Parashat Va’eira: Anguish of Spirit

When Moses delivers God’s promise of redemption to the Israelites, their response is baffling – and heartbreaking. They simply cannot hear it.

God instructs Moses: “‘Therefore say to the children of Israel, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of Egypt, and I will deliver you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, and with great judgments: and I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God: and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who brings you out from under the burdens of Egypt. And I will bring you into the land, which I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and I will give it you for a heritage: I am the Lord.’ And Moses spoke so to the children of Israel: but they hearkened not to Moses for anguish of spirit, and for cruel bondage.” (Exodus 6:6-9)

When our brain gives up hope

After years of slavery and Pharaoh’s terrible decrees, why couldn’t they seize this opportunity?

American psychologist Martin Seligman’s “learned helplessness” theory offers one explanation. When we fail to solve a problem repeatedly over a long period of time, we gradually come to believe it cannot be solved – that nothing we do will change anything. Eventually, our brain gives up hope. In such a state, when real change becomes possible, we don't even notice it. Disappointment has trained us not to see possibilities.

A long, dark tunnel

But there’s another mechanism at work, one that researchers Eldar Shafir and Sendhil Mullainathan call “tunneling.” Imagine driving through a long, dark tunnel; all you can see is the narrow strip of light directly ahead. What’s happening outside – the landscape, the possibilities – doesn’t exist for you. The longer you spend in the tunnel, the more you lose touch with what lies beyond it.

Severe scarcity creates this tunnel. When a person experiences extreme scarcity – of time, money, or physical energy – their brain hijacks their attention. All mental resources mobilize to survive the next hour, the next day. The Torah captures this: “anguish of spirit” – the spirit becomes constricted, narrowed.

The brain lacks the necessary “bandwidth”

Tunneling creates near-blindness to everything outside. Our ability to plan ahead, consider new opportunities, or process good news is blocked. The brain lacks the necessary “bandwidth.”

Shafir and Mullainathan demonstrated this through experiments: people living in poverty, forced to cope with severe scarcity, become hyper-focused on immediate worries while their decision-making deteriorates. Usually, it’s not that you live in poverty because you made bad decisions; it’s that you make bad decisions because you live in poverty.

Hunger intensifies this phenomenon. Scarcity captivates all consciousness. Eli Sharabi, who was abducted during the Be’eri massacre on October 7, describes in his memoir “Hostage” how in captivity, all they could think about was food. Hunger captures all your attention.

But this isn’t limited to extreme situations. Shafir and Mullainathan showed that even people with significant resources, when placed under temporary scarcity and stress, experience rapid decline in decision-making ability. This happens during stressful periods – while caring for small children or an ill parent. Scarcity creates tunneling, and we lose focus.

A consequence of trauma

This explains what happened to the Israelites: they were trapped in a cognitive tunnel of survival. When the tunnel is so narrow and the labor so crushing, Moses’ voice – speaking of a distant future and a land flowing with milk and honey – simply cannot penetrate. As Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808–1888) explains, the Israelites’ present suffering was so overwhelming that it consumed all their mental and emotional energy. Their focus was entirely on surviving the immediate demands of their brutal labor and finding momentary relief. They had no capacity left to contemplate a distant future or listen patiently to promises about it. The crushing weight of their bondage and the urgency of each moment left no room for hope.

The Israelites’ inability to hear Moses wasn’t a failure of faith – it was a consequence of trauma. Understanding this transforms how we read their story, and perhaps how we understand those around us who cannot yet see the way out of their own tunnels.

Lior Tal Sadeh is an educator, writer, and author of “What Is Above, What Is Below” (Carmel, 2022). He hosts the daily “Source of Inspiration” podcast, produced by Beit Avi Chai.

For more insights into Parashat Va’eira, listen to “Source of Inspiration”.

Translation of most Hebrew texts sourced from Sefaria.org

Main Photo: Main Photo: Aaron Cast His Rod Before Pharaoh and It Became a Serpent\ Wikipedia