Last week we passed the 100 day mark of the hostages being held in Gaza and the turmoil of outright war. We have watched in shock when the most simple and obvious international requests – the return of the hostage, getting medicine to our hostages, recognition of truth – are consistently denied or reinterpreted with modifications. But why are we surprised? Is this not, yet again, something we have seen before, something we have seen over and over throughout history.
In the world of our forefathers that we consider ancient times, Egypt was the dominant world power. They set the tone of the world, and the tone they took was that of the upper hand. The Israelites were their slaves. The Israelites were the potential enemy they were controlling. Slowly but surely, however, the Egyptian people realized that the price of keeping the Israelites was not worth it. But their leaders refused to relent. Their leaders refused to offer compromise that could be acceptable. Go for three days but leave your source of sustenance or offerings. Go for three days but leave your elderly and little ones. And even when Pharaoh’s ministers were telling him that it was over, that the time to relent had come, Pharaoh remained obdurate. He compromised and reneged, agreed and broke faith.
Villainy remains villainy throughout time. We are not the first to witness it, but, please Gd, we shall be the last.
In ancient days our forefathers must have looked about and wondered what would be. After all, when Moshe first spoke to Pharaoh, their load was made even harder. Things were tough and getting tougher. It is not rare to hear people question how Gd can allow bad things to happen in the world. If one were in ancient Egypt, one might have wondered why life was so horrid, why slavery and oppression was happening to them. Throughout history we ask why bad things happen to good people, or, on a larger scale, why bad things happen to the Jewish nation if we are Hashem’s chosen people. Certainly, right now, when 90-some percent of the world seems to be wanting to harm our nation, that question sparks beneath the surface. How do lies promulgate when they are so obviously untrue?
At the beginning of Parshas Shemos, Hashem tells Moshe “Come to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, in order that I may place these signs of Mine in his midst, and in order that you tell into the ears of your son and your son's son how I made a mockery of the Egyptians, and [that you tell of] My signs that I placed in them, and you will know that I am the Lord" (10:1-2).
Hashem hardened Pharaoh’s heart is just a statement of Hashem’s omnipotence. The story of the Jews in Egypt was just the start of the necessary journey of all of humanity.
What do the Jewish people represent? We represent God in this world, but not in the way that that sounds; The Jews are the people who taught humanity that we, as creations, owe true fealty to the Creator and not to created gods that appease our need for worship without challenging our morality or, as more recent history has shown, to our own whims and will.
The world has free-will, and the way the Jewish people are treated in the world represents humankind’s metaphysical battle with accepting the fact that Hashem, and not they, are in control. For there to be that free-will, Hashem has to let the world run its course, has to let humankind think that it has power until… until He makes a mockery of them, until he breaks every rule of logic in order to remind us, the people who have dedicated themselves to Him, that there is always a bigger plan that Hashem is involved in.
What does it mean to make a mockery of something? It is to reveal its falsehood. God, through Moshe, showed Mitzrayim just how little power they had and that their Pharoah was as far as could be from a powerful god.
The Jews of the 21st century have the benefit of the Torah and the centuries of history to help us stay strong. Our faith must be stronger than the will of our enemies. Our faith must be stronger than feeling and whims. Our faith must be more than faith; it must be knowledge that Hashem is always in control.
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