“Every Jew has the choice whether he will be separate from the heathen nations of the world in all matters, then he will be called an olive that the LORD called his name, and will not need to be pressed. However if he is not separate and tries to imitate them, then he will need to be pressed. This is what it means “I am like an olive”, meaning that a Jew is compared to an olive inasmuch as he is satisfied to be rooted in the House of God, meaning he is separate and distinct from the heathen nations of the world, therefore he will not need to be oppressed.” Until here are the words of the Tefilah LeMoshe.

Yoel Teitelbaum, Divrei Yoel: Selected Teachings of the Satmar Rebbe on Sefer Bereishis - Genesis, trans. Joseph Kolakowski (North Haven, CT, December 2025), isbn: 978-1-5207-8442-7.

Egypt was once the world capital of science and wisdom. (As an indication of this, the wisdom of King Shlomo, the wisest of all men, is lauded as being “even greater than the wisdom of Egypt.”) And, corresponding to its role of providing civilization with “intellectual sustenance,” Egypt became the world’s primary supplier of physical sustenance. As such, Rashi’s implication that Yaakov and his family were not actually dependent on Egypt for their food alludes to the Jewish People’s inherent independence from Egypt for their knowledge and wisdom.
Instead, the Jewish People were given the Torah from which to draw their wisdom. Even the knowledge of the sciences that is necessary for comprehension and observance of the Torah is essentially contained within the Torah itself. In addition, where necessary, the Jewish Sages themselves composed scientific works. In the era of the prophets, for example, sages from the tribe of Yissachar wrote texts explaining principles of astronomy and geometry relevant to the workings of the Jewish calendar. This allowed a Jew’s knowledge of the sciences to be entirely independent of secular influence.
Alas, due to the travails of exile we must now rely to some degree on secular scholarship for knowledge of the sciences relevant to the Torah. With the coming of Moshiach, however, the Jewish people’s intellectual independence from “Egypt” will be restored, and we will once again draw all our wisdom from the Torah alone.

“Independence from Foreign Aid,” in Lightpoints from the Teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe on the Weekly Torah Portion, Weiss (Brooklyn, NY: Or Hachassidus, 2020), 119–120, isbn: 978-0-8266-0105-6.

To return to our original theme: the threshold now has two supports, as it were–the mezuzah to the right and the Hanukkah menorah to the left. The mezuzah represents the inside of the house, guarding all that has been taken within. Thus, it is affixed to the right upon entering, not upon exiting. The Halakhah also insists that the entrance must contain a door in order to fulfill properly the mitzvah of mezuzah. The mezuzah, as it were, pleads for a closed door so that it may guard the interior of the home and all that has been stored in it and keep it safe from the imprecations of a pagan world. The Hanukkah lights, on the other hand, argue for an open-door policy, for their function is pirsumei nissa, to illuminate the “street” or outside with the sanctity that issues from within. This collision on the threshold–whether to shut the doors and guard what we already have within, or to open the doors wide to allow us to share the blessings of Torah with the outside world–this clash of opposing tendencies is what creates within us that tension. It is only when we have the two mitzvot around us that we can properly weigh and measure and know when to open the doors to the outside world, to absorb from it what is good and true and beautiful, and when to shut the doors tight against the falsehood and profanation of an ungodly world and its nefarious influences.

Norman Lamm, “On The Threshold,” in Festivals of Faith: Reflections on the Jewish Holidays, ed. David Shatz and Simon Posner (New York, NY: OU, 2011), 189–190, isbn: 978-1-60280-174-5.

What does this (fourteenth principle) of Ani Ma’amin say? It states: “I believe with perfect faith that this Torah is given to be observed, realized, and fully carried out in every place and at all times. within every social economic, and cultural framework, in every technological circumstance and every political
condition.”
Actually, this Ani Ma’amin is intimated in the ninth of the thirteen principles of faith: “The Torah will never be changed.” This fourteenth principle negates two theories that seem at first sight distant from one another. On the one hand, it rejects all the experiments of those who would “improve” religion–reformers of half, third, and quarter measures, who claim that halacha in its totality is unsuitable for our social, scientific, and industrial framework and that we must trim the branches in order to save the trunk. This Ani Ma’amin says: “Rather the matter is very near to you, in your mouth and your heart, to perform it” (Deut. 30:14). In other words, the Torah is relevant and meaningful at all times and under all circumstances.
However, this Ani Ma’amin rejects a further theory that separation from the world is the only way to observe Torah. In other words, those would uphold this theory of complete isolation admit by their silence the position of the reformers, to the effect that within the modern, cultural, historical constellation, the observance of the mitzvoth and Torah study are almost impossible.
We solemnly declare that the principle of the eternity of the Torah bestows upon us the promise that it is possible to study Torah and to observe it not only at home and in the ghetto, but everywhere in the world, be it the modern home, the laboratory, the campus or the industrial plant, in public as well as private life (The Rav Speaks, trans. from Yiddish addresses delivered by the Rav at Mizrachi Conventions, 1962-1967, pp. 174-176)

Saul Weiss, ed., “Emunah,” in Insights of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik: Discourses on Fundamental Theological Issues in Judaism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 13–22, isbn: 0-7425-4469-9.