Parshat Bo  6 Shevat 5762, 19 January 2002

By Shlomo Riskin

Efrat, Israel - Most revolutions in history have failed dismally, with the architects of the rebellions - leaders of the new government regime - acting far more cruelly and high-handedly than the despots against whom they rebelled; witness the French Revolution and the Communist Revolution, and remember the blood-battles and the terrorizing Secret Police which the new government put into effect as soon as the rebels assumed power. Generally when the former slaves begin to rule, they do so with a vengeance, zealously and vengefully expressing their new found invincibility without limits! The nation of Israel was born as the result of a revolution - the rebellion of the Israelite slaves against the despotic, totalitarian regime of the Pharoahs of Egypt. But this revolution did not fail; much the opposite, its message of the inalienable right of freedom for all and its abhorrence of all forms of enslavement reverberate to the present day. It is important to attempt to understand - and learn from- this most uniquely successful revolution against oppression at the very dawn of history.

The Israelites were enabled to leave Egypt and to emerge from slavery to freedom, from light to darkness, as the result of ten plagues which descended upon the Egyptian populace and brought havoc to the most advanced civilization at that time. The Israelites celebrate - indeed, attempt to re-experience - their miraculous exodus every year at a family-oriented seder dinner which is accompanied with as well as preceded and concluded by special readings from a liturgical composition called the haggadah. These ten plagues, declares Rabbi Yehuda as cited in the haggadah, are to be easily remembered and symbolically categorized by means of a linguistic mnemonic device which divides the plagues into three separate sections, DATZAK, (Dam, Tzfordea, Kinim), ADASH, (Arove, Dever, Shekhin), BAHAB, (Barad, Arbeh, Hoshekh, B'khorot): blood, frogs and vermin; wild animals, animal illnesses and boils; hail, locusts, darkness and the slaying of the first-born. Apparently each grouping highlights the mastery of the Israelites - or rather the G-d of the Israelites - over another crucial aspect of Egyptian life: the first three, in which the Nile turned to blood, the waters spewed forth omnipresent frogs and the dust turned into vermin, demonstrates control over the waterways and the land; the second three, wild animals, animal illnesses and boils, demonstrate control over those who populate the land; and the last three, hail, locusts and darkness, demonstrates control over the heavens and what comes out of the heavens and affect the earth. The slaying of the first born expresses power over life and death.

In a recent lecture, Rav Mordecai Allon cited the Maharal of Prague and Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch, who provide an even deeper insight into these three categories of plagues. These great scholars hark back to the prophesy included within G-d's initial covenant with Abraham, when the patriarch is awesomely and frightfully informed that "your seed will be strangers in a land which is not theirs, they shall be enslaved and they shall be afflicted", (Genesis 15:13) after which they will inherit the Promised Land of Israel. Since the Egyptian experience serves as a paradigm for all subsequent Jewish and human exiles and persecutions, this original prophesy delineates the three characteristics ascribed by every totalitarian persecutor to any minority group: alienation, (gerut) enslavement, (avdut) and affliction (inuy). These are what Pharoah did to the Hebrews, what Hitler did to all non-Aryans, and what Stalin did to any group he thought may be posing a threat to his omnipotent authority, be they liberal intellectuals or Yiddish writers. Certainly the Hebrews in Egypt (as well as the Jews in Germany three millennia later) were first delegitimized as aliens or strangers in a foreign country to which they did not belong (gerut), were then enslaved and forced to build the store-houses of Pitom, and Raamses (avdut), and finally were mercilessly afflicted through the mass murder of the Hebrew male babies and the back-breaking labor under inhuman working conditions (inuy).

The Maharal and Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch ingeniously suggest that the G-d for the Israelites punished the Egyptians measure-for-measure by means of the plagues - and Rabbi Yehuda brings this allusion to the forefront in his tri-partite division for the plagues. The first plague in each of the three categories - blood, wild animals and hail - would make the Egyptians feel like aliens in an Egypt taken over by some strange force totally foreign to their experience until this point: the familiar life-giving Nile turned to blood (remember, Herodotes called all of Egypt the "gift of the Nile"), wild animals running rampant and seemingly controlling human movement, hail uncharacteristically raining - and reigning - down on a defenseless Egyptian populace.

The second plague in each of the three categories, - frogs, animal illnesses and locusts - would make the Egyptian feel enslaved, devoid of ownership of any property which is the chief characteristic of a slave. The frogs took over their homes, the dever (animal illnesses) destroyed their livestock, and the locusts completely consumed their agricultural crop. And the last plague of each of the three categories - vermin, boils and darkness - afflicted every Egyptian with severe personal discomfort, making it impossible to continue living, working and socializing in any humanly endurable fashion. The Egyptians became subjected to the very alienation, enslavement and affliction to which they had subjected the Hebrews!

The most important point of all this, is however, that it is not the Hebrews who turn the table on the Egyptians - as is the general case with most revolutions - but it is rather the G-d of both the Hebrews and the Egyptians who teaches the world the lesson of the necessity of universal freedom under G-d, the G-d of all humanity. The Hebrews have no right to feel like invincible conquerors after their successful exodus; they can only feel beholden to the G-d of their redemption, before whom every human is creature and not creator, servant and not master. The creator-hood and parent-hood of G-d ultimately insures the creature-hood and sibling-hood of humanity, and under such a G-d no human creature has the right to enslave another human creature.

And indeed, this is the true message of our revolution against Egypt as well as of the four expressions of redemption which is the major source for our four cups of redemption-wine highlighting the Passover seder: "I have taken you out from under the sufferances (sivlot) of Egypt (they "suffered your "alien" presence in their Egypt), I have saved you from their work (enslavement), I have redeemed you with great miracles (from their affliction), and I have taken you for Me or a nation So that I may be your G-d" (Exodus 6:6). We dare not exit from our revolution in order to lord it over any other minority; G-d freed us from Pharoah's enslavement in order that we be able to serve G-d, the only and ultimate true Redeemer. G-d teaches us and the world that we must "love the stranger because you were strangers in the land of Egypt," and gave us a Sabbath day "in order that our Gentile servants "may rest like you" - for everyone must be free under G-d. And only a people which is committed to universal freedom of all humanity has the right to benefit from a revolution and create its own nation-state; the formation of yet another totalitarian regime will only increase human misery and prevent the advent of a world of peace.

Shabbat Shalom.

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