'Some thoughts on exile' revisited

On 12 January I posted a piece, ‘Some thoughts on exile’, in which I discussed some of the mishnayot in Pirkei Avot that deal with exile. In that post I mentioned the idea, raised in an article by Rabbi Pinchas Winston, that exile was not purely a physical phenomenon because it also had a psychological dimension: a person might be “exiled” in their mind, their conscious thoughts and their emotions. He summarized the position thus:

There is no greater exile than not being yourself. It may sound trivial because, how can you be anyone but who you are? But the very fact that psychological depression is a national disease and anti-depressants are such a lucrative prescription drug today answers that question head-on. It is exhausting to watch how hard people have to work just to maintain an image they want to project, but which has little to do with who they really are.

I liked this idea but questioned whether it was truly sustainable.

Since writing my post I have found that Rabbi Winston is not alone in examining exile in terms of its mental element. Rabbi Shalom Noach Berezovsky’s Netivot Shalom commentary on the Torah, on parashat Vaeira, contrasts two species of exile: communal (galut haperat) and personal (galut hayetzer hara). Communal exile can be remedied by taking the Children of Israel out of Egypt, while personal exile demands that each individual is detached from his negative traits and vested with a fresh set of positive values. Without this process, a person cannot switch his commitment from servitude to Egypt to service of God. In popular parlance, we might say that it’s not enough to take the Children of Israel out of Egypt: we must also take Egypt out of the Children of Israel.

The Netivot Shalom does not claim to be the originator of this idea. He cites the Toledot Yaakov Yosef of Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Polonne on parashat Vayishlach, which in turn cites the Ba’al Shem Tov in support of the proposition that personal redemption should precede the communal. He also describes the same concept in his partial but eloquent commentary on Pirkei Avot, at the end of Avot 5:11, but without citing his predecessors. To my embarrassment I must have read this many years ago without it ever sinking in.