But you, have no fear, my servant jacob,

Be not dismayed, o israel!

I will deliver you from far away,

 your folk from their land of captivity;

and Jacob again shall have calm and quiet,

with none to trouble him.

(Jeremiah 46:27)

R.

Yehoshua said: I have on tradition from our teacher R. Yochanan ben Zakkai, who

received from his teacher and his teacher from his teacher, a law given Moshe

at Sinai, that Elijah will come neither to make impure nor to purify, nor to

distance nor to bring close, but to separate those forcibly connected and to

unite those forcibly separated. The House of Zerifa was on the other side of

the Jordan, and Ben Zion forced them to leave, and another was there and Ben

Zion forced them to come close; such as these will Elijah come to make impure

and to purify, to distance and to bring close.

R.

Yehudah says: To bring close but not to distance.

R.

Shimon says: To settle disputes.

And

the Sages say neither to distance nor to bring close, but to make peace in

the world, as is written (Malachi 3) 'Behold, I send you Elijah the Prophet' and [the

passage ends] 'And he will return the heart of fathers to sons and the heart of

son to their father'.

(Mishna, Eduyot 8:7)

The

question is asked, what is the difference between the words of the Sages and

those of the first-quoted Tanna? Do not his words overlap those of the Sages

who say "to make peace in the world'? Prof. Hanoch Albeck quotes the Sages'

teaching from the Mishna in Tractate Eduyot and explains their intent by adding

a single word: 'to make peace in the entire world'; that is to say, in

contrast to those Tannaim who thought that Elijah the Prophet's mission is to

bring peace between fathers and sons, to settle disputes within the Jewish

people, the intent of the Sages, in their emphasis upon 'the world', is the

making of peace and spreading it not only within the people of Israel, but

throughout the entire world.

 (Y. Leibowitz: Discussions on the Holidays of Israel

and its Festivals pp. 64-65, Heb.)

On freedom of choice and hardening of the heart

Pinchas Leiser

                                                                                    And

the Lord said to Moshe, "Come unto Pharaoh,

for I Myself have

hardened his heart and the heart of his servants,

so that I may set

these signs of Mine in his midst.

The hardening

of Pharaoh's heart has a long history, and Biblical exegetes and thinkers

sought to cope with the difficulty inherent in the punishment of Pharaoh and

Egyptian people when, in actuality, they were denied free choice.

Nechama

Leibowitz (Studies in the Book of Shemot p.110)

brings all the passages relating to the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, and

differentiates (following the Midrash Tanhuma) between the Torah's description

of the hardening of the heart in the first five plagues and that of the later

plagues, and thus writes the Tanchuma:

And he

hardened the heart of Pharaoh – In the first plagues it is only written

"And He hardened the heart of Pharaoh". Because five plagues

had been inflicted yet he did not send [the people off], the Holy One, blessed

be He said, From here on if he wants to send, I do not accept [his wishes], for

so is it written in the latter five plagues "And the Lord hardened

the heart of Pharaoh", and Moshe would decree and

the Holy One would fulfill, as is written "You will decree and it will

be fulfilled" (Job 22:28).

Biblical

exegetes, beginning with Chazal, the Talmudic sages, related to theological

problem:

For I

have hardened his heart" – Said R. Yochanan: This enabled the

heretics to claim that he was prevented from repenting, for it is written "For

I have hardened his heart". Replied Resh Lakish: "At

scoffers He scoffs" (Proverbs 3:34) ,

for the Holy One warns a person once and twice and a third time and he does

repent, so He locks his heart against repentance in order to repay him for his

sins, and so with Pharaoh the wicked, because five times the Holy One sent

warnings and five times he ignored them, said the Holy One: You have stiffened

your neck and hardened your heart, I now add impurity to your impurity, thus : "For

I have hardened his heart". What is the meaning of hichbadeti ["I

have hardened"]? [The root of hichbadeti – k'v'd' – "heavy:

– also means "liver"]. The Holy One made his heart like liver

which, when cooked a second time, artesis enters into it, so Pharaoh's heart

became like that liver and did not receive the words of the Holy One, thus "For

I have hardened his heart" (Shemot Rabba 13:3)

Nechama

Leibowitz quotes SHaDaL (R. Shmuel David Luzzato, Italy, 19^th cent):

One may explain

according to the opinion of Rambeman (Mendelssohn) that there was no divine

punishment nor actual miracle. Rather Pharaoh hardened his heart by himself,

yet all actions are ascribed to the Lord in that He is the first cause; and I

add that the acts ascribed in the Bible to the Lord are those unusual phenomena

we do not understand, and so here, Pharaoh's obstinacy even after witnessing

to the Lord; similar to this is "Yet to this day the Lord has not

given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear" (Devarim 29:3), and also "For the Lord

told , curse David" (II Shmuel 16:10).

Other

commentators (R. Yosef Albo, Seforno, Reggio) claim that actually Pharaoh's

reaction to the plagues and his willingness to free the Children of Israel were

not a matter of choice, but rather submission to pressure applied upon him and

therefore – in the long run – freedom of choice was returned to Pharaoh through

the hardening of his heart.

Rambam deals

with the philosophical-theological aspect of the subject of freedom of choice and

problems arising in the Bible, among them the hardening of Pharaoh's heart by

God. Following the basic argument that that prevention of the possibility of repentance

is the severest of punishments, Rambam relates to various examples which would

seem to contradict the principle of free choice:

One concludes

from this that the Lord did not force Pharaoh to harm Israel nor did He force Sihon to sin inside his land, nor Israel to worship idolatrously, but all

sinned of their own volition and all were punished by being denied repentance. (Mishneh Torah of Rambam, Laws of Repentance 6:3)

In other

words, God's hardening of Pharaoh's heart is explained as a punishment which

prevents the possibility of repentance (Resh Lakish and Rambam); as an act of

God, because everything is an act of god inasmuch as He is the First Cause; or

as divine intervention which actually returns to Pharaoh the possibility of

realization his will, i.e., Pharaoh's original hardheartedness.

It seems to me

that these various explanations invite us to study the subject of choice and

hardening of the heart not only in the context of Pharaoh, but in relation to

every man, every leader, and every nation.

In the Shemot

Rabba midrash quoted above, the teacher describes the "hardening of the

heart":" The Holy One made his heart like liver which, when cooked

a second time, artesis (a property of copper) enters into it", that

is to say, the heart becomes sealed and impenetrable.

The heart is

sealed and impenetrable, it certainly cannot be attentive to the suffering of

the other, and then the question arises: How does a heart become sealed off?

I think that

the Torah, beginning with Parashat Shemot supplies a convincing description of

the development of this phenomenon.

a.       The frightening of the nation by presenting the stranger as a

demographic and security danger. At the beginning this may have been a calculated

act of demagoguery on the part of the ruler to unite the nation against an

external enemy, but in time the leader himself begins to believe his own

propaganda.

b.      We can assume that the leader does indeed begin to believe that the

strangers constitute a danger and that a way must be found to eliminate them,

for he orders a campaign of male infanticide. According to the midrash, this is

motivated also by a real fear of the birth of a leader who will foment

revolution.

c.       When Moshe and Aharon first appeal to Pharaoh and he rejects their

request to worship their God, the Torah does not specifically refer to "hardening

of the heart". It may be that Pharaoh feels that the current state of

servitude is sustainable, so why attempt to change a situation prevalent for

years. After all, the aliens seem to have reconciled themselves to their

condition, so why permit them something which they themselves did not request

and which may upset a functioning equilibrium? They have become accustomed to

the situation! In other words, the first stage in the hardening of the heart is

the belief that it is possible to enslave another nation forever, and therefore

it is also necessary to suppress attempts, even limited ones, at developing

self-identity (such as observance of a different religion).

d.      'Hardening of the heart' first appears explicitly following the plague

of the frogs. Pharaoh promises that in return for removal of the frogs, he will

permit the Hebrews performance of the desert ritual as Moshe requested, but

then he breaks his promise. Does he intuit that temporary release of the slaves

will lead to their escape? In any case, the second stage in the hardening of

the heart is perhaps the belief that the ruler has no commitment to his alien

slaves; he rules with absolute power.

e.       In the ensuing plagues, e.g. following the plague of the swarm of wild

beasts ["arov"], Pharaoh seems to soften up, he does lighten

control; he suggests that they observe the ritual within the land of Egypt or somewhere nearby, but again he retracts. The hardening of the heart is the

need to control and the denial of choice and freedom for others.

f.       

The first time where there is divine intervention is after

the plague of boils; here perhaps the heart has already hardened and is totally

impenetrable.

It may well

be, then, that the Torah is teaching us an essential lesson on choice; a

leader, any man, or any nation, in a slow and incremental process such as the

stages described above, can harden and seal his/its heart and be opaque to the

needs and suffering of the other.. At some point, this imperviousness becomes

irreversible, and even the most severe plagues cannot effect change. Denial of

choice to one who rules over others parallels, in a certain sense, the attempt

of the leader to deny the right of choice of others, and the sad poetic justice

decrees that the enslaver himself becomes slave to his own imperviousness;

It seems to me

that the Torah's goal is not only to inform us of what happened to Pharaoh and

the Egyptian people, but also – perhaps primarily – to warn every man, every

nation, including ourselves, in these times, what are the dangerous

ramifications of sealing off the heart.

Pinchas

Leiser, editor of Shabbat Shalom, is a psychologist

Thick darkness descended upon all the land of egypt for three days. People could not see one another, and for three days. No one could

dwellings.

(Shemot 10:22-23)

No one could get

up from where he was – it is not

the nature of darkness to so imprison someone that he cannot get up from where

he is. Even the blind can walk around, feeling their way in the dark. From here

we learn that they were terrified by strange visions until fear made it

impossible for them to move from place to place, as happens to a person who is

frightened by a catastrophe.

Three days – the plague continued to keep them immobilized for

so long that they would have died from thirst and hunger if the Israelites did

not come to help them, feeding them and giving them drink. Thus it

seems reasonable that they did this, and Scripture alludes to it the

later verses; when the Egyptians saw the Israelites repaying evil with good,

they lost their hatred of them and began to honor and love them, and to believe

that they had a divine quality. That is why they generously lent things to them

and showed them favor. They also greatly honored Moses, which they had not done

previously.

All the Israelites enjoyed light in

their dwellings – the land of Goshen was mentioned in connection with the plagues of mixed beasts

and hail, and here it says in their dwellings to tell

us the secret of the matter – that there was no darkness in the land, but only

in the eyes of the Egyptians. Therefore, the Israelites had light – even

those who lived in close proximity to the Egyptians. That is the significance

of [the expression] in their dwellings: the expression

refers to the Egyptians – even in the Egyptian dwellings and their vicinity

they [the Israelites] saw light, while there was darkness in the land of Goshen because many Egyptians lived in the land of Goshen amidst the Israelites, and they were also punished. There was no place where an

Egyptian could escape this torment, so every Egyptian sat in darkness, while

every Israelite served as his light.

(Rabbi

Yitzhak Shemuel Reggio on Shemot 10:23)

"Light

and Darkness"

And so,

the pure righteous ones do not complain about darkness, instead, they add

light. They do not complain about evil, but instead add justice. They do not

complain about heresy, but instead add faith. They do not complain about

ignorance, but instead add wisdom.

(R. A. Y. Kook zt"l Arpelei Tohar 27-28)

Why was the prohibition of hametz on the Pesach in Egypt in effect for only one day?

On

the Pesach in Egypt the hametz prohibition lasted only one day.

The Sages further taught us that the first Pesach was not considered a Yom Tov

(no commandment to rejoice, as on other festival days). In my opinion, the

reason for giving – at that time — other mitzvot valid for generations to come, is to

teach the perfection of His commandments. In all other nations, a day of

victory over enemies is celebrated as a Victory Day. Such is not the case with Israel; they do not rejoice at the fall their enemies, and they will not joyfully

commemorate these events, as is written, "If your enemy falls, do not

him." A person of

character does not rejoice in his enemy's fall, because such joy is displeasing in

God's eyes, and we are obligated to detest that which is displeasing in God's

eyes. Therefore, on Pesach, we do not commemorate Chag Hamatzot as the occasion of God's punishing

Egypt, but in remembrance of the deliverance of the Children of Israel for the

Land of Egypt. Israel has no festival or Yom Tov in celebraation of an

enemy's downfall.     

(Reb Meir Simcha of Dvinsk, Meshekh Hokhma, Shmot 12:15)

"Nor shall you break a bone of

it" – The Symbols Which Express the Meaning of the

Redemption from Egypt

"Nor

shall you break a bone of it" – The real offering consists primarily

of the blood and the flesh (i.e., the muscles), excluding the bones which only

form the passive framework. An offering is essentially a giving up of oneself

and of the activities prompted by one's own will. In the Pesach offering one

receives oneself back. This symbolic "enjoying of oneself again,

represents the gift of the return of one's personality, i.e., regained freedom

of will. This refers primarily only to the 'basar" – the

flesh, the active part of the personality (the muscles). With

this basar, this 'mevasser' (messenger) of the nefesh, the

soul, there are the bones, the means placed at the service of the will, to

enable the activity of the muscles to function, and to hold the whole together.

They are not the creature itself but they are placed at the disposal of the

creature and in conjunction with it, 'a bone with meat attached', they

represent, not indeed activity, but the means by which activity is achieved. As

long as the basar is on them, they can represent the dedication

by one's own free will of one's activities to God. i.e., as long as

the basar is pure, the bones, as the means used by this free will for

activities, themselves become important, and must be treated with respect, must

be protected from fracture. Apart from their use in conjunction with the basar and

holy uses, the means themselves are worthless. In conjunction with it, they

take on the importance and meaning of our morally free personality. Hence the

dictum: "If there is no kazayit [size of an olive] of meat,

then there is no prohibition against fracturing bones; if it is impure, there

is no prohibition against fracturing bones". Taken together with the two

preceding precepts the verse would express: No person is to be withdrawn from

the home, no basar from the person, and no bone from the

flesh; the consecrated idea of the home is to hold all and everything

fast to itself.

(Rabbi Shimshon Rafael

Hirsch, ibid., ibid.)

[Editor's

note: In continuation of Rabbi Hirsch's words about the consecrated

home, one can read the passage which continues the laws regarding the

Pesach sacrifice: "There shall be one teaching for the citizen

and the stranger" as a moral statement which expresses the

deep meaning of the redemption for Egypt; The freedom of a people cannot base

itself on the negation of the freedom or equality of another people).

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