We read Az Yashir Moshe every morning and say, “This is my God, and I will glorify him.” Sometimes, unfortunately, we’re reading so fast because we’re trying to catch up to the Chazan (cantor), or maybe the Chazan is going so quickly because we have to get to work, and we forget what that song is about. In Yetziat Mitzrayim (Exodus from Egypt), after 210 years, Hashem redeemed us. We’re recounting to him the miracles that he did, the wonders that he performed on our behalf, and saying, “This is my God, and I will glorify him.”
I want to give you a little story. They tell a story about the Chafetz Chaim; I guess it was about 90 years ago. He was studying with his son-in-law all day, for about 10 hours. They were working through a very difficult sugya (Talmudic discussion). All of a sudden, the Chafetz Chaim looks up and says, “Aha, now I know the answer.” He opens up his manuscript and writes down one line. That manuscript was eventually going to be the Mishnah Berurah. His son-in-law looks at him and says, “Tati—Daddy, I guess, Dad. 100 years from now, is anybody going to realize, anybody going to know that you spent 10 hours working on that halacha (Jewish law) and wrote down just one line? Who’s going to know?”
He turns to his son-in-law and says, “Let me tell you a story.” He says, “A number of years ago, I was riding on the train going through Russia, and this very large Russian man comes and sits down next to me. A very friendly Russian fellow. We strike up a friendly conversation, and he’s telling me about how he spent 10 years in the frozen wastelands of Siberia. What he did was build a small road going through Siberia with nothing but a small shovel. It took him 10 years to build a road. And why did he do it? Because he knew the greatness of the Tsar, and he was doing it just for the Tsar.”
Let’s go back. Let’s go back about another 3,000 or 3,200 years. Yetziat Mitzrayim. What happened? Hashem took us out across the Red Sea. We get to the foot of Mount Sinai. Hashem gives us Aseret HaDibrot. He gives us the Torah. Moshe Rabbeinu is late coming down from Har Sinai (Mount Sinai). What do the Jewish people do? They commit to Chet HaEgel (sin of the Golden Calf). Terrible. Terrible. Moshe Rabbeinu comes down. He breaks the Luchot (Tablets). Hashem tells him, “Leave me alone, and I’m going to destroy them, and I’ll make you into a great nation.” Moshe Rabbeinu picks up on the cue. Hashem says, “Leave me alone and I will destroy them.” Meaning, if I don’t leave them alone, you won’t destroy them. So what does Moshe Rabbeinu do? He prays for Klal Yisrael (Jewish people) and tells Hashem, “What will the people of Egypt say? They’ll say, ‘You took them out of the land of Egypt to do evil to them, to destroy them in the wilderness.’” Moshe wasn’t concerned about us. He was concerned about the glory of Hashem.
What happens about a year later? Klal Yisrael is wandering through the desert. They decide they want to send the spies into the land of Israel, to spy it out and see if it’s conquerable, if they would be able to live there and take over the land from the people who live there. Moshe Rabbeinu sends the spies. He expects them to come back with a wonderful report. Instead, terrible. As we know, they said, “We can’t conquer it. It eats the people who dwell there.” The people tear their clothes and cry. Hashem says, “That’s it. I’ve had it. I’m going to destroy all these people. The whole ungrateful bunch. Just get rid of them.” Moshe Rabbeinu prays again and says, “Do you know what people will say about you? They will say that you got weak, that you couldn’t bring them into the land. You couldn’t bring them into the land of Israel. Not only that. They’ll also say, ‘You know what? It wasn’t even the God of the Jewish people who took them out of the land of Egypt. It was the God of Egypt who took them out. And what did he do? He did Pharaoh a tremendous favor by taking them out and destroying all of them in the desert.’” Hashem says, “I agree. I won’t destroy them.”
So if redeeming Klal Yisrael from Egypt was the entire purpose, okay. Hashem accomplished his purpose. We were redeemed. He performed his miracles. People said, “Great. What a powerful God. We were redeemed.” We served a purpose of allowing Hashem to act upon us. No, not so. We are highly relevant. We are, in fact, the point of Moshe Rabbeinu’s prayers to preserve us, because we are very important. We testify to the glory and the greatness of Hashem. What happens if we were destroyed? Leaf through the annals of history 3,800 years ago. Nobody hears about us anymore. People would say, “Okay. The same way the Egyptians, Syrians, and Babylonians, one after the other, as you know, are all put by the wayside. Same with the Jewish people. Their God is no greater than my God.” Our continued existence is the glory of Hashem. We’re his ambassadors.
But let’s look at what kind of ambassadors we should be. Let’s say that you’re the manager of the Waldorf Astoria, and you get a call from senior management: “Hi, Bill. Just want you to know, the King of Tahiti is coming to stay at the Waldorf Astoria tonight. I need the place to be perfect. We’re going to roll out the red carpet. The King of Tahiti has come to stay with us.” Wow. That’s great. That’s great. Wow. What an honor. A king of a country is staying at the Waldorf Astoria. So you’re the manager. You get everybody to scrub the place. Make it wonderful. Put on their white coats with their white gloves. They roll out the red carpet. You get a call: “Okay. Limousine’s down the block. He’s coming.” Everybody lines up. Everybody’s in the hallway, in the lobby. Everybody’s waiting for the King of Tahiti to come. The limousine pulls up in front of the hotel. The back door opens, and out steps the King: a short, pot-bellied man, well-tanned, wearing a grass skirt with a bone through his nose. What does that say about the people of Tahiti? Not very much.
We represent Hashem. When we do something good, when we behave the way we’re supposed to, when we show the greatness of the Jewish people, it’s not the greatness of us. It’s the greatness of our God. People are supposed to look and say, “How great is the God of the Jewish people?” That’s our job. Our job is to reflect the greatness of Hashem by being the best that we can, by being kind, by being merciful, by serving Hashem with glory. If that man from Siberia served the Tsar of Russia with great joy because he knew the greatness of the Tsar, can we serve the King of all kings with any less than that? No. We have to show Hashem. We have to show the world Hashem’s greatness by being kind, by looking out for our fellow man, by being merciful, and through all of the Yud Gimel Middot (Thirteen Attributes) that Hashem says, with Torah, Mitzvot (commandments), and Ma'asim Tovim (good deeds).