Parsha Bo

Parsha Bo
Parsha Bo begins with the eighth plague in the series of ten, the coming of the locusts to destroy the crops of Egypt. Moses nonchalantly stretched out his trusty staff, and a strong westerly poured in from God knows where, and locusts came and covered all of the ground until it was black. They devoured everything, forcing Pharaoh to summon Moses and Aaron back into his presence. Pharaoh explains that he had sinned, and asks Moses and Aaron to pray to God to stop the onslaught of plagues. God then initiates a strong easterly wind, taking all of the locusts with it. The portion reads, “Not a locust was left anywhere in Egypt. But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go.

Plague nine brought darkness to the land of Egypt. Conveniently enough, though, the places where the Israelites dwelled remained lit. After what must have been an odd-looking situation to those looking at the dark from the light and vice versa, Pharaoh again summons Moses and Aaron, and tells them to leave the land of Egypt, but to leave their livestock behind. He warns them, telling them never to show their faces before him again. Moses agrees to this permanent separation, and they go on their merry way.

The Lord then explains to Moses the concept behind his latest and greatest creation: the plague that would eliminate the first born of those whose door was not adorned with the blood of a sacrificial lamb. The rules for Passover, by my count still two months away, but who am I to question God, are then laid down. Following this, and the to-be-closely-adhered-to rules to make sure you wake up with your first-born still sleeping where you left him the night before, Pharaoh, apparently not able to live without seeing Moses and Aaron one more time, summons them and tells them to leave, no strings attached.

Then, according to my Sunday school teacher, Moses wasn’t happy because he had just told his bakers to begin baking bread for sandwiches for the ride home, and now that they had to go there wouldn’t be enough time for the bread to cook all the way, oy vay, so they were forced to take it out of the oven while it was still flat as a coaster, leading to generations upon generations of crumbs all over the carpet. They then began on their way to the Promised Land, the land of milk and honey, Israel.

But it wasn’t all fun and games. In fact, unless you’re named Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell, we can hardly expect that God might intervene today on our parts as God chose to do in the time of the enslavement in Egypt.

Around the seder table at my house each year, my staunch revisionist mother allows us to reflect upon what the plagues might symbolize for us denizens of the modern world; that being, modern-day plagues. And in the latter two plagues of Parsha Bo, striking and chilling examples still occur in our world.

As I stated earlier, the miraculous nature of the plague of darkness must call into question the probability of there actually being darkness which only filled certain parts of Egypt, leaving the Jewish settlements illuminated. Etz Hayim offers this explanation:

Perhaps the plague was not a physical darkness, a sandstorm, or a solar eclipse; perhaps it was a spiritual or psychological darkness, a deep depression. People suffering from depression lack the energy to move about or to be concerned with anyone other than themselves, precisely as the Torah describes the Egyptians.

I did not know Donalyn Evans, so I am certainly not qualified to speak on specifics or causes of her recent passing, and because of this I offer my pre-emptive apologies to anybody who is aware of these items (Editor's note: Donalyn Evans, a student at Trinity College, died of self-inflicted wounds the first week back from winter break). But as an individual whose family has a multi-generational history of depression and difficult and scarring bouts with it of my own, I feel I am well qualified to say at least this much:

The recurring theme of the confrontations between Moses and Aaron and the Pharaoh whose permission they are seeking speaks aptly to the well-worn adolescent psychology phenomena of the warning sign. Pharaoh was given more than enough warning signs; in truth, every one of the plagues could be counted as such. His unwillingness to acknowledge these, divinely willed or not, points directly and obviously to the inner thoughts of someone who is suffering from depression. I cringe when I hear of the premature death of any person, college students especially, but when it is of the self-inflicted kind I am forced to re-examine my relationship with my peers. Is my relationship with them at the point where I could have figured out something was wrong? What would I have done differently? Did she know there was more help available? What more could her friends have done for her? I can only imagine how those close to Donalyn must feel during these moments, and in truth I never want to be able to experience it in reality. If we are able to learn anything from Pharaoh, an otherwise vilified character in the annals of our religion, it should be to acknowledge the warning signs, the plagues, from the outset. Don’t wait until it’s too late to reverse your track.

The death of the first born. Tragically, today, the angel of death is not so selective. War and famine continue to rage in Darfur, and in 2005 alone 2.8 and 3.6 million had their lives ended by HIV/AIDS, which bears a strong connection to the first plague, that of blood. Who is to say that these modern plagues are not testing our will just as those of Pharaoh’s time? These modern-day plagues are of such intensely frightening magnitude that they likely would not have been out of place among the other curses God leveled onto the Egyptians. Now is our chance to be put in the shoes of Pharaoh. Will we wait until it is too late to acknowledge the realities of these plagues, as he did? Or will we be able to change the course of history and acknowledge these issues as reality? It is now up to all of us. The writing is on the wall; the land of milk and honey awaits.

Shabbat Shalom.