This sheet on Exodus 11 was written by Sivan Rotholz for 929 and can also be found here
As I read Exodus 11 in this cultural moment, from the epicenter of the #MeToo movement, everything I look at is through the lens of trauma. Through the relived trauma of nearly every woman speaking out or bearing witness today.
But I have not only been thinking of trauma; I have been thinking of spectacle.
In Exodus 11, God promises that every first-born in the land of Egypt shall die if Pharaoh does not set the Israelites free.
The narrative we have inherited is one in which God delivered us from bondage in Egypt. But when we press against that narrative, we must remember that the same God who freed us
was the God who sent us into slavery in the first place. And when we are told that God sent the curse of the first-born son so that Pharaoh might finally let our people go, we must remember that God hardened Pharaoh's heart so that he would not set us free. “Pharaoh will not heed you,” God tells Moses, “in order that My marvels may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.”
The curse of the first-born has never sat easily with me. I cannot help but wonder how the
Israelites, grieving the loss of their own infant sons, would have experienced “a loud cry in all the land of Egypt, such as has never been or will ever be again.” Did the Hebrews relive their own trauma when the Egyptians lost their children, just as women throughout the world are reliving theirs today?
The death of every first-born child in Egypt was a foregone conclusion, and it was all for show. A spectacle so that God might display power. It seems to me that we are also experiencing a historical moment in which justice only conveys the trappings of legitimacy. That all across the world survivors are suffering, and greatly, so that the marvels of those in power might be multiplied.
But I have not only been thinking of trauma; I have been thinking of spectacle.
In Exodus 11, God promises that every first-born in the land of Egypt shall die if Pharaoh does not set the Israelites free.
The narrative we have inherited is one in which God delivered us from bondage in Egypt. But when we press against that narrative, we must remember that the same God who freed us
was the God who sent us into slavery in the first place. And when we are told that God sent the curse of the first-born son so that Pharaoh might finally let our people go, we must remember that God hardened Pharaoh's heart so that he would not set us free. “Pharaoh will not heed you,” God tells Moses, “in order that My marvels may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.”
The curse of the first-born has never sat easily with me. I cannot help but wonder how the
Israelites, grieving the loss of their own infant sons, would have experienced “a loud cry in all the land of Egypt, such as has never been or will ever be again.” Did the Hebrews relive their own trauma when the Egyptians lost their children, just as women throughout the world are reliving theirs today?
The death of every first-born child in Egypt was a foregone conclusion, and it was all for show. A spectacle so that God might display power. It seems to me that we are also experiencing a historical moment in which justice only conveys the trappings of legitimacy. That all across the world survivors are suffering, and greatly, so that the marvels of those in power might be multiplied.
Sivan Rotholz is a joint rabbinical and MARE student at Hebrew Union College, where she is a Wexner Graduate Fellow and a New Israel Fund Elissa Froman Fellow.
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