Musar su Genesi 41:55

Now I shall quote only what the Ari zal has written about this subject. I have found the following in a booklet of his. In Genesis 41,55, at the beginning of the famine, we read that Pharaoh told the people: "Go to Joseph and do whatever he tells you." I have already explained that Joseph circumcised all the Egyptians at that time. The background of this (as I explained) was that the first 130 years the Jews stayed in Egypt -before Moses was born- in order to salvage the emissions of Adam's semen during the 130 years he lived apart from Eve. Israel's hard labour was needed in order to purify the impurity Adam had created by his actions. During that period the Jewish people were the atonement for Adam.

The land of Egypt is to earth what the מקום ערוה, seat of the reproductive organs, is to man. This is why Ezekiel 23, 20 describes Egyptians as ejaculating seminal discharge that resembles that of horses, and generally describing them as debauched. [The theme is that it is the nature of the earth itself which contributes to the debauchery of its inhabitants. Ed.] Jacob's descendants were exiled to Egypt because in that country it was easiest to transfer their share of the serpent's pollution to their surroundings. Once they had disposed of those pollutants they could emerge purified. Joseph was especially suited to start such a process because he had demonstrated by his previous behavior how to maintain the Holy Covenant with G–d entered into by Abraham when he circumcised himself. The evil influence of the serpent's pollution remained only in the descendants of Esau. The reason the Torah presents us with such a long list of Esau's descendants at the end of פרשת וישלח, is to inform us that they were all ממזרים, bastards. Rashi already comments in this manner on Genesis 36, 2. Esau went to the land of Se-ir because he did not want to undergo the exile experience in either Egypt or the land of Canaan (where he would not have been sovereign, seeing that Israel owned that land). Had he been prepared to undergo that experience, he, too, could have rid himself of the negative influence of the original serpent.