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This week’s parasha is the fulfillment of a 400-year-old prophecy:
But it’s striking how the “יצאו ברכש גדול” is fulfilled:
I won’t deal with the implications of “וישאלו ממצרים”; I will simply translate as “asked from” rather than “borrowed from”. But what does וינצלו mean?
Rashi, based on the targum, translates it as “emptied”: “they emptied Egypt out”.
The Baal HaTurim cites the Gemara (and connects it to a gematria, as is his wont):
But the problem with that is that the word נצל never means “empty”. It generally means “save”. The Rashbam points out that there are other uses of the root to mean “remove, take something from a place it does not belong”, which could go with the “empty” meaning:
But there’s a problem with this. Look at all the other uses of the root נצל to mean “take off, plunder”:
In each case (except the last which does not have an object), the object of the verb נצל is the thing taken or “saved”, not the place it was taken from. In English that’s not a problem; one can “empty a pot” or “empty the water from a pot”, and “plunder a bank” or “plunder the gold”, but to have a use of a verb in תנ״ך that doesn’t correspond to anything else is problematic. Ibn Ezra notices the problem, but isn’t bothered:
But it’s odd. Some commentators reach for other understandings. Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg connects it to צלה, as in מצולות ים:
The Mechilta translates it as “saved”: בני ישראל “saved” the Egyptians by taking their gold and silver עבודה זרה:
The most insightful translation in my opinion (based on Rabbi Sacks) is from Benno Jacob. Jacob was an interesting character; he was a staunch Reform rabbi (1862-1945) (he never met a mitzvah he didn’t despise) but wrote a very traditionalist, anti-Documentary, commentary on Chumash. As Nechama Leibowitz wrote in a letter to a correspondent who complained that she cited him:
So Jacob translates וינצלו as “saved” but with a twist:
The key to understanding וישאלו ממצרים כלי כסף וכלי זהב ושמלת is that these “gifts” are reparations. They allow בני ישראל to leave Egypt without hating the Egyptians, without always looking for revenge. Rabbi Sacks connects this to a mitzvah in Ki Tetse:
The victim of injustice needs closure to go on with their life. There are three ways to achieve closure: reconciliation, revenge and reparation. Reconciliation, forgiving the perpetrator and just letting go of the past, is impossible for most people in egregious cases. Revenge works, but not long term:
Reparation literally means “repair”, but it is not undoing the injustice but allowing the victim to feel that justice has been served.
In order for reparations to work, both the perpetrator and the victim have to feel that the reparations are just and proportionate. In Egypt, the perpetrators were subject to ה׳’s open miracle: וה׳ נתן את חן העם בעיני מצרים. For the Jews, for us, it is our responsibility to let go of hate: לא תתעב מצרי.
And this concept becomes part of the ongoing halacha: