Passover Publications & Resources Why we had to leave Egypt |
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Why We Had To Leave Pharaoh
The locusts begin,
brought by an east wind (Ex. 10:13)
carried away by a west wind (10:19).
The wind blows both east and west for us.
East wind, the silent heart of wisdom,
unreflective, the seamless embrace,
before language,
it is chochmah, aha,
the heart's deep wisdom.
West wind,
self conscious, inquiry, conceptualization, language,
it is binah.
West wind, conscious, linear, rational.
East wind, intuitive, lateral, mystical.
Chochmah and binah, the right and left sides,
both winds blow through our camp.
East-West, we are both.
Western branches, eastern roots, it is a tree of life.
Tonight it is union, sheleimut, shalom,
the integrating dream,
every blessing a prayer of cosmic union.
Set against this is Par'oh, to rend, to split,
the separator, the dis-integrator.
Every blessing is union, integration, wholeness,
we separate from the Other Side,
the side of separation,
and that is why
we had to leave Pharaoh,
to become one, with ourselves.