Hurry Up, Slow Down
A Tale of Two Exoduses
This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly (b’chipazon): it is a passover offering to the Lord. (Exodus 12:11)
You shall not eat anything leavened with it; for seven days thereafter you shall eat unleavened bread, bread of distress—for you departed from the land of Egypt hurriedly (b’chipazon)—so that you may remember the day of your departure from the land of Egypt as long as you live. (Deuteronomy 16:3)
For you will not depart in haste (b’chipazon),
Nor will you leave in flight;
For the LORD is marching before you,
The God of Israel is your rear guard. (Isaiah 52:12)
The Israelites left Egypt in haste, b’chipazon. The Mishna (Pesachim 9:5) contrasts the first passover sacrifice, eaten in a hurry, with subsequent passover sacrifices, eaten in a state of ritualized regularity. The Passover seder combines the pressing anxiety of an original Exodus with the leisure needed to digest the experience, so to speak. Matza signifies the haste, chipazon, required to leave Egypt, but it also delays the metabolism, admonishing us to pause and reflect on what we’ve just gone through. In Rav Hutner’s telling, it is not just the bread of affliction (lechem oni), but the bread of responding to that affliction, of finding the words to name what we’ve endured.
According to Avivah Zornberg, there is an “Exodus of the day” and an “Exodus of the night.” The Exodus of the day is the Exodus of public miracles and collective triumph. The Exodus of the night is the Exodus of the soul, of the unconscious. The Exodus of the day is sudden. The Exodus of the night is ongoing. The Exodus of the day was a historical moment, taking place in the past, the Exodus of the night is the Exodus we live every day, the Exodus we can refashion going forward. For Zornberg, haste is a sign of trauma. We need time to slow down to analyze and heal that which we ran through the first time.
Zornberg’s insight that chipazon points to something unresolved is born out by the subsequent Biblical narrative, in which the people complain that they want to return to Egypt. Did they really know what they were doing? It all happened so quickly. When Isaiah imagines a future moment of redemption he underscores that we will not need to leave b’chipazon. The first Exodus, the Exodus of the day, is a kind of panicked Exodus, but it’s an incomplete one. That is a core paradox of the story—if we think too much, we’ll remain stuck. If we don’t think enough, we’ll bring Egypt with us; we’ll remain prisoners even as our surroundings change. “Move fast and break things” is stage one. But the seder night in which we recollect the Exodus is stage two, and there we need to “lean back and repair things.” Haste has its use. But the free person knows when to stop running. Hustle forms character. But hyper-focus stunts the growth of the soul.
“Pharaoh hurriedly (vayimaher) summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “I stand guilty before your God, the Lord, and before you.” (Exodus 10:16) This is one of those moments where Pharaoh has a change of heart—we can see him trying to enact a change before his mind catches up with him. But the problem with quick movements is that they aren’t necessarily sustainable. True, God hardens Pharaoh’s heart, but even without this intervention it’s unclear that Pharaoh’s atonement is genuine; perhaps he simply wants to avoid another plague, in which case, his motivation is not internal to him. Pharaoh’s hurrying brings only short-lived results.
Ironically, Pharaoh’s hurrying to atone for Egypt’s answer to the “Jewish Question” parallels the hurrying of another Biblical protagonist, Joseph, who hurries to another room to hide his tears from his long-estranged brothers (Genesis 43:30). Joseph is ultimately unable to repress his emotions. His heard heart, as it were, is softened. His hurrying to repress is overtaken by a counter-hurrying revelation. Similarly, perhaps, our own Exodus from Egypt is a kind of repression—a repression both of the pain of bondage and the pain of leaving it behind—but a repression that can’t endure. Eventually, we will have to cry it out. Eventually, we will have to tell our story. But running away from a pursuing army is not the time to talk about the meaning of it all. There are no atheists in fox holes, no cognitivists in parted seas.
The doubled Exodus—the Exodus of day and night—points to the perennial tension between action and contemplation. Action is needed to win battles with external circumstances. Contemplation is needed to win inner battles and to ensure that external victories don’t prove shallow or even ruinous.
The two Exoduses also call to mind the two moments of covenant, an initial one accepted in duress (Sinai) and a second one, a retrieve, accepted in joy and freedom (Purim). The two Exoduses also point to two Torahs, a written one and an oral one, a Torah that is given and a Torah that is interpreted. We might think of our own lives as having a written Torah—the facts—and an oral Torah—the evolving narrative we bring to those facts. We can’t choose or unchoose our pasts. We can choose how to make sense of them, and how to shape our commitments in light of them. Understandably, the seder night points to a messianic era, a future redemption, because we know that this life is characterized by incompleteness. We have left Egypt, but only in haste.
Haste is a sign of natality and excitement, of chaos and emergency. Haste makes friends of strangers, and brings people close, as in a combat unit. Hasty decisions are made from the gut. World history is made on split-second decisions, handshake deals, a glance across the room. But multi-generational healing and transformation requires patience and longevity. Be quick to execute and slow to strategize.
The dialectic between chipazon and therapeutic leisure has been codified by Kahneman in Thinking, Fast and Slow. In Kahneman’s terms, the people need type 1 thinking to leave Egypt and type 2 thinking to conduct a seder. Type 1 thinking brings freedom from, Type 2 thinking brings freedom for. Focus helps you fight your enemies. Vision helps you transcend them so that you can build and transmit non-reactively. We must recognize the reality and dignity of our incompleteness and the hastiness of our lives lived on the go, shooting from the hip. We must also hope for a future in which we will not have to “depart in haste” nor “leave in flight.” We will not have to look over our shoulders, any more, for we will be perfectly in the present moment.
Shabbat Shalom,
Zohar Atkins