400: Some Difficult Arithmetic

In 2011, a team of three social psychologists published a remarkable discovery: listening to the Beatles song “When I’m Sixty-Four” can make a person younger.  Yes, you read that correctly, simply listening to a song can decrease your age. 

Of course, this conclusion is absurd, and that was the point.  These psychologists published a paper “False-Positive Psychology” to question the then standard statistical method of psychological studies.  They demonstrated that both deliberate and unintentional statistical manipulation had crept into these studies, with researchers conveniently choosing the “best” way to analyze data after it had already been collected. 

The specific flaws in these studies and their interpretation will sound like jargon to anyone but a statistician or data scientist, but you don’t need to understand P values to notice an impossible number in our parsha. 

The rishonim grapple with an inconsistency in the chronology of our parshiot.

In our Parsha this week, G-d tells Avraham that his descendants would be slaves for 400 years.                                                       

Yet in Parshat Bo, in anticipation of the redemption, we are told

Was it 400 years or 430?

To make matters worse, Rashi, Ibn Ezra, and others point out that based on the genealogy in Sefer Shemot, the stay in Egypt lasted no more than 210 years.

430?  400? 210?

Rashi famously suggests that the discrepancies lie in when you count the start of the slavery.  Do we count from parshat Lech Lecha, or parshat Vayera:  The 430 years and 400 years begin at the brit bein habsarim and the birth of Yitzchak, respectively.

That’s convenient, the math works out perfectly, and this is the classic explanation taught in school and printed in the Artscroll Chumash.

But just because this answer adds up does not overlook a glaring difficulty. 

Say I told you that my wife and I are celebrating our fifteenth anniversary.  Yes, we’ve only been married four years, but I begin my count from my bar mitzvah.  That’s illogical!  It’s strange to choose an arbitrary point to begin counting a period of time, even if that date has historical significance.  When the Torah tells us how long the slavery in Egypt will be (in our parsha- 400), it’s nonsensical to begin that count from the birth of Yitzchak.  It’s not accurate, and it seems as bizarre as me counting my wedding anniversary from my bar mitzvah.

There are other explanations given in the rishonim which may avoid this question, but the Ktav Sofer shares an enlightening defense of Rashi’s position.  He suggests that the brit bein habsarim is not an arbitrary moment; at that very moment the servitude to Egypt began.  Of course, the physical slavery, the body breaking work which the Egyptians inflicted upon the Jewish people did not begin for another two centuries, but beginning at that moment, Avraham felt like a slave.  The information itself- the horrific prophecy that his descendants would endure so much pain- distressed Avraham, and he felt the slavery.  This pain began the 430 year shibud Mitzrayim.  When Yitzchak entered the world, he inherited this emotional baggage, this depressing destiny that the family would be subject to slavery.  This began the 400 years of Avraham’s offspring experiencing slavery.

The avot sympathized for their descendants.  They felt the emotional pain of slavery, and despite the fact that the physical slavery beginning centuries later, the magnitude of their emotional pain began the 400-year clock of slavery. 

This idea jumped out at me not because I have a clear takeaway message, but because I found it so resonating and relatable.  We all worry about our future and feel those pressures today, and at times we are slaves to those worries and concerns.  We worry daily about our families, our careers, or our bills.

But perhaps another element of relatability is to our place in Jewish history.  Compared to most generations of Jewish history, our current galut is not one of physical slavery.  To some, the current reality may not feel lacking much, but realize that there can be a second type of slavery, a burden of knowing that something isn’t right.  A burden of slavery that Avraham felt despite his material comfort.  We read this week not just of a future physical slavery in Egypt, but an emotional slavery, beginning with Avraham himself.  Avraham understood that even though he was not a slave, his nation would remain incomplete until the end of their stay in Egypt.  We too may not be slaves, we may have physically comfortable lives, but we must forget that the clock of our galut ticks on, as we proceed through the chapters of history awaiting the ultimate redemption.   

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