Parshas Bo: The AUdacious Ego

 Parshas Bo: The Audacious Ego

Dedicated to a Refuah Shelaima for Moshe Aharon ben Necha Itta and Tanchum Shlomo ben Rayza Bryna

This week’s parsha describes the terrible events of the last three plagues and the ultimate downfall of the great Egyptian monarchy (although it would, we know, rise again). This week’s parasha explains great and mighty events such as the blackening of the sky by a sea of locust who landed on the fields and devoured everything in their path. This week’s parsha is full of darkness and death.

This week’s parsha contains the unmistakable calamity of absolute narcissism.

                                                                                                                                                

There is a fascinating verse buried amidst all the chaos of the final plague: “Take also your flocks and your herds, as you said, and begone! And may you bring a blessing upon me also!” (12:32).  After the Death of the Firstborn, Pharoah is finally ready to send the Israelites – all of the Israelites – to go to the Wilderness to worship Hashem. After generations of slavery, after trying to kill their babies, after all the extra inflicted hardship, how does he possibly have the audacity to ask for a blessing! As if setting them free is no big deal.

 

It’s audacious. It’s outrageous. It’s… well, when we really stop and think about it, perhaps it isn’t so surprising. The easy response is to say, “Well, we all know people like that.” People who are do oblivious to clues. We all know people we want to label as narcissists, who put themselves before everything and take no responsibility for the messes they may make. Pharoah is just perfect profile of the personality – although one could argue that his royal life made it so he could be no other way. Pharoah’s ridiculous ego is present throughout the story of Yetzias Mitzrayim. He reacts to Moshe and Aaron by stating that he doesn’t know who Hashem is. He deliberately toys with them about whether he will send them to the wilderness. More significantly, even as his land and people are plunged into chaos and despair, Pharoah doesn’t care.

 

Indeed, one can see how the Egyptian people felt by their immediate reaction to Pharoah’s release of the Israelites…… “The Egyptians urged the people on, impatient to have them leave the country, for they said, ‘We shall all be dead’”  (12:33).

 

The fact that the Torah includes this detail of Pharoah asking for a bracha allows us to examine the significance of what he did. Obviously, it is included for us to really understand who Pharoah was and just how flawed he was. It serves as a warning about autocrats who rule a country based on a sense of their own personal power. Warnings about such a grandiose concept, however, is really a warning about who each of us has the potential to become. We can say it’s human nature to focus on ourselves, but Jewish tradition constantly reminds us that we need to be above base human nature.

Parshas Va’eira – The World Cannot Choose

If you know the story of the Exodus then you know that Hashem hardened Paroah’s heart. It’s one of the most repeated tropes in the many discussions of the narrative. Most often, however, it comes up far into the plagues. It is the source of great discussion and debate: What of Paroah’s bechira - especially as his actions impacted all of Mitzrayim? If Paroah didn’t relent, then no one was going to help the Israelites. This, of course, leads to the deeper question of: How can Paroah be punished if Hashem was the one causing his heart to be hardened?  The hardening, tradition teaches us, was already there. Hashem did not change the man.

 

This week’s parsha, Parshas Va’eira, introduces the beginning of the plagues, and it introduces the hardening of the heart of Paroah. It came from the very beginning and is mentioned three times before the first plague, the plague of blood. The first mention is verse 7:3, where Hashem informs Moshe: “And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, that I may multiply My signs and marvels in the land of Egypt.”  Having heard this, Moshe and Aaron went to Paroah and had their show down with Paroah’s magicians, but their expectations must have been very low. When the snakes of the magicians were eaten by Aaron’s snake, the Torah relays: “Yet Paraoh’s heart stiffened and he did not heed them, as Hashem had said.  And Hashem said to Moshe, ‘Paraoh is heavy of heart (stubborn); he refuses to let the people go.’” (7:13-14).

 

In English, these verses look both very similar and very different. All three of them contain the word lev – heart. However, 7:3 uses the verb kashe, verse 13 uses chazak, and verse 14 uses the word kaved. Hashem promises Moshe that he will make Paroah’s heart hard. However, what we see happening is that after being confronted with Aaron’s obviously mightier staff-snake, Paroah made his own heart strong. There was nothing supernatural about it. And thus Hashem’s statement in verse 14, that Paroah’s heart is stubborn. Hashem used the term Kavaid Lev. The word Kavaid means heavy, but it is also associated with the word kavod, which means “honor.” 

 

Hashem did not need to strengthen Paroah’s heart, Paraoh’s own ego refused to allow him to recognize Hashem’s greatness, that there was a possibility that he was not the ultimate authority.

 

This is a deep truth of the world, that we all know. Power breeds power. Paroah, who reigned over the most powerful nation in the ancient world, could not humble himself to acknowledge that something beyond him was happening. Hashem did not have to worry about fulfilling His promise to strengthen Paroah’s heart because his heart was already burdened with too much kavod.

 

We, or at least I can speak for myself, keep hoping that the world will open its eyes and see the truth. But even if they do, are they capable to admitting they were wrong? A stand once taken is hard to come down from, and so we fight almost alone. Is this Hashem’s will actively blinding the nations or were their hearts already hardened?

The truth, alas, is that this question pushes at our brains but is, in fact, irrelevant. If their hearts were already hardened than it was so because of Hashem, Who stated that we would be a hated nation. Thus, either way, the events of this era – as of so many eras in the past – is the will of Hashem. What is left to us to ponder – and many of us have and do – is what Hashem requires of us in light of the path the world has taken. That, I would say, is the true bechira.

Vayechi: Death, Blessings, and Life Choices

 

Vayechi – Death, Blessings, and Life Choices

If one were to boil this week’s parsha down to its most basic elements, Parshas Vayechi would be said to be about death and blessings, blessings that all focus on “this will be you when I am gone.” Death and blessings sound like a strange combination of themes as we tend to think of death as the ultimate negative, and even more so when we remember that the name of the parsha translates to “And he lived.”

 

He lived. Yaakov lived. For 17 years Yaakov lived in a land not his own, and, in many ways, he flourished. It was not, one would assume, his ideal life. He was not where he wanted to be as he understood the kedusha of Eretz Yisrael, but it was where Hashem told him that He wanted him to be. It is a sharp contrast to the commentaries surrounding the beginning sentiment of “Vayeishev,” “and he dwelled,” where Yaakov is criticized in the Midrash for settling into complacency.

 

Because Yaakov lived his life in the best way he could for being in a less then ideal state (an ability he had proven already during his sojourn with Lavan), his last years had a tremendous impact. The Torah describes the funeral procession set for him by Paroah and the fact that there was a period of national mourning throughout Egypt. Some of this was a reflection of the nation’s feelings for Yosef, but a reaction so grand only occurs from respect, nay – reverence, for the deceased himself.

 

Yaakov’s choosing to LIVE those 17 years, rather than just accept his altered state, gave him the kochos, the spiritual strength, to end his life in a way that carried his life forward. He focused his ability to see the world on a spiritual plane to provide guidance and shine light on the deeper journey ahead for each of his sons and, thus, strengthening them. Yes, even the blessings that were tochacha were the means of shoring them up against the challenges that were to come. Yaakov on his deathbed focused not on his own end but on the future that was to come.

 

Today is Aseres B’Teves. It is the shortest fast day on the calendar, but it is also noted as the most significant of the minor fasts of mourning the destruction of Jerusalem. Today represents the beginning of the end of what had been an idyllic time when the first Beis Hamikdash was the heart of our nation. We fast to mourn our loss and to spur on teshuva so that we can return, so that Hashem will redeem us. But as this year it overlaps with Vayechi, perhaps we must recognize a different lesson in our mourning.

 

Like Yaakov Avinu, we are not living in our ideal world, we are separated from the greater spirituality, but that is not a reason to live any less. That is not a reason to become complacent, but rather it is a reason to bring that ideal world as close to where we dwell as possible. And this does not apply only to one’s physical location. Yaakov did not live an easy life. From sibling rivalry to in-law troubles, from Rachel’s dying to Yoseph’s disappearance, from trouble with Shechem to famine in Canaan… But he did not let that stop him from living. Often times life takes a hard turn, but it is our job to persevere.