EACH MAN THREW FORTH HIS STAFF, AND THEY TURNED INTO

SERPENTS. AND AARON'S STAFF SWALLOWED THEIR STAFFS.

(Shemot 7:12)

Take your staff

and throw it forth before Pharaoh, and it will become a serpent [tanin]. What is the Difference Between a Serpent [Tanin]

and a Snake [Nahash]?

…the tanin is a large and especially

dangerous snake, as it is said, their wine is the wrath of taninim (Devarim

32:34), this implies that its wrath is greater than that of a

regular snake. Now Moses and Aaron performed all of the miracles through

speech, like this snake, whose chief strength is in its mouth. Since it appears

that most of the miracles were performed using the staffs of Moses and Aaron,

someone might argue the opposite and say that the miracles were performed

through the power of the staffs. They could mistakenly say that there was

something magical about the staffs. That is why they [the staffs] changed into

snakes, in order to show that just as a snake can bite without the aid of magic

spells, so too, the power of Moses and Aaron was in their own mouths, and the

staffs performed all of the actions which they performed through the power of

the speech of their mouths, for the decrees spoken by a tzaddik

are fulfilled for him…since He did not want the wrath of taninim

around Israel – his staff and that of Aaron involved providence over both Israel

and Pharaoh –

it was turned in to a snake. But Aaron's staff worked

against Pharaoh alone, so it turned into a tanin in order to cancel Pharaoh's

power which was compared to a tanin, as has been stated.

(Kli Yakar Shemot

7:9)

Everywhere in Scripture we find wizards in the employ of ancient

rulers. Similarly today, the natural sciences are harnessed to the needs of the

state. If today they asked to mobilize the natural sciences towards solving

serious problems such as the satisfaction of all human appetites – without

worrying about health-damaging affects – it would be no more than an abuse of

man's control over nature. It would share the same fundamental outlook with

magic.

 (Rabbi S.R. Hirsch Shemot

7:11)

Dedicated to my father Chaim Bermant, z"l, on his 8thYahrzeit.

He was a writer and journalist, and campaigned for

justice and peace

between Israel and her neighbors.

Determinism, Collective Responsibility and Individual

Responsibility

Azriel Bermant

Everything

is foreseen, yet freedom of choice is given. The world is judged with goodness,

and the judgment is according to the scope and magnitude of man's actions. (Pirkei Avot,3:15)

This well-know dictum from Pirkei Avot sets forth an

important theme of this week's Parsha

We read the following in Parshat

Va'era:

And

I will harden Pharoah's heart and multiply my signs

and my wonders in the land of Egypt. (Shemot 7:3)

Over the ages, the commentators have had

difficulties with the verses referring to God "hardening Pharaoh's heart".

On the one hand, we know that man is given freewill. On the other hand, the

aforementioned verse suggests that Pharaoh was not given the choice to repent

and let the Children of Israel leave the land of Egypt.

This raises the following question: If man is

given pure freedom of choice, why was Pharaoh punished, when his

decision-making appeared to be out of his control?

Rambam in his Mishna Torah dwells upon the issue of

freewill and individual choice:

 Do not

believe what the fools among the nations and the senseless of Israel say: that

the Holy One, blessed be He, decrees whether a person

will be righteous or wicked at the moment of his creation. It is not so. Every

person may become righteous like Moses our teacher, or wicked like Jeroboam. (Mishna Torah, Teshuva, 5:2)

Nehama Leibowitz presents an interesting response to our question.

At the outset, man is free to choose any path of action that he wishes. Yet

once a person sets out to do evil and remains on that path, it will become

increasingly difficult to change that behavior for the better. Thus, it is not

God who is holding such a person back. By persisting in the path of evil, the

path of repentance is beset with obstacles. The more one sins, the harder it is

to change.

Let us now look once again at Rambam:

…So long as man is attracted to the paths

of wisdom and righteousness, he hankers after them the more, and assiduously

cultivates them. To this our Sages referred in their statement: "He who

comes to purify himself is helped from Above" – implying that he will find

his path smoothed.

Resh Lakish sheds more light on the response to our question,

through his commentary on a verse from Proverbs:

Said Resh Lakish: What is the force of the text (Proverbs 3, 34): "If to scorners he will

scorn; but to the meek he will show favor?" If he tries to defile himself

he is given an opening; if he tries to purify himself, he is helped (from

above). (Shabbat, 104a)

The Malbim also

expands on this verse from Proverbs:

A

life lived according to "wisdom", according to Torah ethics, is

rooted and nurtured in the essential dignity of the soul, fulfilling its own

nature. Sin, on the other hand, diminishes and enfeebles the soul; the impulse

to evil rises from the subconscious depths, and sweeps away the lofty

aspirations to goodness, so that the soul is overwhelmed and its nobility

lessened. The human being grows mean and small, as his animal nature increases

in strength and importance. (Malbim

on Mishley, 3:30)

In accordance with the words of our sages,

acts of goodness have a positive momentum of their own, with added divine

inspiration and encouragement. While the righteous are given active divine

assistance, the wicked, at best, are given passive assistance in having obstacles

removed, in order to retreat from the path of evil.

Acts

decreasing room for repentance.

In his book Tradition In An Untraditional

Age, the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain and the Commonwealth, Jonathan Sacks,

dwells on a question raised by Rambam that expands on

our discussion and is particularly pertinent to our Parsha:

Why were the Egyptians punished for enslaving and mistreating the Israelites,

when God had already told Abraham that his people would be oppressed in a land

not their own? In other words, it appears as if the Egyptians were already

acting out a divine decree over which they had no control.

Rambam responds by accepting that groups will tend

to act in a predictable manner. Determinism seems to exist on this level. Thus,

according to this argument, it was perhaps predictable that the Egyptians as a

nation would oppress the Israelites. However, this does not extend to the

microcosmic level. There were notable Egyptians who stood out for their courage

in resisting authority. For example, Pharaoh's daughter rescues an Israelite

child from death, in open resistance to her father's edict. Then we have the

case of Shifra and Puah who

are identified by Abarbanel and Samuel David Luzzatto as Egyptian midwives. Here are two more heroines

who were even prepared to risk their lives, in violating the cruel decrees of

their own people.

As Rambam puts it:

Each

individual Egyptian who oppressed and maltreated the Israelites could have

refrained had he so chosen. For God did not make a decree concerning any

specific individual, but only informed Abraham that his descendants would be

subjected to servitude in a land not theirs. (Mishna Torah, Teshuva,

6:5)

Thus, as a member and a leader of the

Egyptian collective, Pharaoh could not be absolved from responsibility for his

crimes, on the basis that he was acting out a preordained role as an oppressor

of the Israelites. On an individual level, Pharaoh had freedom of action to

choose between good and evil. He chose the latter path, from which there was

ultimately no return.

In grappling with determinism, Rambam touches on an issue that is a matter of considerable

contemporary debate. One often hears the argument that we are all products of

the environment in which we live. According to this argument, we are

conditioned by forces beyond our control. The problem with this claim is that

it provides us with ready-made excuses when we stray from the right path. Thus,

people who resort to violence are often encouraged and excused by those who

maintain that violent conduct is conditioned by society and the local

environment.

The fact is, as Rambam

makes clear, we are given choices. As individuals, we have the ability to

exercise our responsibilities for good or for bad. Although our local

environment does have some impact on our individual decisions and lifestyles,

we still have to take responsibility for our own lives, and to recognize that

like Pharaoh, we have been given the freedom to choose between good and evil.

Azriel Bermant, MA, International

Relations, Writer and researcher

The Timing of the

moaning of the Israelites

If you ask; why that day rather

than another?

What is this information – that I did not make My

name the Lord [YKVK] known to them – more necessary now than at other

times? Regarding this, it is said: I will establish My covenant with them,

to give them the land of Canaan (Shemot 6:4), and if I do not publicize now

that the whole earth is mine, the nations of the world will say that you are

bandits, for you conquer the lands of the seven nation with a mighty hand, and