Friday night begins the holiday of Passover in which Jews celebrate deliverance from Egyptian bondage.
In order to escape the shackles of slavery, the vast machinery of the mighty Egyptian state had to be crushed. Those who wielded absolute power were reduced to nothingness. G-d did this not only to diminish the physical power of a pitiless slave state, but to begin the process of making free the minds of the Israelites.
Slavery is an insidious institution, not only because it shackles the body, but creates a mentality where the slave identifies with his master to such a degree that he becomes complicit in his own bondage. He loves his master and cannot imagine a world absent an overlord.
As Daenerys Targaryn (Emilia Clarke) observes (via screenwriters) in Game of Thrones, “The slave learns to love his shackles.”
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