Parashat Bo: Light Years Behind

 I’ve long been a fan of Shakespeare and seen quite a few filmed renditions of his plays, with Laurence Oliver’s Hamlet being my favourite. A few days ago, I watched the “The Taming of the Shrew” with Elizabeth Taylor and her then husband, Richard Burton. What started off as an entertaining and colourful spectacle descended into much darker territory.

I’ll admit that this wasn’t a play that I was too familiar with, although I had a general idea of the theme. If you don’t know the storyline, it features a Paduan nobleman (Baptista) who has two daughters and refuses to allow the younger one (Bianca) to be courted (as they used to call it) until her older tempestuous sister (Katherina played with gusto by Elizabeth Taylor) finds a suitor who will be able to ‘tame’ her, as per the title.

Richard Burton’s Petruchio enters the picture and the expected mayhem ensues resulting in their being married (allowing young student Lucentio to elope with Bianca) and Petrucio subjecting Katherina to all manner of both psychological and physical abuse until he eventually breaks her spirit. She becomes so submissive to his will that she identifies the sun as the moon because this what he has instructed her to say. It is terrible and pitiful indictment of how the fairer sex were depicted (and I would presume, considered) in Shakespeare’s day.

I was greatly troubled by what I saw. Attitudes have definitely changed in recent years, and I doubt that the film could be remade today in the same manner. As a comparison, I also watched an updated version of the story which came out in the late 1990s in the guise of ‘10 Things I Hate About You’. This was set in an American High School and it was certainly more balanced in the way it covered the controversial storyline.

The success of the #metoo movement in light of the appalling behaviour of people such as Harvey Weinstein, is still fresh in our minds, I thought that those days were well and truly behind us.

That was until the events that took place on 7^th   October which as we know should have been one of the most joyous days in our calendar.

What transpired is still not fully known. What we are aware of, is a darkness that descended over our nation, the like of which can only be described as akin to a Pasuk/Verse that we read in this week’s Parasha.

then the l-rd said to moshe,”reach out your hand toward the sky to bring darkness down over egypt -darkness so deep it can be felt..and all across Egypt it was pitch dark for three days..so no one could see anyone else or even move.”                 (shemot 10.21-24)

Like the ancient Egyptians, our people (along with those of other faiths who were also targeted) have experienced a darkness, so deep that it can be felt throughout the extended Jewish community around the world - an appropriate thought to consider today which is designated as JAMI’s annual Mental Health Shabbat.

Keeping the treatment of Katherina in mind, I will now focus on the women who were, are and will be impacted for the rest of their lives - that is the ones who survived.

I don’t need to describe the unbelievably cruel, barbaric and sadistic savagery that was directed towards the female victims because this is very well documented. For those who survived, the darkness they are living through, both physically (particularly those who are being held hostage in Gaza) and metaphorically is unimaginable.

If only that had been the end of it. This was yet to come as we realised that the plight of these women might as well have occurred in Shakespeare’s era. The world’s loudest voices in the guise of UN Women, The Red Cross, Black Lives Matter, Me Too (do you remember them from my previous comment?) stayed silent. Not a single word of condemnation from organisations who were fully aware of the atrocities that had taken place in the days and weeks that followed when more and more horrific details emerged.

It took nearly two months, over 50 days after intense pressure for UN Women to issue a statement on 1^st December which read:

We unequivocally condemn the brutal attacks by Hamas on Israel on 7 October. We are alarmed by the numerous accounts of gender-based atrocities and sexual violence during those attacks. This is why we have called for all accounts of gender-based violence to be duly investigated and prosecuted, with the rights of the victim at the core.

On 9^th January, more than three months after the fact, the JC reported that:

Two UN human rights experts on Monday called for full accountability for the multitude of alleged crimes, including sexual torture, committed against civilians by Hamas terrorists on October 7, saying they amount to war crimes.

https://www.thejc.com/news/world/un-finally-condemn-october-7-war-crimes-against-women-af0syoj2

This, in addition to the news that was reported last week that hospitals in Israel are prepared for many of these women to be leaving Gaza at various stages of pregnancy. One can only recoil in horror at what these victims have been through and what lies ahead.

All of this not in 16^th Century Italy, but 21^st Century Israel.

My horror at witnessing the treatment of Katherina was compounded by what I have learned over the last three months from the behaviour of some of the evilest human beings on our planet.

I’d like to believe that with the progress humanity has made, albeit haltingly in the last five centuries, attitudes towards women have improved. However, the hypocrisy of movements who claimed to care about women has been laid bare for all to see. Those who chanted and used the hashtag ‘MeToo_Unless_Ur_A_Jew’ outside the United Nations and at many rallies said it all. You can find out more about this movement and sign their petition at: https://www.metoo-unlessurajew.com/

We are being subjected to an almost daily barrage of insults and threats aimed at our people. From the idiotic and ignorant rantings of Gary Lineker to the disgraceful attempt by South Africa to bring charges of genocide against a country whose very formation could have prevented this happening to Jews. It appears to be very dark both inside and outside our small world.

Yet, here we are, on the Shabbat which reminds us of the final plagues directed against the Egyptians. In that same Parasha, Gd instructs us to observe the Passover holiday and provides the template for the Sedarim that we will re-enact in a few months. After all that has taken place, we read of the Exodus. The journey that brought us out of the darkness of Egypt onto the path that would eventually lead us to the Promised Land.

 

In these troubling times, we can derive some comfort in knowing that, despite all that happened on 7^th October, we will emerge bloodied but victorious. The enemy who tried to break us will eventually be subdued and our dignity, which has never left us (though we are scarred, battered and unbeaten) will emerge intact. When our precious women return to us, we will treat them with the respect, dignity and care they deserve. We will do our very best to rehabilitate them.

Unlike Katherina, they will never be subservient and will never call the moon the sun or vice versa because someone tells us to.

In this week’s Parasha, Gd instructs us to create a lunar calendar which we are still using over three thousand years later and will continue doing so.

We have been here before in different iterations, many times and as ever, the nation of Israel lives - Am Yisrael Chai.

Shavuah Tov

Parashat Va'era: A Plague On Both Your Houses!

Joe Cohen has managed to beat forty other applicants by reaching the final stage of the selection process for a senior position at Microsoft.  He leaves his house early but encounters a ten-mile tailback on the motorway due to a serious accident.

He arrives at the car park with a few minutes to spare but there are no free spaces.  Driving around and around, he starts panicking and in a moment of desperation looks up to the sky and cries out, “Oh Gd, I’m desperate to make this appointment on time.  If you could find a way of arranging this for me, I promise you that I will go to shul/synagoue every day for every service, give 50% of my monthly salary to Tzedaka/charity and promise to learn a page of Gemara/Talmud (Daf Yomi) every day for the rest of my life.”

As the final words leave his lips, the car in front pulls out of the spot enabling him to park directly opposite the entrance to the building.  He looks up at Gd and says, “Don’t worry, I’ve found one!”

In Parashat Va’era, we read of the first seven plagues that Hashem inflicted upon the Egyptians.  Reading them as we do on an annual basis in this week’s Parasha and then again at our Pesach Sedarim, how many of us give much thought as to their significance?

From an early age, we are taught the story of how Pharaoh refused to free the Israelites, so Gd punished the Egyptians and eventually, following the deaths of the firstborn sons including Pharaoh’s own heir, he caved in and ‘let the people go’…only to change his mind and pursue the Israelites to the Yam Suf/Sea of Reeds.

Have you ever asked yourself what the purpose of the plagues was and who they were aimed at? 

We have been brought up being told that the Egyptians were the intended target of Gd’s ire but perhaps the answer to the question is not as simple as we have been led to believe.

The Rambam in his ‘Guide for the Perplexed’ writes:

‘The object of all these plagues was to establish in the minds of that people as well as in the minds of the Israelites, the existence of Gd and the idea that He is the living Gd who can do whatsoever He pleases.

They were also meant to show that by His word the laws of nature are set aside and that He is not like the gods of the nations which have no power over anything and are themselves subject to the same laws of nature as other bodies.

The plagues were further intended to prove to the Israelites that Gd had not forgotten them and that He would fulfil His promise made to their ancestors.

Lastly, they served as a preparation for the giving of the Law, which was to be proclaimed amidst great and fearful signs and wonders, in order that the people might firmly believe in the prophecy, and might for ever know that whatever the prophet commanded in the name of Gd was true, right, and obligatory.’

As per our simple reading of the Torah (i.e.  on the Peshat level), Gd was demonstrating to the Egyptians, and by extension the Bnei Yisrael, the awesome power of His majesty.  Nothing was beyond His control, from turning water to blood, through decimating livestock, afflicting people firstly with lice and then boils, to destroying crops by sending locusts and combining fire and ice to form deadly hailstones – Gd had dominion over every aspect of the natural world.

It doesn’t take much to imagine what it must have felt like to be an Egyptian living through those traumatic times.  Their entire world and belief system was under attack, even to the extent that the sun god (Ra), which they worshipped, was hidden from them during the three days of the penultimate plague of darkness.  They were living through a nightmare brought on as a result of their cruel behaviour towards the Israelites. 

The Midrash Tanchuma states that each of the plagues represented punishment for a particular wrong that the Egyptians did to the Israelites:

·         They made them drawers of water and so their river was turned to blood;

·         They made them load their freight and the frogs destroyed it;

·         They had the Jews sweep the streets and the dust turned into lice;

·         They made the Jews watch their children and God flooded the country with wild animals that ‘devoured the children’;

·         The Egyptians made them cattle-herders, whereupon the pestilence killed the herds;

·         They used them to prepare their baths and then they developed boils which made it impossible for them to wash;

·         The Jews were made stone-cutters and HaShem sent hailstones against the Egyptians;

·         They were forced to tend the vineyards and fields and the locusts consumed all that grew;

·         The Egyptians sought to keep the Jews as prisoners and were themselves shackled by the thick darkness that fell upon Egypt;

·         Their murderous designs upon the Jews brought the killing of the firstborn and their drowning of Jewish children was repaid by their death in the Sea of Reeds.

(source: https://www.betemunah.org/plagues.html#_ftnref38)

Thus far, according to the Rambam and the Midrash, we can see that the Egyptians are being punished ‘mida keneged mida’ or measure for measure in respect of the way they treated the Bnei Yisrael.

If we look at the Rambam’s second and third points, the focus shifts from the Egyptians to the Bnei Yisrael.  As well as demonstrating Gd’s awesome power over nature, Gd was simultaneously providing a Divine-sourced morale booster to the subjugated descendants of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov.  He was reminding them of the promise he made to all three that one day, in the not-too-distant-future, they would be able to leave Egypt behind and return to the ‘land flowing with milk and honey’.  Gd could and would arrange this.  They just had to ‘hold tight’ and know that this would transpire.  The plagues that He was inflicting on the country would inevitably force Pharaoh and his minions to free the Bnei Yisrael and send them on their journey to The Promised Land.

Which leads us to the final objective suggested by the Rambam and this is the one which links to the joke I started my Drasha with.  Gd’s inflicting the plagues upon Egypt was meant to cement the legitimacy of Moshe, in the eyes of the people he was soon to lead out of the country, via the miracles being performed both in the Court of Pharaoh and through the initiation of each plague, via the actions of Moshe and Aharon. 

If you read the text, you will see that aside from the final plague, which we will encounter next week, the brothers were instrumental in summoning the power of Gd to send each plague.  Aharon struck the waters of the Nile and after turning into blood, they later brought forth a frog (or frogs, depending on which interpretation you follow).  When Moshe’s staff encountered the dust on the ground, this was miraculously transformed into lice and so on and so forth.

Gd’s splitting of the Sea had not yet taken place yet.  A bevy of miracles and wonders to prepare them for the greatest one of all – the giving of the Torah on Sinai.

And yet, no sooner had they crossed the Yam Suf, having witnessed miracles that no-one had seen before, they were complaining about not having water to drink.  It is as though the staff transforming into snakes, and all the events that had led to their exodus, were but a distant memory.  In the parlance of our protagonist, a plea from the people to Gd, dismissing His intervention in their lives instead of recognising His Divine handiwork.

Ironically, one could argue that at least Pharaoh had received His message loud and clear, as per his allowing the Bnei Yisrael to leave.  So, the Rambam’s first objective was met.  One would like to assume that their morale was boosted but this seems short-lived as they were already complaining by the time they reached the Yam Suf.  As for the third point, their lack of belief accompanied them throughout their wanderings in the desert.  It accounted for the sin of the Golden Calf as well as the failure of the spies’ mission.  They even criticized the manna they received.  A miracle, if ever there was one.

When I titled this Drasha ‘A Plague on Both Your Houses’, my intention was to explain the idea both from a physical and metaphorical viewpoint.  Whereas the Egyptians were afflicted, our ancestors were also impacted, if not literally, then figuratively.  Had they understood and taken on board (if we follow the Rambam’s commentary) the purpose and significance of the plagues, they could have avoided all the challenges that they had to deal with over the four decades, that led to their eventual demise in the deserts separating the land of Egypt and its northern neighbour.  How different our story would have been!

Miracles happen on a daily basis.  We can choose to acknowledge them or act like Joe Cohen, refusing to recognise them for what they are.  Whenever Gd does his bit to help us (which we call Hashgachat Pratit – or Divine Providence), let’s take a moment and thank Him.  It will remind us of the lessons we can still learn from the plagues that struck Egypt so many years ago and of course The Rambam would be very proud!

Shavuah Tov 

Parashat Shemot: The Magnificent Seven

She is a force of nature that we dare not challenge.  Smart, wise, opinionated and unflappable.  I am generalising a little but I doubt that many of you will disagree.  With her, we usually lose the argument but without her, we would certainly be lost.  I am of course referring to the Jewish mother / wife / sister / daughter / friend (delete as appropriate).

The jokes abound.

Like the one where little Yossi comes home from school to proudly announce that he’s been given a major role in the school play.  When asked by his parents what it is, he replies, “The husband.” at which point, he is told to go back to the teacher and demand that he be given a speaking part!

Years ago, my mother bought me a t-shirt bearing the legend ‘I don’t need Google, my wife knows everything’ which Stephnie has never forbidden me from wearing (did you see how I phrased that?!).  In fact, she beams whenever I put it on.

I have met very few Jewish men who admit that they ‘wear the trousers’ in their homes.  At least, not in front of their wives.  We males readily acknowledge that we are subservient to them but in truth this is not a new situation.  If we want to know when we realised that our survival as a nation rested on the shoulders of the fairer sex, look no further than this week’s Parashah.

Rabbi Sacks’ Dvar Torah in his ‘Lessons in Leadership’ book (Maggid, 2015, ‘Shemot: Women as Leaders’ pages 61-54) identified ‘six courageous women without whom, there would not have been a Moses’.

The first is Yocheved, wife of Amram, father of Moshe, Aharon and Miriam.

She protected her infant son by hiding him amongst the reeds of the Nile, whilst her daughter (the second heroine) kept an eye on his basket as it floated down the river.  The Midrash also tells us how she reconciled her parents after her father, a leader of the Israelite community, instructed the males to divorce their wives to avoid the birth of any boys that would be drowned in the Nile because of Pharaoh’s cruel decree.  Miriam’s reasoning was that it would not be wrong for women to bring children into the world if there was a 50% chance that their offspring would be murdered.  She reasoned with him, saying that Pharaoh’s decree had affected only the males, whilst Amram’s ‘decree’ was impacting both males and females, which meant that this was worse.  Her father relented, remarried Yocheved and as a result, Moshe was born.

The third and fourth women cited were Shifra and Puah, the Hebrew midwives, who refused to carry out Pharaoh’s instructions and saved the boys as they were being born.  One could argue that, according to tradition (and Sotah 11b), these were in fact different names for Yocheved and Miriam.  However, this is disputed by the Abarbanel and the Ramchal (Rav Moshe Chaim Luzzato) who provide different interpretations of their identities, so I’m happy to include them.

Jewish heroine number five is Tzippora who saved Moshe’s life whilst accompanying him back to Egypt following his encounter with Gd at the Burning Bush on Sinai.  The Torah tells us in a deeply unsettling and enigmatic (as Rabbi Sacks’ writes) episode, that Gd punished Moshe for not having circumcised their son, leading to his being brought close to death.  Tzipporah carried this out and, as a result, quite literally saved her husband’s life.

The final ‘woman of distinction’ is Bitya, otherwise known as Batya who is mentioned in Chronicles I (4.18) and understood by Chazal to be Pharaoh’s daughter, responsible for saving the infant Moshe by ‘drawing him’ from the waters, which is of course, the origin of his name.

Six women who together, and apart, saved Moshe’s life from the time before he was conceived until he reached his old age.

They set the example for future leaders who Gd sent to save us when we were at our most vulnerable, two examples being the Judge Deborah and Queen Esther.

I have recently read a biography of another iconic Jewish lady who, in modern times stood her ground and even earned the moniker of being the ‘only man’ in Ben Gurion’s cabinet.  Golda Meir’s battle against the male-dominated and chauvinistic Zionist movement as described in Deborah Lipstadt’s excellent recent book, ‘Golda Meir: Israel’s Matriarch’ (2023, Yale University’s ‘Jewish Lives’ Project), demonstrated that the tenacity and fortitude of Jewish women exhibited in the Parashah has fortunately not been curtailed.  As the world’s fourth female prime minister (Indira Gandhi’s tenure predates her by three years and Golda was elected a decade before Margaret Thatcher), she demonstrated that our people respect and value the position of women in our culture.  It is deeply regretful that her legacy will always be tarnished by the Yom Kippur War which took place under her premiership and for whose outbreak she was blamed.  She never forgave herself and as Lipstadt writes (page 225) acknowledged that since that war, “I am not that same person.”

She was a human, like the rest of us, and made mistakes (let’s not forget that Miriam also sinned for speaking Lashon Hara (Slander) about Moshe to Aharon) but this does not detract from the formidable person who spent most of her life trying to achieve the very best for her brothers and sisters.  She was the same Golda who managed to raise $50 million from American Jews for the desperately impoverished Yishuv (pre-State community) a few months before Israel’s Independence on 14^th May 1948.

If ever there was a modern Jewish heroine who fits my initial description of a lady being a force of nature, smart, wise, opinionated and unflappable, Golda certainly fits the bill.  She spoke for our nation, as few could, to a world that listened and mostly respected her opinions.  They are still making films about Golda almost half a century after her passing which speaks volumes for the impact she made. Golda Meir is one of the many formidable Jewish women who have left their mark on the world throughout history.  Others include Licoricia of Winchester, Doña Gracia Nasi, Glückel of Hameln (whose diary is a must-read), Judith, Lady Montefiore, Henrietta Szold, the founder of Hadassah, Hannah Szenes (who also happens to be one of my own heroines) and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The Jewish mother / wife / sister / daughter / friend is the spiritual fuel that powers our homes, rears our children and following the Orthodox tradition, determines the Jewish identity of the next Jewish generation.  Love her, or dare I say it, loath her, she is our ‘not-so secret’ weapon.  She keeps us on the straight and narrow, makes sure that we are clothed, fed, challenged and confident.  This is not to say that we, the menfolk, don’t play our part, but we need to remember who is really in charge!  Though we may unfairly mock and satirise her, we should never underestimate how powerful she is.  She is simply, the Jewish superhero par excellence. 

Yocheved and Miriam, Shifra and Puah, Tzipporah and Batya were instrumental in protecting our greatest leader. Golda, who lived thousands of years later, in her total dedication to the Jewish people, shared many of their worthy attributes.  I consider them to be ‘The Magnificent Seven’ who represent, along with many, many others, the unique and indestructible entity that is the Jewish Woman. 

I am sure you agree!

Shavuah Tov.