Addict Torah: Bo 2024/5784

Addict Torah's Mission: To interrogate Torah deeply so as to create space, connection and safety for people with addictive patterns and behaviors that have led them to a crisis of the spirit to tell and shape their stories for the purpose of healing, growth, and a return to their whole selves.

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Rabbi Shefa Gold, Torah Journeys, p. 70-71

God speaks to Moses, the prophet within us, and says, 'Bo! Come on in! I am waiting for you inside the heart of Pharaoh. The heart of Pharaoh is inside you. It is the place that has grown heavy with the weight of life's experience. It is the place that has hardened - its outer shell cynical, and its inner layers made of fear and unhealed grief. Through this heart of Pharaoh you must come if you are to know Me, if you are to find your freedom.'...When we come through the heart of Pharaoh and enter in to those depths within, the blessing we receive is freedom and protection...

Rabbi Nancy Wechsler, The Mussar Torah Commentary, p. 95-96

In most cases, “go” is any movement away from the speaker, whereas “come” is any movement toward the speaker. To whom shall Moses come? To God, we suppose, for “I,” the speaker, is God, who has hardened Pharaoh’s heart. Does that mean that God is where Pharaoh is? Does that mean that there is a breath of godliness even within Pharaoh, the incarnation of cruelty and arrogance? Does the same spark of God that lives in everyone and everything also live in Pharaoh? Apparently so. Might giving Pharaoh some kavod (honor) turn things around?...Moses lived and was raised with riches in the palace, guided through life by none other than Pharaoh’s daughter (Exodus 2). Apparently, Pharaoh had decided to spare that one little boy and let him live. That single decision made Moses’s life and all his deeds possible. It was ultimately Pharaoh, not his daughter, who saved the life of Moses. To give honor to Pharaoh, to “come” to him, requires “sweeping away” everything but that one fact. Merciless cruelty and humiliation to the Israelites—swept aside in that moment; fear of being killed—swept aside: Pharaoh saved his life, and in that moment, nothing else matters.

Rabbi Mark Borovitz, Finding Recovery and Yourself in Torah, p. 100

"I have made his heart heavy with honor."—Exodus 10:1

The Torah and commentators also tell us that Pharaoh had gone too far in his stubbornness and evildoing. Many in our tradition believe that after the first five plagues, Pharaoh was too stubborn and too proud to change. He had caused himself to be incapable of doing t’shuvah. Unfortunately, there are people like this living among us. There are people who are so committed to doing evil, to enslaving others, they can no longer see the wrongdoings they are committing. Some of us have become oblivious to the harm that we cause and even deceive ourselves into believing that we are doing the right thing when we are in fact causing chaos and pain. This is the kind of evil that many people practice each and every day; it is the evil that is our way of continuing to be like Pharaoh. Remember, there is a pharaoh inside us all. We, too, are able to enslave others in order to make ourselves feel better. I ask myself, and am asking that we all investigate how we are doing this in our own lives, how are we using others to their detriment? We must break the denial and self-deception in which we live. We can do this by having a spiritual guide and spiritually inclined friends who tell us the truth. When we hear their truth, we can then search inside to see how we need to change.

Rabbi Shefa Gold, Torah Journeys, p, 70

There is a story about some jealous angels who are asked to hide the spark of the Divine in the world. 'Let's put it at the top of the highest mountain,' offers one. 'No,' says another, 'The Human is very ambitious, he will find it there.' 'Well, then, let's bury it beneath the deepest sea.' 'That won't work either,' another chimes in. 'The Human is very resourceful. She will even find it there.' After a moment's thought the wisest angel says, 'I know. Put it inside the Human heart. They will never look there.'

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 374

Pharaoh's repeated refusals to let the slaves go have made it virtually impossible for him to change now. In effect, he has given away his freedom to decide. The talmudic sage Resh Lakish is quoted as saying, 'When God warns someone once, twice, and even a third time and that person does not repent, then and only then does God close the person's heart against repentance and exact punishment for his sins'...although...later texts will portray God as grieving for the Egyptians who are also God's children and suffer because of Pharaoh's stubbornness.

Richard Elliott Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, p. 1052, Kindle edition

The phrase is a triple redundancy: yeter happlth hanniš ’eret.

Rabbi Shai Held, The Heart of Torah, vol. 1., locations 2991 & 3002

Just as God had separated light from darkness in the creation story (Gen. 1:4), so here also God separates light from darkness..."At the end of the narrative in Exodus,” [Bible scholar Ziony Zevit remarks, “Israel looks back over the stilled water of the sea at a land with no people, no animals and no vegetation, a land in which creation has been undone.”

Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Covenant and Conversation, vol. 2, p. 74

The significance of the ninth plague is now obvious. The greatest god in the Egyptian pantheon was Ra or Re, the sun god. The name of the Pharaoh often associated with the exodus, Ramses ii, means meses, “son of” (as in the name Moses) Ra, the god of the sun. Egypt – so its people believed – was ruled by the sun. Its human ruler, or Pharaoh, was semi-divine, the child of the sun god.

Richard Elliott Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, p. 1059, Kindle edition

10:21. one will feel darkness. Like the other plagues, this one is explicitly identified as different from what is found in nature at other times. The hail and locusts are unlike anything that has ever happened in Egypt. The darkness can be felt. There is no chance whatever that the Egyptians—or any interpreter of this text—can understand these as being chance occurrences of nature.

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 377

Perhaps it was a spiritual or psychological darkness, a deep depression...People suffering from depression lack the energy to move about or to be concerned with anyone other than themselves, precisely as the Torah describes the Egyptians. Perhaps the Egyptians were depressed by the series of calamities that had struck them or by the realization of how much their own comfort depended on the enslavement of others. The person who cannot see his neightbor is incapable of spiritual, incapable of rising from where he is currently. In Jewish legal discussion defining how early one may recite the morning prayers, 'dawn' is defined as 'when one can recognize the face of a friend.' (BT Berakhot 9b). When one can see other people and recognize them as friends, the darkness has begun to lift.

Rabbi Dr. Sue Reinhold, 'Hope in the Dark,' Rosh Hashanah sermon 5780/2019

In Jewish tradition, lots of things start in the dark. We start our days in the dark – in Jewish time, our 24 hour ‘days’ begin at…night’ when the sun goes down. We start our months in the dark – the new moon is the head of the month, the darkest time of the month. Tonight is a very important new moon, because near the autumnal equinox, just as the nights become longer than the days – just as things are getting dark – we now start our year. Why do we all these important beginnings start in the dark? And it’s not just time, it’s our legends. Our legends are full of dark, powerful, cool things...Why all this darkness in our time keeping, and in our great legends? Well, we start in the dark! Where are we before we are born? In the dark of the womb. And, we spend a lot of our time in the dark! What happens when we close our eyes? Where are we when we sleep? In the dark. We spend up to a third of our lives - in the dark. Renewing, regenerating, growing. Is darkness a bad thing? Or is it important to use it as a quiet, creative space in which to grow?

Rabbi Shai Held, The Heart of Torah, vol. 1, loc. 2969

Imagine living in a world in which violating the laws of morality leads inexorably to consequences in the world of nature. Faced with the fear and pain of living in what appears to be a cold, unfeeling cosmos, where immorality seems to have no inevitable consequence, the possibility of inhabiting such a morally ordered world is appealing. But on another level, faced with the reality of our own failures and shortcomings, the thought of living in such a universe can be, frankly, terrifying. We yearn for such a world, and yet we can’t really bear the thought of it.

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 380

One of the first steps in the process of liberation was for the Israelites to have their own calendar, their own way of keeping track of time and recalling the most important days of their people's history. A slave does not control his or her own time; it belongs to someone else...

George Robinson, Essential Torah, p. 359

A slave people does not control its own time. A free people does. A new calendar marks that change in the most concrete way possible. In a sense, then, time begins with the liberation from Egyptian bondage. A free people controls its own time and its own destiny, and once freed the Israelites will go out into the Wilderness and agree to accept “the yoke of the mitzvot,” as Yeshayahu Leibowitz calls it.

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 382

Was the blood on the doorpost a sign that this family had the courage to defy their Egyptian neighbors and demonstrate an inner liberation? Was it perhaps a sign that this family has already suffered and should be spared? or was it simply that this family had complied with God's command? Could God not distinguish between Israelite and Egyptian homes?

Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, p. 712, Kindle edition

Those among the Egyptians who gave credence to Moses' words, and tried to shield their first-born children from death, sent them to their Hebrew neighbors, to spend the fateful night with them, in the hope that God would exempt the houses of the children of Israel from the plague. But in the morning, when the Israelites arose from their sleep, they found the corpses of the Egyptian fugitives next to them.

Nehama Leibowitz, Studies in Shemot, p. 195

The Israelites were called upon to perform actions that would symbolise not only the dramatic change in their physical fortunes from bondage to freedom but also their spiritual transformation from cultural and religious enslavement to acceptance of the true God. The night of the Passover represents a watershed in Jewish history separating the preceding nightmare of slavery from the impending saga of redemption.

Rabbi David Kasher, ParshaNut, p. 142, Kindle edition

"...Halakhah gives us knowledge; Aggadah gives us aspiration. " - Abraham Joshua Heschel

The wise child is asking for knowledge – for Halakhah. But there is another type of child who is seeking meaning. This one does not know how to ask, because questions are the language of analysis and investigation. Instead this child is listening. Listening for something that lies beyond the range of expression. How will we know what to say to this silent child? Rashi tells us. We will open with Aggadah, with story, because, Rashi says, words of Aggadah draw forth the heart. This is not the simple child. This child holds a complexity, there behind the silence. But this is someone who processes the world not with the mind, but with the heart. So we must learn to speak to the heart, to the emotions, to the intuitions. We must learn to tell the story of the Exodus. This is the child who will teach us how.

Richard Elliott Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, p. 1083, Kindle edition

The horror of the tenth plague then comes, and the Pharaoh capitulates utterly. It becomes clear that this had never been a matter of negotiation at all, but rather an agonizing, gradual drawing of the Pharaoh to a decision that had been inescapable from the start.

Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, p. 715

Now the king of Egypt insisted upon their leaving the land without delay. But Moses objected, and said: "Are we thieves, that we should slink away under cover of the night? Wait until morning."

Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, p. 713-714, Kindle edition

There remained nothing for him to do but go in search of the Israelitish leader. He did not know where Moses lived, and he had great difficulty and lost much time in looking for his house, for the Hebrew lads of whom he made inquiries when he met them in the street played practical jokes on him, misdirected him, and led him astray. Thus he wandered about a long time. all the while weeping and crying out, "O my friend Moses, pray for me to God!"

Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture, p. 152, Kindle edition

[God] keeps Pharaoh on his feet for a double purpose—so that he is in a position to witness God’s power, and to create a narrative about Him. God wants Pharaoh to come to a personal recognition of His power; it is his narrative that God desires, his awareness that his own starting point—“I do not know God!” (5:2)—has been repudiated. Such a narrative will surely be worth having. The narrative of conversion, then, is God’s desire. It justifies the risk involved in the ambiguous, repetitive, and protracted narrative of the plagues—the risk, that is, of generating an adversary narrative, telling of weakness and inability to accomplish His will. This theme, of God’s desire for Pharaoh’s conversion-narrative, informs Rashi’s reading at the climax of the Exodus: “God struck down all the first-born of Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh” (12:29): Pharaoh, too, was a first-born and alone survived of all the first-born. Of him, it is said, “I have spared you for this purpose: in order to show you My power …” (9:16)—at the Red Sea. Pharaoh’s survival, alone among the firstborn, is, again, ambiguous: it provides a basis for adversary narratives, but is justified by the prize of the narrative he may yet come to tell.

Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer 43:8

(8) Rabbi Nechunia, son of Haḳḳanah, said: Know thou the power of repentance. Come and see from Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who rebelled most grievously against the Rock, the Most High, as it is said, "Who is the Lord, that I should hearken unto his voice?" (Ex. 5:2). In the same terms of speech in which he sinned, he repented, as it is said "Who is like thee, O Lord, among the mighty?" (Ex. 15:11). The Holy One, blessed be He, delivered him from amongst the dead. Whence (do we know) that he died? Because it is said, "For now I had put forth my hand, and smitten thee" (Ex. 9:15). He went and ruled in Nineveh. The men of Nineveh were writing fraudulent deeds, and everyone robbed his neighbour, and they committed sodomy, and such-like wicked actions. When the Holy One, blessed be He, sent for Jonah, to prophesy against (the city) its destruction, Pharaoh hearkened and arose from his throne, rent his garments and clothed himself in sackcloth and ashes, and had a proclamation made to all his people, that all the people should fast for two days, || and all who did these (wicked) things should be burnt by fire. What did they do? The men were on one side, and the women on the other, and their children were by themselves; all the clean animals were on one side, and their offspring were by themselves. The infants saw the breasts of their mothers, (and they wished) to have suck, and they wept. The mothers saw their children, (and they wished) to give them suck. By the merit of 4123 children more than twelve hundred thousand men (were saved), as it is said, "And should not I have pity on Nineveh, that great city; wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?" (Jonah 4:11); "And the Lord repented of the evil, which he said he would do unto them" (Jonah 3:10).

Mechilta on Bo, Ch 13, transl. by Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture, p. 158, Kindle edition

“They said, ‘We are all dying!’ ” This is not exactly what Moses had predicted, when he said, “All the first-born in the land of Egypt shall die.” So they thought that in a family of four or five children, only the first-born would die. But they did not know that their wives were guilty of adultery, so all their children were first-born of different fathers.

Rabbi Shai Held, The Heart of Torah, vol. 1., location 3102

Passionately dismissing the recurring citation of this text by those who want to impugn both Jews and Judaism, Bible scholar (and Rabbi) Benno Jacob (1862–1945) sees in our story “the most elevated and spiritual reconciliation among people; it was full of wisdom and love of fellow man.” The gold and silver the Egyptians gave were “farewell gifts,” Jacob insists, given out of a genuine sense of affection for the Israelites. “This new mood was surprising, but even some of Pharaoh’s loyal courtiers [had begun] to see matters differently and respected Moses (Exodus 8:20; 10:7; 11:3).” The gifts given by the Egyptians were thus “a clear public protest against the policies of the royal tyrant. They demonstrated a renewal of public conscience.” In words that anticipate Fretheim and Janzen, Jacob adds that this turn of events “was of major importance to the Torah in our drama of liberation, as it showed a moral change; the receptive heart of the Egyptian people was now contrasted to the hard heart of Pharaoh.”

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 388

According to the Midrash, there were three kinds of people among the Egyptians. One third wanted to keep the Israelites as slaves. They died in the plagues. A second group supported Israel's bid for liberation and rose in revolt against Pharaoh's stubborn policies. These were the Egyptians who gave Israel gold, silver, and jewels as they prepared to leave. Their 'lending' these gifts to the Israelites was part of the public nature of the Exodus. The Israelites did not sneak out furtively under cover of darkness. A third group of Egyptians celebrated the Pesah with Israel and then left with them.

Richard Elliott Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, p. 1086, Kindle edition

12:38. heavy. The word that described the Pharaoh’s oppression and the force of the plagues now recurs to describe, for the first time, something good: the substantial quantity of possessions that the people are able to take with them. It is as if this good is in proportion to the bad that they have experienced.

Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Covenant and Conversation, vol. 2, p. 77-78

And now the time had arrived. The Israelites were on the brink of their release. Moses, their leader, gathered them together and prepared to address them. What would he speak about at this fateful juncture, the birth of a people? He could have spoken about many things. He might have talked about liberty, the breaking of their chains, and the end of slavery. He might have talked about the destination to which they were about to travel, the “land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:17). Or he might have chosen a more sombre theme: the journey that lay ahead, the dangers they would face: what Nelson Mandela called “the long walk to freedom.” Any one of these would have been the speech of a great leader sensing an historic moment in the destiny of Israel. Moses did none of these things. Instead he spoke about children, and the distant future, and the duty to pass on memory to generations yet unborn...About to gain their freedom, the Israelites were told that they had to become a nation of educators. That is what made Moses not just a great leader, but a unique one. What the Torah is teaching is that freedom is won, not on the battlefield, nor in the political arena, nor in the courts, national or international, but in the human imagination and will. To defend a country you need an army. But to defend a free society you need schools. You need families and an educational system in which ideals are passed on from one generation to the next, and never lost, or despaired of, or obscured. There has never been a more profound understanding of freedom. It is not difficult, Moses was saying, to gain liberty, but to sustain it is the work of a hundred generations. Forget it and you lose it.

Jason Gary Klein, Torah Queeries, p. 85 & 87

Parashat Bo not only tells of a one-time liberation in Jewish mythic history; it is also a tale of the future, setting the stage for a ritualized storytelling in every generation...Judaism suggests that the Exodus is not merely a physical journey from one place to another. The Hebrew word for the book of the Torah that contains this story is Shemot, which means “names of.” So the story is also framed with the concept of making a name for oneself, of being empowered to tell one’s story and of naming one’s people.

Ha'amek Davar on Exodus, trans. Nehama Leibowitz, Studies in Shemot, p. 291

Even this (the observance of the Passover and the telling of the story of the Exodus to the children) is not sufficient. You must therefore be provided with a daily remembrance.

Richard Elliott Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, p. 1099, Kindle edition

13:16. a sign on your hand and bands between your eyes. The context of this and the similar expression in v. 9 indicates clearly that this is a metaphor, meaning that the Passover observance is to become a vivid, conscious concern of the people of Israel.

Ha'amek Davar on Exodus, trans. Nehama Leibowitz, Studies in Shemot, p. 291

The Lord brought you forth from Egypt, because you did not accept His governance compliantly...Obviously then, they had not been willing to leave Egypt...God brought them out against their will, and extraordinary efforts are required to implant that which the human mind is reluctant to accept.

Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture, p. 197-8, Kindle edition

The groping for a true narrative is the very purpose of the Exodus. As Sefath Emeth puts it, in another passage:136 the redemption from Egypt (mitzrayim) is a freeing from the “narrow places,” the meitzarim, the straits of the soul, into an expansiveness in which all potential is realized. This release was intimated in the mystery, the unconsciousness of a people just born. It will become real in the narratives of memory that the people will tell, as they grow to adulthood. Some of these narratives will be subversive, even demonic. But the project will be “to utter true words,” to re-evoke in a later time the power of redemption that is incarnate in language. All the complex events of the Exodus are le-ma’an te-saper, “in order that you may relate the story” (10:2). More pointedly, the practices that will commemorate them are “in order that the Torah of God may be in your mouth” (13:9); in order to utter these true words, a continual process of engaging with the multiform “narrow places” of Egypt, of engaging with the ambiguities of desire, will be necessary.