In “The Jewish Way,” Rabbi Yitz Greenberg teaches that the Exodus from Egypt teaches not just about social justice in the past and present, but of the redemption of the world in the future. “The overwhelming majority of earth’s human beings have always lived in poverty and under oppression, their lives punctuated by sickness and suffering…Most of the nameless and faceless billions know the world as indifferent or hostile. Statistically speaking, human life is of little value. The downtrodden and the poor accept their fate as destined; the powerful and the successful accept good fortune as their due. Power, rather than justice, seems always to rule.

Jewish religion affirms otherwise: Judaism insists that history and the social-economic-political reality in which people live will eventually be perfected; much of what passes for the norm of human existence is really a deviation from the ultimate reality.

How do we know this? From an actual event in history – the Exodus…The freeing of the slaves testified that human beings are meant to be free…No, the Exodus did not destroy evil in the world. What it did was set up an alternative conception of life. Were it not for the Exodus, humans would have reconciled themselves to the evils that exist in the world. The Exodus establishes the dream of perfection and thereby creates the tension that must exist until reality is redeemed.”