* Translation by Yehoshua Siskin
Once upon a time there was a king who lived in a palace with his family. But the son of the king, the prince, behaved in an unbecoming manner to the point where the king decided to send him away from the palace. The prince, now homeless, wandered the streets and soon became destitute.
One day the king’s longing for his beloved son grew so strong that he asked a servant to search for him, to find out how he was and what could be done to help him.
The servant went on his way, searching the streets of the kingdom. He began in the big cities in the affluent neighborhoods, but ultimately found himself in the kingdom’s most impoverished domain, far from the palace. There he found the prince sitting on a sidewalk with torn shoes, begging for handouts.
The servant was sad to see the king’s son in such a state. He remembered happier days when the prince was growing up in the palace. The servant approached him and said: “Well hello there, the king sent me to find you. He misses you and wants to know if there is anything you lack, anything he can get for you.”
The pitiful prince thought for a moment and said: “You ask me what I want? Well, I would be very happy to get a new pair of shoes and a good sandwich.”
The servant looked at him with enormous disappointment. “That’s all? That’s what you want? Have you forgotten that you are the son of a king? You could have asked to come home to the palace, you could have asked for anything, and this is all you want?”
What is the connection between this story and us, between the parashah and us? In this week’s Torah portion, we leave Egypt. We fulfill the dream of generations. But before this dream can come true, not only does Pharaoh need to agree to our leaving, but we also need to want it. The nation of Israel must dream, aspire, and pray. To dare to leave its old reality and venture into a different reality, new and greater than the old. What would we ask from the servant? A sandwich or a palace? What dreams do we have, and are they big enough?
