In this week’s portion, Shmot, the Jewish people are enslaved and oppressed in Egypt, and Moshe begins the process of freeing them. At a critical stage in the narrative, at the burning bush in the desert, where God first reveals Himself to Moshe, He explains His plan: “Go and gather the elders of Israel and tell them: ‘the Lord, the God of their fathers has appeared to me; the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, has spoken, saying…I will take you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanite…to a land flowing with milk and honey’… And you and the elders will go to the king of Egypt and you will say to him: ‘the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has appeared to us, now let us please go a distance of three days in the desert and offer sacrifices to the Lord our God.’ And I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go, not unless it is with a strong hand.” God seems to be proposing a somewhat duplicitous plan: tell Pharaoh we only want a three-day vacation, he’ll say no, and then I will be morally within my divine right to really give it to him (’a strong hand’), free you altogether, and bring you to the land of Canaan.

The obvious question is this: What if Pharaoh had been reasonable? What if he had agreed to this fairly minimal request for a three-day religious holiday for the Jews? The answer seems inescapable: the Exodus never would have happened. The Israelites, and God, would have been forced to accept their status in Egypt - slaves, but with the right to freedom of religion, and some free time to practice that religion - as a reasonable one, a fair one. If Pharaoh had had the decency, and foresight, to permit a degree of religious pluralism, and a certain amount of freedom and autonomy to the Jews, they would not have had the religious and historical need, or, perhaps, right, to leave Egypt.

Of course, God, who knows a thing or two about power, and control, knew that this would not happen, and predicts, correctly, that Pharaoh would not grant them these minimal human rights, thereby necessitating the Exodus. The implications of the liberal path which Pharaoh could have taken but did not, however, are fascinating, and should be part of every conversation we have about Jewish nationhood, power, and autonomy.