Monica

the cost of plagues

2021-01-24T19:44:35Z

I want to amplify something I saw on Twitter today by AvBronstein:

A congregant shared an insight: immediately following the final plague, the killing of the first-born, the text tells us that "Pharaoh arose that night."

In other words, he had gone to sleep.

Pharaoh couldn't have gone to sleep on the assumption that the plague wasn't going to happen. This was the tenth time around. He knew. His advisers knew, the people knew. The Midrash says that the Egyptian first-born actually rebelled, taking up arms, because they knew.

Rather, Pharaoh was prepared to bear the cost of the final plague. For him, it was worth it. So much so, that he was even able to sleep that night, knowing what was coming.

I'm going to interrupt for a moment here. Paro knew by now what the consequences of his stubborn refusal to give up personal power would be. He'd seen his people be afflicted by nine previous plagues. Some of them even affected the elite in the palace, though they had more power than "regular folks" to evade some of the effects. They could bring all their animals safely inside before the hail, could source drinking water elsewhere, could afford to replace animals lost to the pestilence, could get top-notch medical care not available to others. But some plagues affected even them, safely in their palaces. They knew. Paro knew.

And Moshe had just told him that God was going to kill all the first-born, from the palace on down to the slaves, even down to the animals. Paro knew this was a credible threat.

And he was ok with that. Maybe he had some magical thinking that his own family would be protected; more likely his son was an acceptable loss. Certainly the first-born of all the people he ruled, the people he was nominally responsible for, were acceptable losses. He was their ruler and "god", after all; he couldn't be weak by giving in to Moshe and the true God. These afflictions would pass and the deserving would survive.

And it wasn't just Paro thousands of years ago, now was it? This happens with power-hungry leaders, ones who've lost touch with whom they serve, all the time. It happened in our day, with a deadly plague that our leaders concealed the severity of, because they were safe. A few hundred thousand old folks are an acceptable loss to preserve the illusion of strength, right?

Avraham continues on Twitter:

I can't help but think of all those people ready to launch a civil war in America, so grimly sure that they are prepared to pay whatever price needs to be paid. And how many of them, like Pharaoh, woke up later that night and realized just what they had done to themselves.

I'm also thinking of a President calmly watching the insurrection he stoked on television, only to realize the costs he will be paying for the rest of his life out of what remains of his fortune, reputation, and legacy.

Me again. And I'm also thinking of all the people who were, and even still are, fine with plague deaths, and murders and reckless killings, and treating human beings like animals even down to the cages, and justice systems that depend on who the accused is, and ruining people's lives on mere accusations and presumptions, because they, personally, are safe. But nobody's safe, and we can't sleep through the unrest our society has fallen into.

Paro's people had no power to effect change; Paro held all the cards. We might not have much power to effect change, but I think we have a little more (voting, for example), and I pray it's enough to avert Egypt's fate, despite bad decisions made by those who rule us.

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leaving personal slavery: lessons from Pesach (class notes)

2020-04-22T01:50:33Z

Last night I watched the recording of a JLI class that had been given for free earlier in the day (but I had a work meeting at the time). The class is Leaving our personal slavery: 10 lessons from Passover for the whole year. taught by Sara Esther Crispe. I don't know anything about the teacher; I went there because I've taken several JLI courses (in the classroom, not online).

What follows are basically my running notes as I listened (and occasionally backed up to hear something again, so I guess it's just as well I missed the livestream). Some of this might sound a little pithy or trite summarized here; I encourage you to listen to the talk (44 minutes) before drawing a negative conclusion just based on my notes.

In English the book is called Exodus, but in Hebrew it's Sh'mot, Names. To leave something which enslaves you, you need to know who you are. Slavery is dehumanizing, taking away your name, reducing people to numbers. When someone tries to strip our identity, that is the foundation of enslaved reality - we have no voice, nobody is going to believe us.

Nobody escapes Mitzrayim (Egypt); we all are there at some point in our lives -- not having freedom of movement, expression, thought. Egypt is something we all go through. It's part of our journey. The same God who put us there takes us out.

It's not "what can I do to escape Egypt", but "what will I learn from the Egypt I'm in?". How do I discover who I am so I can be free?

10 lessons:

1 - Knowing your name is essential.

2 - What doesn't kill you makes you stronger -- we can allow what beats us down to paralyze us, or we can let it push us to grow. We're so constricted that we're forced to break out because there's nowhere else to go.

3 - Passion can overcome fear; if we believe strongly enough we won't even see the potential barriers. (Miriam confronting her parents in their separation -- uncomfortable, but she was right, she was passionate, she spoke up and got them back together and they had Moshe.)

4 - Learn to be flexible and switch roles. Miriam parenting her parents; Yochevet as nursemaid to her son; Miriam as negotiator w/Paro's daughter to save Moshe's life. Story of her friend pumping milk to save another child after hers died -- of all the things she could have done, who would have thought that would be her biggest impact?

5 - We are never stuck; we can reinvent ourselves when truly committed. The rabbis say Bat Paro (daughter of Paro) intended to convert to Judaism; Bat Paro became Bat Ya. Paro = peh ra, evil mouth. She comes from that and transforms her life to become metaphorical daughter of God (and raises Moshe who will redeem Yisrael).

6 - Nothing is out of reach if we want it desperately enough, but we'll never know until we try. Batya saw the child's life needed to be saved and she reached out even though he was too far away and miraculously succeeded. People lift cars off of victims. If you think about it, it won't happen. When we see something needs to be done, we believe limitations won't get in the way and miracles can happen. (Nachon ben Aminadav -- innovator, persistent believer.)

7 - True acts of kindness we do are never forgotten, even if we're not aware of their impact. Moshe got his name from Batya, not his mother -- it's the name that sticks, the name God uses. Act of kindness from Batya has lasting effect. We don't know the impact when we smile at a stranger, speak to someone, offer a kind word...

8 - Only when we see the possibility of what can be do we recognize how badly our situation needs to change. We had to hit rock bottom in Mitzrayim before we realized how difficult it was. Nowhere to go but up. Everything's been stripped away; what can we leave behind, where should we focus, where can we make an impact? Time to refocus and rethink. What matters?

9 - When presented w/opportunity to do the right thing, don't let insecurity stand in your way. If opportunity came your way, you're meant to step up. Be humble but don't let it prevent you from acting. Moshe's humility at bush: "why me?". Humility isn't thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less. If you can do something, doesn't matter if someone else could do it better -- you're here; do it.

10 - We can say we're not strong/good enough, but we can't say God isn't; we're never alone. Moshe - I'm slow of speech, and everything's going to depend on speech (negotiation) -- but God says "who makes a man's mouth? isn't it me? I will teach you what you should say".

If we're put in a situation, if we have the ability to influence, there's a reason. We have to be willing to switch roles, do what's needed, know our deeds are lasting and impactful, remember where abilities and opportunities come from.

"Do not tell God how big your problems are; tell your problems how big your God is" -- we might not be able to deal with our problems, but God can. We are never alone. "When I sit in darkness, God is my light."

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brief torah thought (Lech l'cha)

2019-11-11T02:33:54Z

This shabbat we had our approximately-annual shabbaton, or Shabbat retreat. Because everybody's there for the duration -- nobody has to run home for lunch guests or the like -- we can be more relaxed and have time for conversation. I like that aspect a lot.

When my rabbi read the fourth aliyah (Genesis chapter 14) in the morning service, he commented that the passage seems tangential and wondered what it's there to teach us. At lunch afterwards, I told him I could think of four reasons for that chapter to be there:

redemption of captives (Avram had to rescue Lot after the war)
we can't always isolate ourselves and sometimes get drawn into others' conflicts
tithing
Avram superseding Malki-Tzedek, a priest of God according to the text

My rabbi asked if I got that from Mi Yodeya. :-) I know I've asked a question about Malki-Tzedek, but the rest of this was my own reasoning.

He then added a fifth: consequences of bad choices. Lot could have gone anywhere when he split from Avram, and he chose S'dom.

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#SaraiToo

2017-11-01T00:17:29Z

Our associate rabbi gave a powerful talk this past Shabbat for Lech L'cha, the beginning of the Avram (Avraham) story.

When I was five, my classmates and I were playing in the schoolyard as part of the afterschool program. We were running around and the boys decided that it would be fun to chase the girls around and kiss them. One boy started chasing me and, although it’s very possible that I was also giggling out of nervousness or as excess energy from running, I was clear that I did not want him to kiss me. Finally, he managed to grab my hand and kissed the back of it. I promptly burst into tears and ran and told the teacher. She took a couple moments to placate me, telling me that I wasn’t really hurt and that it just meant that he liked me. Then she went to the boy, yelled at him, and put him in time out.

The typical response to this story is to laugh at what little boys thought was fun and to tease me for overreacting to an innocent kiss---clearly I was at the age when girls think boys are gross and vise versa. Sometimes people feel bad for the boy who got in trouble because I was upset by something so minor. I often imagine the teacher struggling to hold in her laughter at the ridiculousness of the situation and thinking to herself that it wouldn’t be too long before I’d react very differently.

But this was also the first time I remember being kissed against my will. At five years old, someone else decided that my body was for his use.

Go, read the whole thing.

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double rainbow

2017-10-29T02:08:36Z

A few days ago I saw a double rainbow while at work -- and just a few days after Noach, the torah portion I chanted last week, too. I can't remember seeing one of these before "in person". The primary was pretty bright; the secondary, less so.

( photo (taken through office window) )

I then learned that the traditional Jewish view considers rainbows to be a bad omen. Why would that be, I wondered? I mean, they remind us of the covenant God made with Noach -- remembering a divine covenant is a good thing, right? It turns out this has been asked about on Mi Yodeya (also here).

Part of the answer is that the rainbow indicates there's cause for divine wrath -- the rainbow reminds us and also God of the promise. There are also sources that say that the rainbow looks like part of the divine form seen through prophecy, and we shouldn't be staring at the divine form.

I was going to ask my question before finding those. In doing some basic research to ask my question, I came across something that let me answer a different question. So my curiosity still managed to contribute to the site a little.

N.B.: Many Jews know this but, in my experience, many others don't or just never noticed: God promised in that covenant not to destroy the world again with a flood. Fire, meteor impacts, snowball Earth, and other calamities are still on the table.

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