Summary

This week’s portion continues the dramatic events leading up to the Exodus of Egyptian bondage. The sidra opens with a short resume of the preceding portion concluding with a genealogy in order to support the role of Moses and Aaron as leaders of the people. Moses had reluctantly undertaken to liberate his people with the help of his brother Aaron, but their first encounter with Pharaoh backfired. Pharaoh ordered the Israelite’s workload to be made heavier and as a result they lost faith in Moses and his mission. God orders Moses to return to Pharaoh to demand the Israelite’s release and supports him with various miracles. As the confrontation intensifies it becomes clear that it is not a confrontation between Moses and Pharaoh, but between God and Pharaoh. Through Moses’s continued demands for the freedom of his people, answered by Pharaoh’s refusal, God demonstrates divine power and will by bringing ever more devastating natural disasters upon Egypt: blood in the river Nile, an infestation of frogs, swarms of insects, swarms of flies, cattle disease, boils and hail yet Pharaoh still refuses to let the people go.

commentary by Rabbi Kathleen de Magtige-Middleton of The Liberal Jewish Synagogue

There are many theories as to what natural phenomena lay at the root of the chain effect of disasters described in this sidra. Surely none of the disasters described were uncommon in the ancient Near East, and in particular in Egypt, but such a series of natural disasters is particularly rare, and the fact that it was to the political, historical advantage of the Israelites, made it into a miracle. It is unfortunate that there is no mention of any of such a miraculously disastrous series of events in Ancient Egyptian sources. Thus the struggle for historical proof of the story continues. Nevertheless, I am not too bothered about it. For me it is enough to remind myself that according to the collective memory of our people the story developed as it is told. The plagues have become much more than natural disasters, but rather literary tools in a power struggle between God and Pharaoh; an almost mythological struggle between monotheism and idolatry – for we must also bear in mind that according to the ancient Egyptians, Pharaoh was a godhead, and it has also frequently been pointed out that the individual plagues be seen as directly aimed at destroying the ancient Egyptian pantheon. Thus the plagues symbolically deconstruct the power of Egypt’s so called Gods.

Yet it would be rather shallow if the story were only to portray God’s power over the so-called gods of Egypt. The struggle between God and Pharaoh is most essentially a struggle between two other polarities in concepts, namely between the moral, merciful power of ethical monotheism, and the power of any other oppressive earthly regime.

The true evil of Pharaoh comes to the fore in the story, not only in the manner he treats the Israelites, but in the fact he knew that the plagues were a direct result of his refusal to release the Israelites and yet he willingly allowed his own people to die and suffer from the plagues.

Why didn’t he spare his own people? In our portion we learn that Pharaoh ‘hardened his heart’ – we are not sure what this expression means. Possibly it means that he allowed his pride to overtake his pity. For him the goal – to assert his own power - became greater than the means. Then, after a couple of plagues our sidra states that God hardened his heart.

But what does that mean? The rabbis struggled with this concept as much as we do. Moses Maimonides (Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, Spain, ca. 1135 - 1204) argued that free will is a fundamental principle of Judaism, no one forces, preordains, or impels a person to act, not even God. In the struggle with God, Pharaoh made his choices, and as he made them one after the other it became increasingly difficult for him to get out of the habit of not responding to the suffering of others that he had created by shutting his eyes, ears and heart for the suffering of others. He hardened his heart; he had deadened his natural emotional response, his ability to empathise first with the plight of the Israelites eventually with the plight of his own people. God’s display of care and mercy for the people of Israel which stands in sharp contrast to Pharaoh’s treatment, not only of the people of Israel, but even more so of his own people.

The struggle between Pharaoh and God can be seen as a paradigm of life. We have to be careful not to become like Pharaoh, so engrained in our own ways, our own sets of thoughts and ideals that we become utterly blind to the effects that they may have on others. It is so easy to fall into the trap of Pharaoh, to shut ourselves off from the hurts of others, not maybe in the same degree as Pharaoh, but nevertheless in a similar manner. Pharaoh’s pride in his struggle with Moses and his God and his people became so all consuming that he was incapable to think beyond himself and became oblivious to the effect it had on his own people. Sometimes issues with which we struggle can become so all consuming that we can no longer see or feel beyond them – we lose our free will and become completely driven by those issues that nag or bothers us. But there is still the voice of God – speaking through ‘Moses’ within us, that reluctantly, yet stubbornly demands of us to let go, to get in touch with our own free will again by listening to plight of others and the voice of empathy, mercy and loving kindness.

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