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.