Bo: commemoration

This parsha is the basis for the Passover Hagadah,  It contains the commandment to celebrate and commemorate the dramatic Exodus from Egypt in the spring. It contains the instruction to teach these things to our children. This is our foundational  story. 

The text tells us that a situation favoring the dramatic display of will and power has been set up.  The Pharaoh's heart has been hardened, he will not easily allow the Hebrews to leave. 

כִּֽי־אֲנִ֞י הִכְבַּ֤דְתִּי אֶת־לִבּוֹ֙ וְאֶת־לֵ֣ב עֲבָדָ֔יו לְמַ֗עַן שִׁתִ֛י אֹתֹתַ֥י אֵ֖לֶּה בְּקִרְבּֽוֹ׃

וּלְמַ֡עַן תְּסַפֵּר֩ בְּאָזְנֵ֨י בִנְךָ֜ וּבֶן־בִּנְךָ֗ אֵ֣ת אֲשֶׁ֤ר הִתְעַלַּ֙לְתִּי֙ בְּמִצְרַ֔יִם וְאֶת־אֹתֹתַ֖י אֲשֶׁר־שַׂ֣מְתִּי בָ֑ם וִֽידַעְתֶּ֖ם כִּי־אֲנִ֥י

 For I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his courtiers, in order that I may display these My signs among them,

and that you may recount in the hearing of your children  and of your chidren's children how I made a mockery of the Egyptians and how I displayed My signs among them—in order that you may know that I am the LORD.” 

 It will take the plague of the firstborn for him to accede to all of the demands.  The goal is to perpetrate the plague, the demands of Moses are merely the instrument.  Is  the  result is worth the effort?  In our time, how do we handle the cruelty assigned to Gd and the role assigned to the Hebrews as bystander/beneficiaries, a role similar to the Polish people in the Holocaust?  

The Passover story is a preparation for the Jewish mind to understand the modern Exodus from Europe.  The Holocaust is often described as "incredible"  This is a word that I object to.  The word means "unbelivable" and hence, not believed.  Not believing that the Holocaust occurred is  a most offensive antisemitism. It is a denial of recorded history for the sake of diminishing Jews.  These are the Jews who perpetuate the miracles of the Exodus as real events.

 As time goes by, the holocaust fades .  It decays and becomes the fertile soil, the product of decayed flesh and blood - out f which stories emerge.  It becomes the origin of the next mythos: stories of survival and heroism,  the fight  for the liberation of all oppressed people. This evolution is framed  by the ancient story of Moses and the Pharaoh and the locusts, darkness and death plagues. It is a co-memoration.  

At the close of the parsha, the special status of the  firstborn is emphasized by repetition.  These 2 passages are incorporated in the  tefillin, they are testimony to the special status of people of Israel, Gd's designated firstborn .  All the firstborn were designated for destruction on the night of Passover, but Gd lamely ( the true translation of pesach) skipped the Hebrews... for a while.

The Rasha, the wicked child, the rash child, of the Hagadah  is quoted  

וְהָיָ֕ה כִּֽי־יֹאמְר֥וּ אֲלֵיכֶ֖ם בְּנֵיכֶ֑ם מָ֛ה הָעֲבֹדָ֥ה הַזֹּ֖את לָכֶֽם׃

And when your children ask you, ‘What do you mean by this rite?’

Actually, all three children's questions can be derived from this verse.  The Chacham, wise, child simply asks: מָ֛ה הָעֲבֹדָ֥ה, how is the ritual carried out?  and the simple child asks מָ֛ה זֹּ֖את   What is this?

At the seder of my parents, I did not know what to ask.  But now I ask, Did Gd harden the heart of Hitler?

Va'erah: Heart and Mind

This weeks parsha reports a conflict between a political leader, Pharoah and a revolutionary leader, Moses. It is a theme that has been repeated in history, the account in va'erah is certainly a paradigm.

Pharaoh's scientists ( the arrogance of our worldview calls them magicians and necromancers, but they were the most knowledgeable and technically advanced people in their time) soon tell him, at the plague of lice ( the third plague),  that the forces at work, coercing him to accede to the demands of Moshe, are "the finger of E", they are  beyond all imagination. .  The  ability of these technicians to reproduce the first two plagues, turning the waters to blood and the obnoxious proliferation of frogs, did not reduce the suffering from these blows, either. 

Why didn't Pharaoh kill  Moses and Aaron, these troublemakers, when they poisoned the water supply?   Was it because the previous Egyptian edict, drowning the newborns in the river, had justified this result?   Did the frogs remind Pharaoh of the benefit that would be derived from the expulsion of the Hebrews?  The Egyptians were disgusted by the large number of Hebrews intercalating themselves everywhere, the frogs reminded them of the feeling.

The Pharaoh's heart is hard. Gd has a plan, and it requires a ruler with an iron will. How much of  anyone's will is Divine intervention? How formative is the beating it takes from other wills, whatever their source? Does it get tougher?   Does it develop holes? Does a will collapse before a greater will? Can it stand up to an armed will?

The   king  does not listen to his best advisers. (We see this)  They are telling him that the situation is outside human control.  He should do what he can to control the damage; he does not listen. The National  Institutes of Magic  are telling the ruler about the effects of climate change: the river is too warm for the fish to survive, the dead fish attract the frogs, the dead frogs feed the lice, the lice-infested beasts run through the city, the invading animals carry viruses that  infect the livestock, the infection  in humans causes a rash.  The warming earth brings storms of extraordinary intensity.  It is all out of control.  The ruler does not trust these advisers. He knows best!

Pharaoh promises to send the people, but he continues to keep them.  The continuation is called Yosef.  The word means continue, but it also evokes Joseph, the great Hebrew viceroy who brought his people to this land, where they ended up slaves.  This Joseph model, this Egyptian-Hebrew is how the last 3 generations have seen themselves.  When Moses accuses Pharaoh  of "continuing"  does he mean that Pharaoh is reminding the people that they are Josephites? This could answer I question that I have long pondered: Why is Pharaoh credited with the exodus?:
וַיְהִ֗י בְּשַׁלַּ֣ח פַּרְעֹה֮ אֶת־הָעָם֒

When Pharaoh sent out the people

Was it not Gd that liberated the people through Moses? Perhaps it was only when the Pharaoh expelled the people that they could dissolve this illusion of Egyptian-ness. 

The expulsion also required a hard heart. 

Shemoth: Oppression

This is the book of names.  They  are taking down names.  These are the names of the brothers who sold Joseph into slavery.  Now, they will become slaves, as they pledged when Joseph's stolen goblet ruse caught them.  These are the 12 brothers who could have returned to  Canaan... but did not.  Now their descendants  will stay in Egypt for hundreds of years. 

The Hebrew immigrants are oppressed. They are foreigners.  Who knows where their allegiance lies?They may join with the enemy, a fifth column. They could have been expelled, the Egyptians could have built a wall.  Instead they enslaved  them.  They became gardeners and house cleaners.  They found an ironic project: build store cities.  Joseph, the viceroy who had brought these Hebrews down from wherever they belong, had risen to his position by storing grain.  Let them continue his tradition and build cities for the storage of grain.  Let them appear to participate in the hated collectivization of the land.

The Hebrews have so many babies! Pharaoh has a plan.  Kill the boys ( and keep the girls) The midwives refuse to carry out this Nazi level policy. When called to task, they get away with a lame excuse.  All they need to do is invoke the  prevailing bigotry  and call the Hebrews animals.   When the 20th century Nazis formed Einsatzgruppen,  squads of soldiers who shot Jews into pits ( how my maternal grandparents probably died), there was little or no punishment for refusing to participate.  At least on some occasions, standing up for good over evil can be worth it. 

The daughter of Pharaoh rescues a doomed Hebrew boy.  She knows exactly what she is doing.  Moshe's mother had followed the royal edict: she had cast her male child into the river.  Who said she could not use a boat? Pharaoh's daughter was rebelling against her father... and fighting an evil. She raised a prince that would defeat her realm... and drowns its sons in the sea of Reeds. 

When Moshe and Aaron ask for a  holiday, the Pharaoh detects a nation-building activity . He reacts by making the work of the enslaved Hebrews impossibly difficult.  They will now need to produce bricks without a a supply of raw materials. When they fail the impossible, the Egyptian overlords beat the Hebrew supervisors. The image evokes scenes from the Holocaust 

Bricks  are the symbol of industrialization, and the subjugation that it implies. Bricks are first mentioned as part of the (sin of) the tower of Babel.  The text tells us that the bricks replaced stones. The manufactured, more uniform, building material replaced the naturally occurring ,  irregular stones that impart uniqueness to every construction; that require (expensive) skill to use correctly.  Bricks generated a (lower) class of brick makers and degraded the status of the builder.  (Concrete is even worse.) The Pharaoh and his minions used the adoption of this socioeconomic system, established at the dispersion of Babel ( which created the distinction between the native and the immigrant) to subjugate the Hebrew foreigners. 

The parsha names heroes, women who would not obey evil decrees. The drudges who carried out the decrees, without protest, possibly without thought , were just  banal parts of the machine.  That is also a crime.  

Fight evil, you might get away with it. 

Vayechi: Making a Living

This parsha is about the end of 2 lives: Jacob and Joseph.  Both want to be buried in the promised land: Jacob immediately and Joseph anon.  It is extremely important to these patriarchal figures that Israel be their final resting place. 

When I buried my parents, I could feel a relic of that mission.  Burying them in Israel was their final struggle,  a battle bequeathed to me, their son.  Its accomplishment is a lasting source of nachas ruach, the satisfying peace, that comes from doing the appropriately ironic.  The Holocaust survivors, who chose to come to come to America to make a living, lie eternally in the ground that was consecrated by their ancestors.  The land that was the subject of inter-generational dreams and contributed so much to an ongoing tradition of surviving and escaping persecution. 

Jacob has come to Egypt to survive the famine.  He had come 17 years earlier.  Joseph, based upon Pharaoh's dream had predicted a 7 year famine.  Jacob had, at least, 10 years to leave, to return to Canaan.   He stayed in Egypt.  Perhaps he was living the title of the parsha: he,  and his clan ,were making a living.

Going to Egypt had demeaned Jacob.  He had to adjure his powerful son Joseph to bury him in his ancestral crypt.  He had lain claim to the Cave of Machpela by burying Leah there. (He had been forced to bury Rachel in Bethlehem.)  Once Joseph swears to fulfill this funereal wish, he bows to the the bed, presumably, indirectly, to his son. 

Jacob leaves a legacy of "blessings" to his sons.  Onkelos interprets this to be deeds to various parts of the Promised Land.  These are dream certificates. Jacob's holdings in Canaan are either non-existent or long gone.  His rusted keys will be ignored.  But these dreams are kept, and motivate "returns" to lands that pilgrims had never seen. A dream that lives today, even in me. 

The Children of Israel and a great Egyptian retinue come to Hevron and bury Jacob  -as he had requested.  Why did they return to Egypt? Physically they had escaped. Perhaps that they had to make a living. 

Joseph had a good life in Egypt. he enjoyed his great grandchildren (who would go on to conquer  parts of the Promised Land.)  But he casts his fate with the redemption of his kin.  He transmits the password: Pakod Yifkod, Gd will surely remember - and remind the nation

Our burial plot, near my parents in Eretz haChaim, the land of the living, is bought.  For now, we will wait. 

Vayigash: Siyum Shas

Vayigash: Siyum Shas

The theme of courage is strong in this parsha.  It begins with Judah's approach to the inscrutable viceroy, Secret Joseph. Judah attempts to enslave himself and all of his future generations in exchange for the framed Benjamin, found with the planted chalice in his pannier. He does this to keep the promise to his father, he does not want to see Jacob's reaction to his return without Benjamin. He does it to honor an  agreement that has become more important than the temporal, more important than self preservation.

Joseph has become one of the most powerful people in the world. He distributes the  stored grain to the starving populace. He acquires all of the region's wealth and enslaves the people of Egypt and takes possession of their land in the name of Pharaoh.  He changes Pharaoh from a chief who rules by intimidation to a lord whose manor extends over all of Egypt  and beyond. He bought cheap and sold dear. This is the way of the world

Today, we complete a cycle of daf yomi, we complete an agreed upon portion of the Talmud, studied one page per day, with the entire community on the same page.  The program was begun  on the first day of Rosh Hashanah 5684 (11 September 1923). 

 The standard Vilna edition ends with : 

תנא דבי אליהו כל השונה הלכות בכל יום מובטח לו שהוא בן העולם הבא שנאמר (חבקוק ג, ו) הליכות עולם לו אל תקרי הליכות אלא הלכות
The school of Elijah taught: Anyone who studies halakhot every day is guaranteed that he is destined for the World-to-Come, as it is stated: “His ways [halikhot] are eternal” (Habakkuk 3:6). Do not read the verse as halikhot; rather, read it as halakhot.


Tosafoth says:  Tosefoth intimates that the quote from the school of Eliahu is added to end the tratctate, and talmud on a positive note  There are texts that do not contain this passage, but Rashi and Rabeinu Tam had it.

Rashi comments in the gemara: הלכות - משנה וברייתא הלכה למשה מסיני:

The word Halachoth means mishnah, Braitha and the orally transmitted tradition 

that is attributed to Moshe at Sinai.

The difference between Rashi and Tosefoth has implictaions for the resolution of the preceding argument between Rabbi Akiva, who argues that complex rules can be derived from Torah text, and   Rabbi Elazar ben Azaria who holds that these complex rules  are traditions that can be traced back.  It appears that Rashi supports Rabbi Elazar ben Azaria

The full verse from Habakkuk, from which the quote in the Talmud is taken, reads:

עָמַ֣ד ׀ וַיְמֹ֣דֶד אֶ֗רֶץ רָאָה֙ וַיַּתֵּ֣ר גּוֹיִ֔ם וַיִּתְפֹּֽצְצוּ֙ הַרְרֵי־עַ֔ד שַׁח֖וּ גִּבְע֣וֹת עוֹלָ֑ם הֲלִיכ֥וֹת עוֹלָ֖ם לֽוֹ׃

When He stands, He makes the earth shake; When He glances, He makes nations tremble. The age-old mountains are shattered, The primeval hills sink low. His are the eternal ways:

The verse is a  testament to Gd's power.  In his commentary on Habakkuk,  Rashi explains this to mean that the world order, as initiated by the Deluge in time of Noach and the Dispersion after the tower of Babel are determined by Gd's will. Presumably,  the famine in Egypt and  the  rescue  engineered by Joseph's  was also so determined. 

The Malbim  understands Halichoth, Gd's paths, to be  the laws of nature.  These, too, are subject to the will of Gd. 

When we study the Talmud, we approach an awesome work, a 2000 year old written record of concepts  refine  from the preceding thousand years. The text is surrounded and appended by the scholarship  of geniuses who dedicated their lives to the endeavor of correctly understanding the transmitted tradition.   All who studied it did so with awe and reverence.  When we study the Talmud, we approach the greatest power in the universe, the power that transcends time.  

The laws of nature are currently in force. Halachoth will last forever.