throughout the earth.”*
The Defeat of Ideology
**Absolute victory** is not achieved by establishing a technocratic committee of Pharaoh’s ministers to disarm him. Absolute victory is achieved when Pharaoh’s belief system is humbled and it is proven that the Lord alone rules the world. Pharaoh’s defeat was expressed first and foremost in the defeat of Egyptian faith. Regarding this, the Sages said (*Devarim Rabbah 1:22*):
“The Holy One, blessed be He, does not punish a nation until He punishes its [celestial] prince first… Pharaoh and all the Egyptians were not drowned in the sea until He drowned their prince first.”
Therefore, it is not enough to simply take Israel out of Egypt. It is necessary to humble the Egyptian faith. In next week’s portion, *Parshat Bo*, we will see how the idols of Egypt are slaughtered and their beliefs shamed—and in memory of this, we celebrate the Passover sacrifice as the founding event of the Jewish people! Specifically, **sanctifying God’s name through trust (*Bitachon*)**, by challenging nations that desecrate God and defying their corrupt beliefs—that is the recipe for absolute victory.
Not by Merit, But for His Name
If your heart whispers to you: “Given our current lowly spiritual state, are we worthy of acting with such trust in God?”—direct that thought to the words of our teachers regarding the Exodus from Egypt (*Yalkut Shimoni, Psalms 746*):
“From here you learn that Israel possessed no [meritorious] deeds for redemption or the splitting of the sea. Rather, why were they redeemed? To make for Him an eternal Name… Moses said to them: ‘You are not being redeemed because of your deeds, but so that you may tell it in the ears of your children… and give praise to the Holy One, blessed be He, to tell of His greatness among the nations.'”
Our Sages emphasized that this will also be the case in our final redemption (*Yalkut Shimoni, Psalms 866*):
“The Holy One, blessed be He, said: ‘When you were in Egypt, I redeemed you for the sake of My Name, so it would not be desecrated among the nations… and from Edom I shall do the same only for the sake of My Name.’ Rabbi Huna the Cohen said: This is what Moses rebuked them for at the end of Deuteronomy—’Not for your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart.'”
These are explicit verses that we will read in a few weeks in the *Haftarah* of *Parshat Parah* (Ezekiel 36:20-32):
“…Not for your sake do I act, O House of Israel, but for My holy Name which you have profaned among the nations… and I will sanctify My great Name… and the nations shall know that I am the Lord… when I am sanctified through you before their eyes.”
A National-Faith Consciousness
The People of Israel are not like all other nations; they are the People of God. This nation was born to sanctify His Name. Consequently, its entire walk across the stage of history is an expression of the sanctification of the King of Kings. Its humiliation is a desecration of Heaven’s Name (*Chilul Hashem*), and its victory is a sanctification of Heaven’s Name (*Kiddush Hashem*).
The return of Israel to its land is not a political event; it is a faith-based event. It is an event that humbles the beliefs of both Christianity and Islam. It fixes the Lord’s control over history into the global consciousness. It was not for nothing that the *Mashgiach* of Ponevezh, Rabbi Yechezkel Levenstein, remarked after the Six-Day War that those were miracles on the scale of the Exodus from Egypt.
The time has come to stop broadcasting “smallness” (*Katnut*). Stop searching for “arrangements” and “calm.” It is time to understand who we are and what our destiny is, and to turn “Absolute Victory” from a hollow slogan into a reality of national-faith consciousness. It is time to memorize the words of our Sages (*Mishnah Sotah 8:1*):
“‘For the Lord your God is He who goes with you’—[the nations] come with the victory of flesh and blood, but you come with the victory of the Omnipresent.”
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*The author is Rabbi Yehuda Epstein – Chairman of the “Kedushat Zion” Association, an association of Haredim seeking Zion in holiness.*