During negotiations between Moshe and Pharaoh, the plague of locusts, the least uncommon of the plagues, seems to have been the one that began to turn the tide. Pharaoh offers a concession. If the Children of Israel really want to go and worship their God they can indeed go for three days. But he asks who exactly they want to…
Parsha Bo
Why?
How do you pass on any tradition, specifically Judaism to the next generation? This week’s reading from the Torah puts it in a nutshell. As the Children of Israel are about to leave Egypt they are commanded to respond to their children’s thirst to know “why.” Why should we be different? The answer is our history, our heritage, our spirituality…
How Many Left?
“And they left Ramses to head towards Sucot, six hundred thousand men on foot, not counting children.” Tradition tells us that there were 600,000 people who left Egypt. But if we take this text at face value you would have to double the number to include women and again to include children. Could there really have been nearly two million?…
Limits of Knowledge
The long saga of plagues finally comes to an end and Pharaoh literally drives the Children of Israel out of Egypt. What was the point of the plagues and why didn’t God simply start with the last one and avoid the whole charade? Pharaoh was convinced his society; its values and religion was the most advanced and technically superior to…
Children
In talking about the Exodus this week, children play a central role. On the one hand the first born of Egypt are condemned because of their parents’ actions, something that is unfair legally and contradicts Biblical law where one can only be punished for one’s own actions. But in terms of history we are all the products of our homes…
Mezuzah
There are different versions in our commentaries as to how intensely identified the Children of Israel in Egypt were. Some say that they retained their identity because they didn’t change their names, language or dress. Others say that only a fifth left Egypt because the rest were so assimilated they preferred to stay where they were. This explains why in…