Bo: negotiations

Bo: negotiations

In the parsha, Bo, there are real negotiations.  You can tell because the two sides are talking about details.  Pharaoh will send the adult males to avoid the locusts - no deal.  The darkness motivates further concessions: all he people can go, but the animals must stay behind.  For the sake of  some sheep and goats, the firstborn of Egypt are slaughtered.  The irony of negotiations.  So close and the consequences are so dire.

But Gd has stated that the demonstration of power was the main point. That demonstration was enough to put the dread  of Chametz  upon the Jews to this day. 

More important, it established a night when  parents tell their children THE STORY. 

For me, it was the story of Egypt ... and the story of Treblinka. 

I am annoyed with my rabbis for telling me that Egypt was worse than the Holocuast.  But maybe it is true.  On some level even my parents believed that .

Negotiations always involve a negation.  A negation of the other.  A negation of the self.