Question: If G-d intended for the Jewish people to be strangers in a foreign land, Jacob’s decision to leave Israel was not out of his own free choice. So why do we thank G-d so much for taking us out of Egypt, when He put us in there in the first place? What are we thanking Him for?

Answer: Thank you for your wonderful question; I’m excited to see it. I don’t know if you’ll believe me, but I’ve been asking people this since I was a teenager. Why would we thank someone for releasing us from jail, if he was the one who put us there?

I suspect that on some level you know the answer already. We are thanking G-d for the whole process. Abraham was incomparably great, but he could not have received the Torah. For that, G-d needed a nation. And no nation in existence could have done it. Only a nation descended from Abraham. But more: Only a nation that had passed through “Kur HaBarzel“, the iron crucible, that had experienced what it meant to be far from G-d (“slaves of Pharaoh”), and had begun to understand what it would mean to be close to him – only that nation could ever have been able to accept the kindness and love for which G-d  created this world.

Best Wishes, Michoel Reach