Welcome to Daily Bitachon as we continue in our journey from Mitzrayim. We spoke yesterday of the Brit Ben HaBetarim , the promise that God made to Avraham Avinu about the Jews in exile that would last over 400 years. As we explained, it's been close to 4,000 years if we go count from the time of Avraham Avinu! And that because we did not finish the purifications of Mitzrayim due to the fact that we left early. Therefore, as the famous saying goes, history repeats itself . There were 4 stages of exile they went through in Mitzrayim : 1-Ger yiheyeh zaracha /Y our children will be sojourners , 2- Be'eretz lo lahem/In a land that's not theirs, 3-Va'avadum/And they will work them, 4-. Ve'inu otam/And they will persecute them, And these 4 stages continue to repeat themselves until we eventually cry out to God and are redeemed. As long as the Jew realizes that he is in exile and gets the messages of Galut , he's okay in that first stage of being a stranger or maybe being out of your land. But it may lead to being subjugated, or ultimately, even being persecuted because the Jew needs to learn the lessons of exile, one way or the other. When we say history repeats itself , there are two connotations. One is the regular secular concept that if you don't learn from history, you're condemned to repeat it , which means there are certain lessons that you can pick up and if you don't learn the lessons, you just make the same mistakes. It's like saying if people don't exercise and diet, they have heart attacks. And if you don't learn the lesson of history, then the next generation will have heart attacks too. It's just nature and if you don't follow the rules of nature, you're going to suffer the consequences. But the Jewish way of looking at it offers a deeper meaning, which is that God made us certain promises and guidelines for how to live life and if we don't follow those guidelines, then we are going to suffer the consequences. There's a beautiful Meshech Chochmah that we've quoted in the past that is prophetic ( Vayikra 26:44). The Meshech Chochmah describes how the Jewish people repeat the same cycle of Galut : He explains how the Jew is exiled from land one, and comes into a new land. In that new land, what usually happens is that first generation is not so learned, much like what happened in America. Then, as they start to settle down, a spirit of God comes upon them and they start searching for their roots. They learn, they spread Torah , and they are at a great height. Then the next generation comes along. There's nothing more for them to add so they start questioning and possibly criticizing. They get too comfortable and start forgetting their roots. They start learning the language of the land. And here he says a most prophetic line. Yachshov , Ki Berlin hu Yerushalayim / They think Berlin is Jerusalem. He was talking to the German people at that time who became extremely secularized. And then he adds, What happens then? Then a wind, a tornado comes, uproots them from their land and throws them into another land. And the cycle repeats itself. It's a prophetic statement, but the Meshech Chochmah wasn't using prophecy. He was using his Da'at Torah to look and see how the system works. And it goes back to the Brit Ben HaBetarim . Once we start getting too comfortable, again, the tornado comes. The Meshech Chochmah in that same piece beautifully explains how Yaakov Avinu was afraid of this. He was afraid that the Jew would once again fall into the trap of being too comfortable. That's why he made sure that they wouldn't change their names, their clothing, or their language- to ensure that they would stay separate. They didn't have the Torah yet, so this was his strategy to keep the Jewish people separate. Furthermore, Yaakov Avinu was afraid that if he were to be be buried in Egypt, they would forget about Eretz Yisrael entirely and consider Egypt their ancestral land. So he commanded his son, with great force, to bury him in the land of Canaan, so that they would know that the founders of the nation were in Eretz Yisrael , which created a natural bond with his children in the land of Eretz Yisrael . That brings us back to the beginning of the Pesukim , where it says that when Yaakov Avinu came down to Mitzrayim , it was Lagur sham . He did not come to be there for a long period of time. Throughout the generations, he explains, different decrees were made to protect us in Galut from forgetting that we are separate from our host nation. Whether it's the laws of Bishul Yisrael , Yayin shel goyim or others, throughout the generations, decrees were made to separate us and remind us of who we are. As we, chas veshalom , forget that, we go from stage to stage of that original promise of the Brit Ben HaBetarim . But as far as may go, we always have that promise from Hashem that He will protect us and we will remain and we will survive.