A Glass Half Empty: Reflections of Parashat Bo in the Midst of the Gaza War: 5769

Parashat Bo 5769
A Glass Half-Empty


I want you all to pause for a moment and try to access the distant corners of your early memory. You are sitting at a table, surrounded by family of all types. A hoary-headed grandfather, perhaps from the old country, sits at the head of the table, while his assimilated children, your parents, chuckle under their breath at the absurdity of Jewish ritual. There is an old, faded copy of the Maxwell House Haggadah resting in front of you, speckled with the crusty stains of last year’s brisket. In front of you there is a glass of sweet, red wine reflecting the light of the swaying chandelier overhead. Your grandfather begins to speak:
“And now, as we recite the Ten Plagues, each of us dips a finger into our wine glass, removing a drop for each plague. In this way we diminish our own happiness in order to recall the suffering of our Egyptian enemies.”
Dam, Tzfarde’ah, Kinim, Arov, Dever Sh’chin, Barad, Arbeh, Choshech: Makkat B’Chorot!

Even as a child, perhaps ignorant to the meaning of the Hebrew, you recognize that something is different about that tenth and final plague. Your parents, your uncles and aunts have suddenly stopped their attempts at childhood regression, as they now sit silently, intently as they arrange the drops of wine on their plate.
Do you remember it? Can you picture it?

And what about the moment when you first come to the realization that part and parcel of our national narrative of redemption is the ultimate divine decree; the slaying of every first born in the Land of Egypt.

As a child at our Seder tables we may have been tempted to ask: “Whoa, God did what to the Egyptian kids?”

As an adult, we may be tempted to ask: “This is the kind of God that I am supposed to believe in?”

But soon enough we move on, as the wafting smell of the brisket distracts us from those inconvenient conversations about theology.

But this morning, in conjunction with our Torah Reading in Parashat Bo, I think it is important for us to pause and take note of the tenth plague, of Makat B’Chorot, and recognize that it is fraught with difficulty. It is necessary for us as Jews to not simply run away from those texts which, for lack of a better term, make us feel “icky.” Instead we are asked to confront these texts, and to confront our own mixed emotions about them.

First, let us examine the P’shat, the plainest sense of the Torah’s words which we read this morning.
After the first nine plagues are unsuccessful in convincing Pharaoh to let our people go, and after a series of ‘hardening of Pharaoh’s heart,’ either by his own hand or by God’s, we come to the ‘last resort.’ God tells Moses that toward midnight, God will go forth among the Egyptians “and every first-born in the land of Egypt shall die, from the first-born of Pharaoh on his throne, to the first-born of the slave girl; and all the first-born of the livestock. And there shall be a loud cry in all the land of Egypt, such has never been, nor will ever be again.”

And so we see that the P’shat is pretty clear. In a last attempt at forcing Pharaoh’s hand God goes nuclear: not only will this plague affect Pharaoh and his household personally, but it will also strike every single strata of Egyptian society, down to the very animals which they used in worship. This is certainly nothing to take lightly, and although all the plagues carried with them disaster for the whole of Egypt; clearly they pale in comparison to the finality of the tenth plague, the killing of the first-born.

So what do we do when we encounter such a violent text? A text that fills us with great doubt as to whether the end always justifies the means. Well, we can start by trying to find elements in the Exodus narrative which may serve to justify the horrific end result of this plague.

Many of our ancient rabbis were quick to point out that perhaps God is simply following the age-old principle of Middah k’Neged Middah; or retribution in kind. Since Pharaoh decreed in the first chapter of the Sefer Sh’mot, The Book of Exodus, that every male Israelite child shall be thrown into the Nile, it can be argued that God’s response was proportionate and justifiable.

Another tack towards justification is the Halacha which concerns the case of the “Rodef,” or someone who is actively trying to kill you. In that case, in a case of clear self-defense, the Rabbis teach us that
הבא להרגך השכם להרגו “If one arises to kill you, you must arise to kill them.”
Therefore, if Pharaoh was indeed interested in murdering innocent Israelites, God’s chosen people, then God was at least in some way, acting in ‘self-defense.’

For some of us perhaps, these arguments are convincing enough to put this issue to rest, after all, there is a brisket in the oven. However, personally I am not relieved of my conflict. I still want to know why God chose to enact such a stunning decree.

Luckily, there are others like me. In fact, just as there were Rabbis who were interested in justifying God’s actions based on logical principles, so too there were ancient rabbis who sought to explore God’s actions from a more emotional perspective.

In Psalm 126, which begins “Hodu Ladonai Ki Tov- Ki L’Olam Hasdo” “Give praise unto God for God is good; with everlasting kindness” we find a litany of wondrous acts that God performed on behalf of the Jewish people. In verse ten we read
לְמַכֵּ֣ה מִ֭צְרַיִם בִּבְכוֹרֵיהֶ֑ם כִּ֖י לְעוֹלָ֣ם חַסְדּֽוֹ:
“God smote the first-born of Egypt: God’s kindness is everlasting.”
I imagine that the Rabbis of the Midrash must have been uncomfortable with a verse that so easily juxtaposes the killing of the first-born with a description of God’s kindness, and so they added this interesting tale:

At the hour that The Holy One sent the Angel of Death to kill all first-born Egyptians, those first-born came before their respective fathers and they said: All that Moses says will indeed come to pass, if you want us to live, please send out the Hebrews from our midst, for if you do not, we will surely die! Their fathers
responded: “even if every Egyptian has to die, we will not send them out from our midst. So the children went before Pharaoh himself to plead for mercy, but Pharaoh not only ignored their plea, he had them whipped for their hubris.
(adapt. Midrash T’hillim 136:6)

Clearly this Midrash intends to show how completely merciless Egyptian society had become. They were so focused on their hatred of the Israelites, so stubborn in their desires to subdue them, that they were openly willing to sacrifice their own children to that cause. Through the lens of this Midrash we see that the rabbis are attempting to show that perhaps the Tenth Plague could have been avoided, perhaps God’s kindness would have prevailed, had the Egyptians only been willing to listen to their children.

But yet another question remains, the question that we ask ourselves each Passover: “Is this really the God that I am to believe in?” And to this question too the rabbis gave their answer.

In a very famous midrash found in tractate Sanhedrin in the Babylonian Talmud, we get a glimpse into the psyche of God after the death of the Egyptians. At the scene of the Parting of the Red Sea, which we will read next Shabbat, when the wall of water collapses upon the pursuing Egyptians, drowning horse and rider alike, the rabbis ask the following question:

“What does the Holy One feel when witnessing the death of the wicked? Rabbi Natan explains that the Holy One does not rejoice at the death of the wicked; As we learn in the episode at the Red Sea. As the Egyptians drowned the ministering angels sought to sing songs of praise before the Lord, and God said to them:
מעשה ידי טובעין בים ואתם אומרים שירה לפני?
The works of my hands are drowning in the sea, and you are singing songs of praise?” (Sanherdrin 39.b)

Here the rabbis are answering our question of conflicted theology. They are saying to us, ‘No! You should NOT worship the God who enacted the tenth plague, or drowned the pursuing Egyptians in the Red Sea; instead you should worship the God who cries at these moments. The God who mourns the loss of the wicked along with the righteous, those with hardened hearts as well as those whose paths are compassion. This is the God we are to believe in: a God whose kindness is everlasting.

Finally I want to close today by mentioning the obvious, or perhaps not so obvious, correlation between our conflicted feelings about the Tenth Plague and our conflicted minds about the recent conflict in Israel and Gaza. On the one hand, I am certain that some of us feel that Israel was simply acting according to the principle of midah k’neged midah, retribution in kind, responding to rockets with more rockets. Or perhaps Israel was merely doing what every nation has the right and the responsibility to do: to defend its citizens from harm.

But I am equally certain that there are those of us who feel that Israel’s response was disproportionate; that the loss of innocent lives can never be justified, not by means of rationality and certainly not by means of our Jewish tradition.

Finally, this conflict is only made more complicated by the fact that we are painfully aware that the leaders of Hamas are stubbornly fixated on their hatred of Jews and Israelis, even at the expense of their own citizens and their own children. What are we expected to do when we face an enemy whose heart has been so thoroughly hardened?

Perhaps, all we can do is take our cue from the mournful image of God found in our midrash. Perhaps all we can do is to learn from the lesson of our Passover ritual and diminish our own joy on account of the suffering of our enemies. Perhaps all we can do is sit in thought, in conflict and in sorrow, as we quietly arrange the drops of wine on our clean, white plates.


Shabbat Shalom