Parshat Bo

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 omens and wonders is something strange and puzzling, therefore it is attributed 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 get up from where he was; But all the israelites enjoyed light in their 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 exult . . . lest the Lord see it and be displeased, and avert His wrath from 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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