Twitter

Sunday, January 10, 2016

Parashat Bo Total Eclipse

Rabbi Ari Kahn
Parashat Bo
Total Eclipse

Something had changed; the earth had begun to shift under Pharaohs feet. Perhaps it was brought about by the crushing force of plague after plague, or perhaps the fear of what was yet to come had begun to take its toll. Either way, the cracks in Pharaohs facade had begun to show: Pharaohs servants were now telling their master what to do:

Pharaoh's servants said to him, 'How long will this [man] continue to be a snare to us? Let the men go, and let them serve God their Lord. Don't you realize yet that Egypt is lost?' (Shmot 10:7)

It is unclear what the status of these people is: Are they Pharaohs close advisors, government officials, or lowly members of the palace staff? Either way, it is highly unusual for anyone, no matter what their standing in the Egyptian hierarchy, to offer unsolicited advice to Pharaoh and not just advice, but advice based on the understanding that Pharaoh has been vanquished by a superior power. These advisors must have been desperate; nothing short of utter despair would have caused them to throw caution and protocol to the wind and to speak out in this way.

On the others hand, it might be argued that their brazen speech indicates a shift that is far deeper than mere desperation. After all, just as people are capable of becoming accustomed to slavery, they are capable of adapting to plagues. We might imagine that the Egyptians had become desensitized, and had managed to adapt to the new normal, developing emotional and cognitive callouses that would allow them to withstand the pain. In that case, perhaps this outburst was not the speech of people beaten into submission by the cumulative effects of seven plagues; rather, there was something about the next plague that Moshe had predicted that was more frightening, more menacing, than anything they had already experienced. Something was different this time: As opposed to all of the preceding plagues, this is the only time that Moshe and Aharon were summoned back to the palace for negotiations after the warning was issued. If we pay close attention to Pharaohs words, we can pinpoint the source of that fear:

Moshe and Aharon were brought back to Pharaoh. 'Go serve God your Lord,' he said. 'But exactly who will be going?' 'Young and old alike will go,' replied Moshe. 'We will go with our sons and our daughters, with our sheep and cattle. It is a festival to God for [all of] us.' 'May God be with you if I let you leave with your children!' replied Pharaoh. 'See Evil (raah) will confront you. That is not the way it will be: Let the males go and worship God, if that is really what you want!' With that, he had them expelled from his presence. (Shmot 10:8-11)

At face value, the negotiations seem to center around the question of who should pray. In Pharaohs view, only the men should be allowed to worship God; women and children have no part in religious life. Moshe demands that each and every member of the Israelite nation must participate in the religious experience, that the festival of worship can only be observed as a People. Men and women, young and old: every Israelite has an equal part in the worship of God, and no one will be left behind. The Jewish concept of service of God is gender-neutral, age-neutral.

Upon closer inspection, we are able to detect a veiled threat in Pharaohs argument: If the entire Jewish People attempt to leave Egypt to worship their God, they will be confronted by evil. What is the nature of this evil? The Hebrew word used to describe it is raah which is often translated quite simply as something bad. Rashi (10:10)offers another interpretation, citing a tradition that raah is related to a celestial entity of the same name. In fact, the most powerful deity in the Egyptian pantheon was none other than Raa, the sun god. Pharaohs threat was no vague premonition of unpleasantness: He invoked the power of Egypts most terrifying deity against Moshe and the Israelites, warning that Raa would confront them and destroy them if they dared leave Egypt en masse.

What set Pharaoh and his servants off? The plague Moshe had predicted, the eighth plague, was locusts. To the eye of the modern reader, this plague promised economic devastation caused by destruction of their food supply. However, it is altogether likely that financial ruin was a secondary problem:

If you refuse to let My people leave, I will bring locusts to your territories tomorrow. They will cover every visible speck of land, so that you will not be able to see the ground, and they will eat all that was spared for you by the hail, devouring every tree growing in the field. (Shmot 10:4-5)

The warning Moshe conveys is equally potent: The Egyptian sun god, Raa, would be eclipsed by the locusts. This threat was far more frightening than mere financial hardship: It was theologically devastating. To the minds of the Egyptians, blotting out the sun with a swarm of insects would indicate the absolute impotence of Pharaoh, on display for one and all to see. This is why Pharaoh summoned Moshe and Aharon, engaged them in conversation, offered to compromise for the first time. This is why Pharaohs minions felt that all was lost. The disappearance of the sun, the eclipse of their godhead, would turn their world upside down.

And yet, despite all that was at stake, Pharaoh was unwilling to abandon his position. He was unwilling to admit that the power Moshe represented was greater than his own. He preferred to bite the proverbial bullet, to contend with the locusts rather than admit defeat, but neither Pharaoh nor his servants could fathom what would happen next. The next plague would be a direct response to Pharaohs veiled threat of the power of Raa: Darkness, complete and utter obliteration of the sun, suffered only by the Egyptians and not by the Israelites. It was no coincidence that the final plague, the death of the firstborn, would also be visited upon the Egyptians in the dead of night, forcing Pharaoh to seek out Moshe and Aharon in the darkness and attempt to save himself. The common denominator among the three final plagues is darkness; the sun god is eclipsed, stripped of power and importance. While this observation may be lost upon modern readers, the Egyptians were shaken to their very core.

How were these messages perceived by the Israelites? They were freed not only of their physical slavery, but of the spiritual and mental shackles that had constrained them as well. Step after step, as each successive plague brought the Egyptians and their belief system lower and lower, the Israelites were raised to new heights of physical and philosophical emancipation, and they began to understand that the God of their fathers, the Creator and Master of the Universe, had set the stage for the fulfillment of their unique national destiny.

As midnight struck and the Egyptian firstborn perished, Pharaoh frantically groped his way through the darkness, searching for Moshe. According to tradition, Pharaoh commanded Moshe perhaps begged Moshe to take the Jews and go. In their first act as a free people, the Jews refuse. They do not leave Egypt at Pharaohs command; they will not run out under cover of darkness. The Exodus must wait until the morning; the Israelites will leave with dignity, in broad daylight, as all of Egypt looks on, and not like thieves or runaways. More importantly, they will leave when the sun shines, so that no one can ever claim that they slipped out when the sun god was off duty. As the Israelites make their triumphant march to freedom, Pharaoh and all the impotent gods of Egypt are left behind, relegated to the dustbin of history.

For a more in-depth analysis see:

new book A River Flowed from Eden 

Echoes of Eden - Completed


Parashat Bo; Lectures and Essays

Parashat Bo; Lectures and Essays
Lectures:





Parshat Bo / In Order To Tell Our Children



The Evolving Haggada (Hebrew)






Parshat Bo / Polemic Against Egyptian Beliefs
http://rabbiarikahn.com/audio?id=375

Parshat Bo / Transcending Time Space And Matter

Matzah of Lot
http://rabbiarikahn.com/audio?id=38


Chametz (not) fit for man and dog


Essays


Of Matzot and Mitzvot

Shabbat HaGadol

Around Midnight

Time for Freedom

The First Born

The Wicked Son in the Passover Haggadah

The Dignity of Mitzvot - Parshat Bo

Rabbi Yehuda gave them Signs


Monday, January 4, 2016

Parashat VaEra Devolution

Echoes of Eden
Rabbi Ari Kahn
Parashat VaEra
You Say You Want a Devolution
  
Hard work is one thing, servitude quite another. Hard work is respectable, respected, and laudable; slavery is humiliating, dehumanizing. When a person is treated like chattel, the divine spark with which every human being is endowed is eclipsed. More often than not, this is true not only in the eyes of the enslaver, but in the eyes of the enslaved: Compounding the physical burden, slaves may develop psychological and emotional scars as the slave mentality seeps into their self-image and they begin to believe that they are unworthy, subpar human beings.

In order to implement his plan to enslave the Jews, it was important for Pharaoh to dehumanize his victims. Thus, the Jews birthrate is described from the Egyptian perspective, in language that would have made Goebbels grin: They multiply like vermin (vayishretzu). (Shmot 1:7). From this starting point, the murder of the males could be easily couched in politically correct terminology: This would not be infanticide; it would be pest control,  extermination. This dehumanization was so pronounced and so firmly entrenched that the Jewish midwives used Pharaohs own bias against him: In explaining their failure to comply with his orders, the midwives claimed that the Jewish women were like animals, that they gave birth in the wild, as it were, before the midwife arrived, and without any assistance. (Shmot 1:19) Captivated and convinced by his own anti-Jewish propaganda, Pharaoh accepted the midwives excuse as a reasonable explanation.

As the story of the punishments and plagues visited upon Pharaoh and his people unfolds, this theme of dehumanization comes to the foreground of the narrative in reverse: The plagues may be seen as a process designed to turn the tables on Egyptian society and to punish Pharaoh and his people for their dehumanization of the Jews. Slowly, relentlessly, the Egyptians themselves are reduced to the level of animals and the higher their original station, the more dramatic the fall proves to be.

Pharaoh was a self-anointed deity. He presented himself as god of the Nile the life force of Egypt:

Thus says Almighty God: Behold, I am against you, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great crocodile (tannin) that lies in the midst of his streams, who has said, My river is my own, and I have made it for myself. (Yehezkel 29:3)

For the Jews, the affliction of the Nile may have been perceived as Divine retribution for the murder of their innocent babies, but the Egyptians may have seen this plague very differently: The transformation of the Niles waters to blood was a severe strike against the power of Egypt the Nile and, by extension, Pharaoh, the god of the Nile. For Pharaoh himself, this first plague began the process of devolution from deity to man, and with subsequent plagues, from human to subhuman. Pharaohs fall would be the furthest and the hardest of all.

Other elements of Moshes confrontation with Pharaoh point to the steady devolution and eventual dehumanization of the Egyptian monarch. The verse from the Book of Yehezkel quoted above gives an additional clue to this general theme: Yehezkels prophesy refers to Pharaoh as a tanin (crocodile) the same word used to describe the miraculous omen performed by Aharon. When Moshe instructed Aharon to throw down his staff before Pharaoh, it was no coincidence that the omen took the form of the very creature Pharaoh chose as his symbol. The message was unavoidable: Pharaohs specious claims of power and supernatural ability were no more than smoke and mirrors. Aharons tanin swallowed up all the others (Shmot 7:12), just as the power Moshe and Aharon represented would soon swallow up Pharaoh and all his minions.

The omen of the tanin is, in fact, an evolution of a sort: At the burning bush, Moshes staff was transformed into a nachash (serpent); now, standing before Pharaoh, in a reversal of the events in the Garden of Eden, the serpent becomes a crocodile; its legs are (at least partially) restored. The primordial serpent had caused man to sin by claiming that eating the forbidden fruit could make him like God. The serpent was punished by being stripped of its human features; specifically, the serpent lost its voice and its legs. With each successive plague, Pharaoh, whose symbol was a serpent with legs (a tanin or crocodile), who saw himself as a deity, would lose not only his claim to divinity but his humanity as well.

As the plagues build up to a crescendo, confusion reigns - particularly when the Egyptians bring their cattle into their homes for shelter. (Shmot 8:20) Egyptian society, the hierarchical construct par excellence, the economic and political structure visually represented by the pyramid, is upended: Who is the master and who the slave? Who leads and who is led? Who is human and who is animal? In this context, Pharaohs eventual loss of free will comes into sharper focus: The ability to make conscious, intelligent decisions is a human trait, whereas the animal world is for the most part driven by instinct. Pharaoh had enslaved others by labeling them as sub-human. Gods response is to bring Pharaoh down, one rung at a time: First, Pharaoh is stripped of the trappings of divinity in which he had cloaked himself. Then, like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, he is stripped of the symbols of humanity that he has forfeited through his own dehumanizing behavior. Pharaoh loses the quintessential defining trait of humanity, free will. When this final devolution is complete, the road to Pharaohs doom is a short one indeed.

For a more in-depth analysis see:
for “Echoes of Eden” Sefer Shmot click here




Sunday, January 3, 2016

Audio and Essays Parashat Vaera

Audio and Essays Parashat Vaera

New Echoes of Eden Project:
You Say You Want a Devolution

Audio
The Path to Transcendence

Deserving Freedom

Manifestation of Hashem's Names - P' Vaeira

Losing Our Religion


Moshe's Inspiration



The Plague of "Frogs" and Kiddush Hashem

Knowledge In Exile (The Haftorah)
The Haftorah for Vaera - the exile of Knowledge

Moshe And Aharon

The four Expression of Redemption and the Brit Bein Habitarim

The Four Cups Of Wine

The Staff

The Exodus and Elusive Perfection

Essays:
Lessons in Leadership
As published in Jerusalem Report

Pharaoh’s Conundrum

The Fifth Cup

Frogs

Pharaoh's Heart

And His Name Will Be One