No one saw his fellow

 and no one rose from where he was three days,

But all the israelites had

light in their dwelling places.

(Shemot 10:23)

You

find darkness mentioned three times in the parasha: "That

there be darkness", "a darkness one can feel"

"and there was pitch dark", -thus alluding to three types of

darkness; alata, afela,

and arafel.

Alata [thick

gloom] (Translations of the Hebrew terms for

darkness are by Robert Alter.) is the

darkness of the "Covenant of the Pieces", as is written: '…there was

a thick gloom".

Afela [pitch

dark] is the darkness of Egypt,

as is written, "and there was pitch dark".

Arafel is the

darkness at the giving of the Torah, as is written (Shemot

20) "And Mosheapproached the darkness".

Rabeinu Behayey, Shemot 10:21)

Therefore

the pure and righteous do not complain about the darkness, but they increase

light; they do not complain about evil, but they increase justice; they do not

complain about heresy, but increase faith; they do not complain about ignorance

but increase wisdom.

(From "Arpilei Tohar",

Rabbi A. Y. HaCohen Kook zt"l

27-28)

My

grandfather, of blessed memory, said regarding the passage, "No one saw

his fellow and no one rose from where he was for three days" – He who

cannot see his fellow with a good eye [generously] cannot himself survive.

(Imrei Emet quoting

the Hidushei HaRim, Pesach

sermon)

*             

Hardening of the heart – as addiction

Gili

Zivan

And the Lord

said to Moses, "See, I have set you as a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron your

brother will be your prophet. You it is who will speak all that I charge you

and Aaron your brother will speak to Pharaoh, and he will send off the

Israelites from his land. And I on My part shall harden Pharaoh's heart, that I

may multiply my signs and My portents in the land of Egypt. And Pharaoh will not heed you

…And

Pharaoh's heart hardened and he did not heed them, just as the Lord had spoken.

(Shemot 7:1-13)

Every year, Parashat "Bo" raises anew the problem of the

hardening of Pharaoh's heart. Again and again it is difficult to accept the

passages describing the toughening of Pharaoh's heart by the Holy One, Blessed

Be He. Similar to the heretics mentioned by Rabbi Yochanan,

we want to protest and say: "But he was unable to repent!?" (Midrash Rabba, Shemot 13, section 3).

How many nibs

have been broken on the issue of freedom of choice vs. the hardening of Pharaoh's

heart… and I confess: I really do not know Scripture's intentions, but, having

already touched upon the subject, I would like to develop the Midrash's statement, further developed by the Ramban ( in his first answer) and intimated in the Rambam's writings.

Resh Lakish replies to the

heretic's question:

At scoffers

He scoffs". The Holy One cautions a person once, twice, thrice, and if still

he does not repent – He locks his heart against penitence in order to repay him

for his sins. And so with evil Pharaoh – since the Holy One had sent punishments

five times and he paid no attention, the Holy One said to him: You stiffened

your neck and hardened your heart – I will add more impurity to your impurity, thus:

"For I have hardened his heart."

The Midrash noted that the Holy One hardened Pharaoh's heart

only from the sixth plague on. During the first five plagues, Pharaoh hardened

his heart of his own volition, and the punishment for his refusal was the preclusion

of his repentance. The Ramban explains in similar

fashion:

And they gave

explanations to the question which all ask, if God hardened his heart, what was

his sin? There are two explanations, both true. One – Because Pharaoh, in

judged according to his earlier behavior.

Rambam, whose words in the "Laws of Repentance" repeatedly

emphasize the centrality of free choice as a foundation stone of religious

thought, relates to our question:

Many passages

in the Torah and Prophets seem to contradict this principle, and most people

misinterpret them, and some think that the Holy One decides whether one does

wrong or right, and that man does not control his heart to determine his

actions. I now explain a major principle from which you will know the meaning

of all those passages – when an individual or members of a community sin and

the sinner sins consciously and willingly, as we have shown, it is proper

to punish him. And the Holy One knows how to punish – …In which

circumstances is this true? When he does not repent. But

if one has repented, repentance is a shield against divine punishment. Just

It is possible that one perform a terrible sin or many sins, until he

stands in judgment before the truthful judge and the punishment for these

sins committed willingly and consciously is that he will be denied repentance,

and he is not permitted to repent from his wickedness in order that he die and

perish in his sin which he committed… therefore is it written in the

Torah "And I will harden Pharaoh's heart" because he had sinned

earlier on his own and harmed Israel dwelling in his land, as is written: "Come

let us be shrewd with them" – the sentence was given to prevent him

from repenting until he be punished therefore the Holy One hardened his

heart" (Laws of Repentance, 1:1-3 with

omissions).

Woven like a

silken thread from Midrash Rabba

to the Rambam is the principle that Pharaoh chose of

his own free will to exploit the minority dwelling in his land – chose to

damage, chose to murder – and chose not to listen to the cry of the enslaved crying

for freedom and pleading time and again "Let my people go". The hardening

of his heart which, at this stage, denies him the possibility of repentance, is itself his punishment for his decision to

exploit and abuse the helpless minority.

I should like

to carry this a step further, and to argue that the

hardening of the heart is not a punishment externally imposed upon the guilty

by the punisher; it is part and parcel of the human personality. There is a

point where that which began as a decision becomes a habit, and habit, with

time, becomes man's "second nature." Smoking a cigarette which

eventually becomes a pack of cigarettes, exaggerated eating from which a person

cannot free himself, speech patterns which one has adopted, methods of

reaction, etc. Certainly such is the case regarding all forms of addictions – drugs,

alcohol, and others.

As in Barry Sacharov's song "Slaves", "…We are all

slaves even / When we have something like this as if / We

open our mouth wide / And wait for the next pleasure." In our media-worshipping

society it is very difficult not to be influenced by social criteria of good

and bad. We are all "addicted to something", we all find it hard to

free ourselves of habits founded in social perversions. The punishment of hardening

Pharaoh's heart, or, in other words, prevention of repentance (the change) from

his sin is but that second when the person cannot stop. Perhaps he wants to

change, but he has already missed the boat. His body cannot function without

the drug, his personality cannot forgo the high which,

with time, becomes his raison d'etre. The fix

hardens his heart, and all the promises he made to himself evaporate into

nothingness when he again feels the need.

How much help

and support does the addict require in order to free himself of the dependence

he has developed? And even then, testify the professionals, not always will he

succeed. There is still hope for the young, but there comes an age when it is

almost impossible to change.

Does not all

of Israeli society suffer from the illness of "hardening of the heart",

i.e., from increasing addictions, even in our protected religious community?

behavior, such as addition to gambling, to sex or to eating, also exist among

religious adults and adolescents, even they would seem to be "inoculated"

against these phenomena", (Returno – Jewish

Rehabilitative Community for Dealing with Addictions, p. 9] at "Retorno" (In Spanish: U-turn, or return, as a symbol

of returning to life), a village for the rehabilitated, located in the hills of

the Judea lowlands, which deals with male and female youngsters  – primarily from religious backgrounds– who, having

undergone some serious crisis in life, sought solutions in the wrong places. In

the preface to their research volume on the rehab village, the authors (Ronel, Chen, Timor, and

Elisha) analyze Retorno's system of treatment,

comparing it to the well-known 12 step system of Alcoholics Anonymous, laying

special emphasis on the spiritual dimension of treatment in "Retorno":

The

though drugs. This inner void derives from the addicts' extreme

concentration on 'myself', which is perceived to be the phenomenological

root of the addiction and as an expression of spiritual disturbance… accordingly,

recovery from the addiction is conceived as "a spiritual journey",

and the twelve steps are the means to spiritual growth (Ibid, p. 12).

Do not

these words draw us back to our parasha? Do not

Pharaoh's defiant cry "Who is God that I should obey His all to send off Israel?!"

(Shemot 5:2)

and his refusal to see the suffering of those around him: "…for they are

idlers. Therefore do they cry out, saying 'Let us go sacrifice to our god.' Let the work be heavy on the men…!" (Shemot 5:8,9) – do these not testify to extreme egotism and

concentration upon the self?

The book's

authors maintain that the cure for the sense of emptiness from which the addict

suffers is a spiritual journey, the personal search for "the meaning of

life". The meaning of life "is not the result of psychological-social

factors, but rather the result of a personal decision based upon spiritual

processes" (ibid.).

Is this not

the exact claim of the commentators with whose words we began the discussion?

Does not the loss of the ability to choose derive from the addict's selfish

concern with himself? The spiritual journey back to life, then, is

contingent upon the discovery that man is able to bequeath to others love, joy,

optimism, support, etc.

The addict

needs a helping hand in order to be able to return. Pharaoh, who does not

recognize the Lord, but considers himself to be the lord, does not recognize 'the

other", and has no need of him, and therefore he is denied repentance.

The repentance

miniscule opening to one who is found outside himself.

Dr.

Gili Zivan is a co-director

of the Yaakov Herzog Center

and a member of Kibbutz Sa'ad.

"They shall ask, each man

recognizes no boundaries

When it developed that redemption

was delayed for the twelve months of Egypt's trial, and that from the

pestilence on they deepened their association… and yet more, during the

affliction of darkness, when no one was able to go out for three days, and

everyone suffered for three days, but the Children of Israel, who had light in

their settlements, supplied them with food and all necessities, did not rejoice

in their adversity and did not take revenge. Thereby they found great favor in

their eyes.

(Haamek Davar, Shmot 11:2)

Between holiness and

national historical ties

The foundations of sanctified

sites are not delineated in the divine teachings, but derive from the nation and

its roots. Har Hamoriah,

for example – there was the point of man's creation, there Avraham

sacrificed Yitzhak; later it was chosen by the word of a prophet. The Torah

states only "the place which God will choose". The site of the

Torah is Mount Sinai. Once the Divine Presence

departed, — let sheep and cattle go up!… Forbid

that sentiments mislead us any visualization of the religion. But Yerushalayim, all Eretz Yisrael, and Har Hamoriah are constructions of their relation to our

fathers. They, the fathers, are the roots of the nation; the nation must be one

with its roots. All sentiments should be directed toward the unification of the

nation.

(Meshekh Hokhma, Shmot 12:21,22)

The blood on the lintel: on

the inside? On the outside? What for?

"And they should put it on

the doorposts and on the lintel': on the inside. But perhaps it really means on

the outside? This is what the verse means by 'and the blood should be as a sign

for you' – a sign for you, and not for others.

(Mechilta Bo Masehet

Depascha Parasha 6)

Many have said that putting the

blood on the lintel and the two doorposts was to show that they could publicly

slaughter what was abhorrent to the Egyptians, because the fear of them had

already fallen on the Egyptians, and they were not afraid that they would stone

them. But if that were the case, it would have been on the gate to the

courtyard. But in fact, the blood was only daubed in secret, with the courtyard

gate shut, and they did the slaughtering in the afternoon so no-one would see

since it was close to nightfall, and no one left their house until morning, for

they went on their way and each person closed his/her courtyard gate, because

the Egyptians thought they would return. Only the reason for the blood on the

lintel was to be a ransom for everyone who ate in the house and a sign to the

destroying angel when he saw it, as though it were a label.

(Ibn Ezra Exodus XII, 7)

We were commanded to slaughter

the Paschal lamb and sprinkle its blood on the doorway in Egypt on the

outside (Leviticus I,2)

to cleanse ourselves of those notions and publicly declare their opposite, and

inculcate the opinion that the deed you think is a cause of destruction is what

saves from destruction.

 (Maimonides,

Guide of the Perplexed, III, 46)

'And it shall be as a sign on

your arm': tefillin should be put on the weak arm.

And so it is with the two arms of

a man, for the left arm is weak and is next to the heart, the seat of wisdom,

for the intelligent part of the heart causes the arm to be weak, for the arm is

busy with material concerns, but the right arm is next to the liver, seat of

desire, which is not opposed to the arm, because there lies its main strength,

but where the intelligence resides, there the arm is weak. And when it says

here 'And it shall be for a sign on your arm', it is as though it said it

should be for a sign on your heart, for the heart is the case of the arm's

weakness, for the point of the tefillin is to be a

reminder for a man where the intelligence resides in the brain and the heart.

And concerning the tefillin for the head it said it

should be 'between you eyes', for the eye and the heart are two pimps for sin (Talmud Yerushalmi Berachot 81 halacha 5),

therefore these two places need something to remind them of the existence of

the Almighty, may He be blessed, and his power, and they will thereby recoil

from evil.

(Kli Yakar Exodus

XIII, 16)

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