From Rabbi Alan Ullman:

The Hebrew word for Egypt "Mitzrayim" comes from the root "Tzar" or narrow place. There the Israelites were making bricks for the Egyptians. Their work was for Pharoah, not in service of any sacred mission. During the Exodus, the Israelites were able to "spring forth" to something different. Those who crossed over the Red Sea were called "Ivrim", the crossers over. The imagery of crossing the sea is like that of being birthed from a womb (where midwives deliver the future after a difficult labor). The Israelites' trajectory took them through 40 years in the wilderness toward "shalom" (wholeness/ peace) and a land flowing with milk and honey. 

It's a story that remains relevant in every generation of leaving a narrow place; what is your narrow place? What do you want to leave behind moving forward?  What are you moving toward? 

The narrow place might feel fairly comfortable - indeed the Israelites later missed the good food in Egypt. The text even indicates that the plagues were not to change Pharoah's mind at all because God simultaneously hardened Pharoah's heart - the plagues were intended to motivate the Israelites to leave a place where they'd been for 400 years! Imagine how hard that would have been. Egypt at the time was the world's greatest civilization, so even the lowliest had access to water from the Nile, food, protection (from advanced technology of the day, like chariots). In the wilderness, they were to lose all of that.  

How do we know when it's time to go? When there's blood in the water/ it's no longer "tov" for the next generation. When do you stay and try to fix something from within and when do you leave?  When in history has the river of life become a river of death?  

Yocheved, in the story, saw that her child was "tov" and made him an ark to float down the river. Hers was sacred seeing. When the torah uses the word "tov", it indicates that something is generative/ procreative...it has potential to seed the future. The word "tov" is first mentioned in Genesis when God creates seeds, which hold the potential to grow food to nourish creation and further hold the seeds for future generations.  Yocheved saw that Moses was "tov" and that emboldened her to float him downstream in his own little ark. What are we doing to preserve the incomplete "tov" around us?


haggadah Section: -- Exodus Story
Source: Alisa Ente in torah study