Why we had to go through the Egyptian exile in order to receive the Torah:[1] Why did the Jewish people not merit to receive the Torah until after they went through the Egyptian exile in which their lives were embittered with slavery? After all, did they not ready merit to receive it due to the righteousness of their forefathers? The explanation is that the Torah contains two parts, one being internal and the second being external. While it is true that we merited to receive the internal part of the Torah already in the days of our forefathers, Abraham Isaac and Jacob, we did not yet merit to receive the external part of the Torah. For this we had to go through the Egyptian exile. Our forefathers did not fulfill the Torah with its physical mitzvah’s and objects, but rather through spiritual divine unification. They did not wear actual tefillin on their bodies which contain the story of the Exodus but rather simply fulfilled the inner divine unification’s that are affected by tefillin, but their actions had no effect in this world. In order for the mitzvah’s to affect the physical world and be invested within physical action, we had to go through the Egyptian exile and slavery, as the bitterness of the work caused a revelation of godliness to penetrate below even into the physical.[2]

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[1] Torah Or Lech Licha 11d

[2] Admur does not explain the connection between hard labor and slavery and having the Mitzvos affect the physical world. However, perhaps we can suggest one of two possibilities: 1) Being that the Jewish people have a G-dly soul, by the Jewish people being enslaved they drew down their own internal G-dliness into the physical, and this then connected the physical with the spiritual. 2) The hard labor and slavery caused the Jewish people to reach an ultimate state of nullification, which automatically draws down the divine revelation all the way until this world. Vetzaruch Iyun!