Two reflections on Exodus

Pharaoh and Plagues; Freedom and Choice

Introduction: This past January 24, my grandson celebrated his Bar Mitzvah. He prepared in the usual way—spending some years in religious school, learning and leading prayers, chanting texts, and giving a talk connected to the text.

Because the synagogue is temporarily without a rabbi and because I have some expertise in all things Bar Mitzvah, I was asked to work with him on his speech, d’var Torah. Ultimately that led to my giving a talk on Friday night. This post is, with only minimal editing for confidentiality, those two divrei Torah. My grandson’s was read second (on Saturday) but written first and, in some ways, mine is a reflection on the experience of working with him. So that is the order in which they appear here.

I debated posting them—they both feel very specific and I don’t have the time or the heart to edit further. So with that note of caution, read on. Or don’t.

Saturday D’var Torah for Parshat Bo

Up to this point in the Exodus story, God has chosen Moses to speak to Pharaoh and sent seven plagues to “tell old Pharaoh to let my people go.” In my portion, Bo, Moses visits Pharaoh for the eighth time, and Pharaoh once again says no to freeing the Israelites. In response, God sends locusts to eat Egypt’s remaining resources. Pharaoh then tells the Hebrew men to pray to God to get all the locusts to leave. But once the locusts are gone, Pharoah changes his mind again and keeps the Israelites enslaved.

Pharoah, Moses, and God repeat this pattern for the plague of darkness. In preparation for the tenth and final plague, death of the first born, the text explains how to kill a lamb and use its blood to paint your doorposts, which will keep your first born from dying. Do not rely on this form of baby-proofing at home. At the end of the portion, the final plague happens, the Israelites flee Egypt, and we’re given a guide on how to explain to our children what happened in Egypt.

Of all the many things that happen in this portion, God hardening Pharoah’s heart annoyed me the most. Why would God do that? If God did that, it is a jerk move and God can’t be all good, at least not within our definition of morality. If God didn’t do it, then the Torah is wrong. It’s quite the conundrum.

In the first five plagues, Pharaoh is the one acting, but after that the text says that God tells Moses “go to [Pharaoh], for I have hardened his heart.” Here are two main ways to think about God’s actions towards Pharoah.

One approach is that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart to prove that we’re all just puppets and God is pulling the strings. That’s how my dad saw it. He imagined a Dungeons and Dragons game in which God, as the Dungeon Master, had prepared ten cool plagues and really wanted a chance to show them all off. Thus, God forces the players down the path that goes through all the plagues.

Another approach is that Pharaoh hardened his own heart, in which case, why?

These approaches raise two more questions: first, what does it mean to have free will; and second, what affects free will.

The question of what it means to have free will is important because if we don’t have free will, then we are no more than puppets and learning from our mistakes is irrelevant to our behavior. Things that are part of your environment or life circumstances, like disabilities and income, can impact what choices are available to you. Everyday choices, like what media you consume, how you act around other people, or how you treat alcohol and drugs, can influence how you think. Free will isn’t just an on-off switch.

For example I have more hours on the video-game Zelda than I’d like to admit. When I’m playing I just kind of turn my brain off and process inputs. I think that’s not entirely losing free will, but it is similar in that I ignore all the other things in the world around me and just react. As another example, when doing an activity with someone else, social expectations limit the actions I can reasonably take but on the other hand keep me grounded in the moment.

I found Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s drash “Freewill: Use It or Lose It” from 2017 very interesting because Rabbi Sacks describes why freewill is not an on-off switch. Unlike many people who wrote the older commentaries, Rabbi Sacks is in the modern world. My Bubbie explained – in almost painful depth – that he was writing in a post-Holocaust period of time when peoples’ idea of God was being questioned. If God is omnipresent and omnipotent, then why was there no miracle to save the Jews? People reconceptualized their image of God emphasizing free will in order to answer this question.

Rabbi Sacks first explains the question of Pharaoh’s hard heart, and continues with three traditional answers: 1) it was a punishment for Pharaoh; 2) it was a blessing, letting Pharaoh keep his humanity; or 3) it was simply to show everyone that God is controlling everything.

Then, Rabbi Sacks points out that these approaches do not work because things like addiction and social status, emotions, social norms, and morals constrain our decisions. In this way, he shows that free will is a spectrum.

Another article from Scientific American, called “The Slippery Slope of Ethical Collapse—And How Courage Can Reverse It” by Elizabeth Svoboda, can be summarized by “Mitzvah Gorerit Mitzvah.” The song’s lyrics translate to: “One good deed will bring another good deed; one act of misbehavior will bring another.”

Svoboda writes “Initially we may be horrified at the thought of lying, cheating or hurting someone. But as we engage in wrongdoing over and over, our brains tend to grow numb to it.” But she says it can also go the other way: “It can also drive escalating spirals of virtue, in which one honest or brave action makes the next one easier to carry out.”

I think this research translates very well to Pharaoh in that he’s snowballing one bad choice into another. For the first plagues, he had the choice to try negotiating, say yes, or say no. He decided to say no because he didn’t believe that the plagues would happen and, if he said yes, he would have to get rid of his slaves, which would throw the Egyptians into economic ruin. By the time the second set of plagues rolled around, Pharaoh was so used to saying no that he didn’t care what would come afterward and he wasn’t thinking about how to stop the pain and suffering.

In my example, playing Zelda has become a habit to the point that anytime I am unoccupied with a task, I go back to Zelda. It doesn’t feel like a problem, but logically I know that it is unhealthy as a default state because it results in me sitting in one spot for hours on end. If I wanted to solve it, I would first need to find something else I could use as a substitute, then start substituting and building a healthier habit. Too bad Pharaoh didn’t try that.

And now, instead of plagues, I have thanks.

1. My mom and dad for facilitating my life

2. [Younger Sister] and [younger brother] for being incredibly wonderful little siblings

3. [Older sister] for taking a hit from my piece of candy two years ago.

4. Bubbie for helping me research this drash and Grandpa for encouraging my addiction to video games

5. Oma and Opa for new experiences and strawberry ice cream.

6. Great Grandma for being remarkable.

7. Rabbi Leah and Joshua for helping lead this service

8. Morah Karen for teaching me all the prayers and how to read Torah and Haftarah as well as putting up with my fabulous attitude for the past 3 years.

9. Everyone who showed up today. You came from near and far, braved airports and freeways, and you have made me feel special and lucky and under no pressure at all.

10. My amazing friends.

Now I’ll let someone else talk please.

My Friday Night Talk

When I was asked to give a drash this evening on Bar/Bat Mitzvah, I was delighted. I spent a lot of years researching the subject and, of course there’s the Bar Mitzvah service tomorrow. And then I was asked to add in the part about working on the drash with [my grandson]. Well, sure, I said, that makes sense. And then someone asked if I could include the Torah portion. And that made sense too. Fortunately, no one asked me to give this talk while standing on one foot! So here are three topics that may or may not fit together. You can give me notes at the oneg on how well I did! Now let’s get to it:

This journey from “once we were slaves in Egypt” to “now we are a free people” is the center of the Jewish narrative, the story of becoming the Jewish people. This week’s Torah portion, Bo, contains one of the critical moments in that journey: the act of painting lamb’s blood on the lintels and doorposts of one’s home.

The key verses are Exodus 12:21-23, very roughly translated as:

Moses summoned the elders of Israel and said, Go, choose lambs for your families, and slaughter them for the Passover offering.

Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the lamb’s blood, and paint it on your lintels and doorposts. Do not open the door of your house until morning.

For God will see the blood on your doorposts, and pass over your homes, preventing the Destroyer from entering and killing your children.

In the spirit of the Seder, let’s imagine ourselves there, confronted with the choice: do we slaughter the lamb and paint our doorposts or not.

Joseph is a distant memory. Our reality is one of long, bitter centuries of slavery. Not all of us are convinced by Moses’ claims. After all, he was raised in the palace, then fled Egypt after killing an Egyptian. We were punished for his actions. And, while the plagues have not touched us, Pharaoh blames us for the misery they caused. Moses claims God will deliver us, but while we are waiting, the doorposts dripping red blood clearly mark us as rebels.

Yet we watched the Egyptian people suffer with each new plague. We believe that the Destroyer will kill the first-born children in houses with unmarked doors.

Do we hide ourselves and risk death from the Destroyer or do we paint our doorposts with blood and risk the wrath of the Egyptians?¹

We’ve barely started on the long and winding tale that continues through the escape from Egypt, crossing the Sea of Reeds on dry land, receiving Torah together at the foot of Mount Sinai, and then wandering through the wilderness for forty long years. But this is the critical decision point. Until this moment, the Israelite slaves have been passive observers. Now each family must choose, and then live or die with the consequences.

The decision to slaughter the lamb and paint the lintels was made by each individual family. But the text says that it was the Israelites, Jacob’s descendants, AND a mixed multitude who left Egypt together. By the journey’s end, the mixed multitude have become part of the Jewish people, a people forged in the perils they endured together. It is here that the text shouts from between the lines that to be part of the Jewish people is to make that choice.

Ten eventful centuries later, we arrive at the beginning of the Common Era, when the Romans expelled the Jews from Israel. For a millennium, Jewish practice had centered on Temple rites. But if the Jewish people were to survive in exile, Judaism had to be made portable.

Through the first several centuries of the Common Era, generations of rabbis developed the Talmud, a compilation of interpretations of texts, gossipy stories about leading rabbis, and debates on Jewish practice and Jewish Law—Halakha. Halakha codified Jewish practice into the practices we still follow today, including, for example, how to light Hanukkah candles, elements of what became the Haggadah, and the system of kashrut. The Talmud also defined a Jew as either the child of a Jewish mother or as someone who formally converted. That definition remained unchallenged until very recently.

In 1983, in response to an upsurge of intermarriage that included me and my husband, the Reform Movement’s Central Conference of American Rabbis, after careful deliberation rooted in Jewish law and interpretation, redefined a Jewish child as having at least one Jewish parent and enacting their Jewish identity through doing mitzvot, commandments. These mitzvot include, and I quote: “entry into the covenant, acquisition of a Hebrew name, Torah study, Bar/Bat Mitzvah, and Kabbalat Torah.”

That decision challenged the accepted definition, but it hearkens back to that earlier moment of choosing to act, a moment that sees acceptance into the common heritage of the Jewish people as less about parentage and more about how someone—whether a Jew by birth or choice —chooses to enact that heritage.

Which brings me to Bet Mitzvah.² The importance of Bar Mitzvah, then Bar/Bat Mitzvah, and now Bet Mitzvah in American Jewish life did not begin with the1983 CCAR ruling. Since the early 1900s, Bar Mitzvah functioned as a way to reconcile American individualism with the Jewish sense of peoplehood—a moment when Jewish parents could proclaim they had raised a child who was both Jewish and American.

The 1983 ruling—whether intentionally or not—provided a way for Jewish families and Bar/Bat Mitzvah students to demonstrate their commitment to the Jewish people. Though not a matter of life and death like fleeing Pharoah’s Egypt, being proudly Jewish and overtly engaging in Jewish behavior is still radical, still counter-cultural.

It is counter-cultural to belong to a synagogue in an increasingly secular world. It is counter-cultural to live in Jewish time when the secular world schedules meetings, exams, and school dances on Shabbat and holidays. And, perhaps most importantly, it is counter-cultural to learn in the traditional Jewish way.

“Two Jews, three opinions” is not just a joke. Our Bar/Bat Mitzvah students don’t work alone on their divrei Torah, their speeches. They engage in chevruta, learning with a partner. In companionship, they challenge the meaning of texts, and they delight in discovering new viewpoints. This mode of learning is so central to Judaism that the Talmud enshrines it in this story:

Around the beginning of the Common Era, the schools of Hillel and of Shammai argued over their competing views of Jewish law. After three rancorous years of debate, the heavens opened and a voice spoke, saying:: “These and those are the words of the living God but the Halakha follows the school of Hillel.” Which leads to the obvious question: “Why, if both are accepted, would the Halakha follow the school of Hillel?”

The answer lies not in what each school taught, but in how they taught. The school of Hillel not only taught content and reasoning, but also humility, respect for others, and civility. What a lesson for our own time!

Bar/Bat Mitzvah takes place at thirteen for reasons beyond puberty. As children approach thirteen, they revel in their new ability to think critically and question, well, everything. As our students develop their divrei Torah, their Bar/Bat Mitzvah speeches, they are exercising their budding abilities to think critically and learning to question and challenge texts. They are stepping into a discussion that has lasted for millennia all over the world, and entering on a new world of knowledge. Bar/Bat Mitzvah is the start of a journey—not the journey from slavery to freedom, but a different long and winding journey through adulthood.

Our Bar/Bat Mitzvah students have many choices ahead of them. Even perilous choices. Even countercultural choices. For those of us who are further along the path, the challenge is to guide and to lead, all the more so in these difficult times. May we find the strength, the courage, and the wisdom, to guide and to lead well.

1. The “choose your own adventure,” alternate ending of this drash, could be about what the brave choices are today—putting (or leaving) a mezuzah on one’s doorposts, wearing items that mark one as Jewish, showing up in difficult spaces, and other possible actions.

2. Bet Mitzvah is a recent term for gender neutrality or fluidity.