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Why was shiluach avadim (sending out slaves) the first mitzvah (מצוה) given to the Jewish people in Egypt, according to the Yerushalmi, when they were still slaves themselves? The shiur develops the idea that victims often become abusers to escape feeling victimized. The mitzvah teaches that true healing from slavery comes not from dominating others, but from empathizing with slaves and treating them properly—transforming the trauma of Egypt into a positive, empowering experience.
The shiur opens with a striking teaching from the Yerushalmi in Rosh Hashanah on the pasuk "Vayedaber Hashem (ה׳) el Moshe ve'el Aharon vayetzavem el bnei Yisrael" in Parshas Vaeira. The Yerushalmi states that "vayetzavem el bnei Yisrael" refers to Hashem commanding Moshe to teach the Jewish people the mitzvah (מצוה) of shiluach avadim—releasing slaves. This presents a fundamental difficulty: the Jewish people were themselves slaves at that moment, none of them owned servants, and the laws of slavery don't take effect until Yovel is observed in Eretz Yisrael. Why would this be the very first mitzvah they received, even before kiddush hachodesh? Rabbi Zweig explains this through a profound psychological insight. There is a well-documented phenomenon that children who were abused often become abusers themselves when they grow up. While psychologists attribute this to the victim internalizing the abuse as normal behavior at a young age, Rabbi Zweig suggests a different mechanism. The real psychology is that anyone who was abused knows how terrible the experience was and feels like a victim. The most common way people escape the victim mindset is by becoming an abuser—because being a perpetrator proves to oneself that one is no longer a victim. Abusing others becomes the person's way of convincing himself he has been cured of his victimhood.
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Parshas Vaeira - Vayedaber Hashem el Moshe ve'el Aharon vayetzavem el bnei Yisrael
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