One way to look at shabbat (the Jewish sabbath) is that it is the completion of a 7 day cycle, and when it is over, we start a new cycle. Another way to look at it is to think of it as the moon. What I mean by this is that Wednesday is like the dark moon, and the energy of shabbat starts to grow and shine stronger and stronger as we go into Thursday and Friday, and is at full strength, shining like a full moon, on Saturday. This energy wanes as we move a way from shabbat, getting weaker each day until we start the cycle again, Wednesday. I was not feeling well this past week, and so I did not get a chance to post on the weekly parsha (Torah portion) before shabbat. However, in the spirit of the latter description of how to think about shabbat, I am posting now. Enjoy.
Last week Moshe (Moses) is told by haShem (god) to come to Pharaoh. What a strange request. This however is the launching point for a wild exploration of the relationship between Moshe, haShem, and Pharaoh. Before I get into it, I want to give a quick overview of last week’s parsha so we are all on the same page.
As I said the parsha starts with haShem telling Moshe to come to Pharaoh. He also tells Moshe that he has made heavy the heart of Pharaoh and his servants in order to place his signs close to him. The purpose of doing this is so the Hebrews will be able to tell their children and grandchildren what haShem was able to do to the Egyptians, and that the Hebrews would know haShem was in charge. We then get the next plagues: locusts, darkness, and finally the death of the first born of man and beast. When haShem tells Moshe about this final plague, he also tells the people to borrow from the Egyptians, gold, silver, and clothing. After this final plague is announced to Pharaoh by Moshe and Aharon, we again are told how Moshe and Aharon performed these wonders before Pharaoh, but haShem strengthened the heart of Pharaoh and the children of Israel stayed put.
Suddenly we get a change of pace. haShem now tells Moshe and Aharon that the current month is the first month of the year (yes the Jewish new year celebration called Rosh haShanah is in the 7th month of the year), and they are told to tell the entire community the rules around the Pesach (Passover) lamb and the placing of blood of the lamb on the door post, what haShem is going to do on the night of the 14th of the month (kill the firstborn), and how the people will be safe from this. We then read of the laws of the 7 day festival of Pesach. We are then told how to respond when one’s child asks what we are doing.
Then midnight of the 14th hits and the killing begins. Pharaoh then tells Moshe and Aharon to take everyone and everything and get out of Dodge.. .I mean Egypt. Then he says something interesting. Pharaoh asks them to bless him too.
At the urging of the Egyptians the people make haste to leave. There is no time to let the bread rise, and the Egyptians lend them the silver and gold and clothing and they go, along with a mixture of other peoples. We here that the Hebrews were in Egypt for 430 years.
We then get more Pesach laws and then we hear that haShem now considers the first born, of people or animal to be his. Moshe now tells the people to remember this day for haShem took the people out of Egypt and bondage and not to eat leaven and what to do in regards to the holy days when they get to the promised land. Mixed in all this, we read that your first born can and must be redeemed.
Whew! What a lot of detail we have here. However, that is only the beginning of the ride I have in store for you. We have taken the roller coaster up to the top and we are about to go down and around, so hold on and enjoy the ride.
What has always bothered me (and others I might add) about the story we have been reading the last few weeks is that on one hand we are told that we have free will, and then we read how god tells Moshe exactly what is going to happen and how god is going to, “harden,” Pharaoh’s heart in order to make sure things happen. As I was reading last week’s parsha, I found myself trying to understand why god would tell Moshe to come to Pharaoh. It seems like a rather strange word to use. Go would work much better. Come is used when you want someone to move towards you. The only thing that made sense to me was that somehow god must be in Pharaoh, and god was telling Moshe to come to that godly part of Pharaoh. Well, later on, I realized that it is a code-word to let Moshe know that Pharaoh is really into doing god’s will.
Ok, I can already hear the gnashing of teeth. But let me continue… One of the problems of your typical English translation of the Torah is that it isn’t always accurate. We keep saying that god is, “hardening” Pharaoh’s heart. Well, the text actually says two different things that get translated as, “hardening.” In Hebrew, the words are: chazek and k’bade, which mean, “To strenghten,” and, “To make heavy,” respectively.
Why does god sometimes strengthen, and sometimes make Pharaoh’s heart heavy? The last pieces of the puzzle are at the beginning of the process and the end of the process. In the beginning, Moshe comes to Pharaoh and says haShem (the four letter name of god) wants the people to go out and serve him. Pharaoh says he doesn’t know of this god (this was a few weeks ago). In last week’s parsha, as Pharaoh is telling them to finally go, he asks them to bless him too. What a strange thing to ask. Yet it will make sense in just a minute. I do want to add one more idea that we see in the parsha: the whole purpose of the 10 plagues was to show everybody that the god of the Hebrews is THE POWER in the world. Again, this seems like a strange thing for god to want. Why not just do one really big event and be done with it? After all, that would cause a lot less suffering. However the answer to that I touched on last week: he wanted the idea to STICK. And as I said last week, a single event does not stay in one’s mind. Something repeated over time, does.
I think I have all the ingredients now. Let’s stir the cauldron and see what we have. When Moshe first comes to Pharaoh,Pharaoh has no idea who this god of Moshe’s is, and so he increases the difficulty in the Hebrew work. This is the only time that Pharaoh says he does not know this god however.
Now, I have always assumed that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened against letting Moshe’s people go. Suppose this is a wrong assumption. Suppose instead, Pharaoh gets to know god and understands what god’s plan is. Suppose that he even agrees to help god, and Moshe, reveal god in the world. In other words, Pharaoh meets and recognizes who and what god is, and by HIS (PHARAOH’S) FREE WILL decides to help. Wow!
But, what does this mean? This means that Pharaoh has to refuse to send the tribes of Israel out, no matter how much his own people are going to have to suffer, in order for the tribes of Israel to internalize who their god really is. How could any ruler possibly do that?
Not without divine help. And that is why god strengthens Pharaoh’s heart. But why does he make it heavy? Because he is still the ruler of the people, and as such, he has to feel the suffering of his people. But he needs that divine strength to follow through on his choice of helping Moshe with god’s plan. And it is that divine strength and heaviness, that part of god, that god is telling Moshe to come to. When Moshe comes and sees that godliness within Pharaoh, he also knows that Pharaoh is going to do his part, and in fact we see this when we read that the interactions went just like god said they would (see the previous parsha). And this is also why Pharaoh asks Moshe to entreat god for him to stop certain plagues, and why he asks for a blessing after the last plague. Pharaoh has voluntarily given up everything, including his first born, in order to see that god gets revealed in the world.
You know, on the holiday of Purim, we are supposed to get so drunk we cannot tell the different between the hero of the story, Mordechai, and the villain, Haman. Why? Because the truth is that Haman is only a villain in our eyes. In haShem’s eyes, Haman is doing his bit to help the tribes of Israel along. I will save that discussion for another time. The point I want to bring out is that the point of getting that drunk on that day is to let go of our small way of seeing the world, and try seeing things thru god’s eyes. We haven’t quite made it to Purim yet, but I am asking all of you to try and see Pharaoh, not from the small eyes of slaves and former slaves, but from eyes above that can see the big picture. Would it not be wonderful to not only see Pharaoh the way god sees Pharaoh, but also to see everybody and everything from that vantage point?
I wish you all a good week/shavuah tov
If you care to read what I wrote about this parsha last year, click here.
About the Author
Shmuel Shalom Cohen spent 10 years studying Torah in Jerusalem. Six years ago, he started Conscious Torah to help Jews connect to their tradition in ways they didn’t think possible. Shmuel also started, and is the executive directory of Jewish Events Willamette-valley, a non-profit whose mission is to build Jewish community, pride, and learning. In his free time, Shmuel likes walks in nature, playing music, writing poetry, and time with good friends.