Jan 23 2009 - WHAT’S PLAGUING THE PHARAOH?

No one in Torah is more terrifying a figure than Exodus’ Pharaoh. His grip over the lives of the Israelites is so tight that they don’t even recognize God when Moses comes to bring them out of slavery. Twenty times Torah tells us that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened. Through the first five plagues, however, indeed (!), this was the doing of Pharaoh, himself. It is only half way through the plagues that God becomes responsible for the coronary stoniness, as Pharaoh alternatively frees and then denies the Israelites their freedom.

This week I read one Rabbinic student’s (Jeremy Gerber of JTS) commentary which astutely pointed out that the act of hardening of the heart is little more than the desensitizing of one’s soul to the suffering of others. We Jews certainly have witnessed such a phenomenon as the world refused to acknowledge the missiles that were, for over 8 years, daily falling on S’derot and southern Israel. Sure enough, however, when the IDF invaded the Gaza Strip, our antagonists the world over quickly found their voices of outrage and protest over what was happening to the sad, poor, victimized citizens of Gaza who once again found themselves in the cross fire. Israel’s critics, however, turned as blind an eye to the /causes /of the Palestinian suffering as the muscles of Pharaoh’s heart and soul surely hardened.

The devolving of events of this week has left me worried and cold to the world. We inaugurated a new President whose burdens, upon his assumption of power, seem as overpowering and daunting as the challenges Moses faced when first he comes to Egypt. Moses quickly is given to understand that the people of God are so beaten down and encumbered that they do not recognize either God’s emissary or the very Deity who sent him. America now faces the greatest crisis of confidence, the greatest economic turmoil and the greatest anticipated level of unemployment since the Great Depression. Everywhere one looks there are things plaguing this nation, from a crumbling infrastructure, to a climate of corruption so wide spread that it has impacted every single citizen in one way or another, from lessening pensions to destroying personal capital to threatening the roofs over the heads of literally millions of American home-owners. All of this has evolved in a climate of partisan bickering and grid-locking back biting. Even though there will be a Super Bowl next weekend and the cost of the ads is pretty much the same as it was last year, signs of economic problems are looming not only in this country, but throughout the world. We can only hope and pray that our new President can retain his vision and encourage America to persevere throughout the plagues which are sure to come in the coming months, retaining that hope, faith, and determination that will enable us to come through the threats we face.

Pharaoh must have been a special kind of beast. True it is that he arrogantly demonstrated a regal cruelty which leaves one to ponder the basic nature of powerful human beings, and to reaffirm the assertion that absolute power corrupts absolutely. When hearing the cries of the Israelite slaves, Pharaoh’s response, like that of so many despots we Jews have known throughout our history, is to heap even more misery on the people. His quota of bricks continues to climb…and he gets an equally abusive idea that if the Israelites want to complain, he should heap upon them more reasons to do so. So, he tells the Israelite taskmasters to command the slaves to do the virtually impossible…to raise significantly the quote of bricks, but now using no straw. Without this material, what bricks that are made will be useless and crumble. This is labor meant to kill not to build anything.

How is it that those who govern with an iron hand have so little regard for those they govern? Hamas abused the Palestinian population of Gaza mercilessly. Is it through Jew-hatred that, even after booby trapping homes, schools, mosques, relief centers and universities, the people of Gaza proclaim to the news media that they hate Israel now more than ever, and they support this evil regime which put them directly into harm’s way more staunchly than before Operation Cast lead? I don’t get it. But, then again, I don’t understand how Pharaoh, like Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic, couldn’t see what would ultimately happen to themselves and their regimes. There is a certain coldness of the soul, a certain blind quality to a tyrant’s lack of consideration and decency that turns our stomachs sick and troubles one’s every waking and conscious image.

I can imagine that at some point, Pharaoh began to accuse God of using disproportionate force. I mean having your water source turn to blood, having the fish die and the water smell so badly that it becomes undrinkable, having frogs invade your every open space and then also die and putrefy in piles the air; have to suffer lice, insects…swarms of them; disease among livestock, and body covering, excruciating boils …well, these are terrible, but are, in fact, bearable. But having thunderous hail beating down you and every standing-thing onto and into the ground, locusts devouring every morsel, every stalk, every blade; then darkness descending so thick that it is blindness to you, and lastly, the slaying of everything that is your first born…well, these must be war crimes!

One can hear the Egyptians appealing to Pharaoh, at last, to do the right thing. But, intransigent unto the end, Pharaoh will follow his disastrous course until, at last, attempting to claim victory by recapturing the escaping slaves, he will witness his armies drown in the Red Sea. Some folks just never learn.

As he was being inaugurated on Tuesday, President Barak Obama might have cited this week’s /parasha/. To a certain degree, but without naming the passage, he did. Obama’s first call to the American people was to change our course, to improve and redirect our politics of division and selfish partisanship, to right the ship of state and renew our world commitments to consult and cooperate, to renew old alliances and build new ones, to return to old ideals too long set aside. But Obama’s most clarion message, for me, was his message to those who would seek to play Pharaoh to their own people. In effect, it’s what Moses and Aaron were saying as they delivered God’s ultimatum. The President said:

To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West — know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

Conditions being what they are, we can and should draw strength from Va’era. God has delivered 10 warnings. They will soon open to a great deliverance. And as there was redemption for a downtrodden people there in the Egypt of their bodies and souls, so may America and we now take up the reigns of responsibility and help to bring about a redemption that will once again resound the world over.