I have a nickname for this week’s parsha, which is Passover in January. In Parshat Vaera we learn about most of the plagues issued in Egypt and find some of the sources for the Passover Haggadah. We watch as Gd aims to show Gd's power in a sort of competition with the magicians of Egypt, a competition that finds Gd, through Moses and Aaron, the clear winner. We watch Pharaoh's back and forth dance between granting permission to the Hebrews to leave to worship Gd and then hardening his heart again.
While reading this Parsha, which was rich in details of the horrors encountered by the citizens of Mitzrayim with each of the plagues, I wondered about the time frame for each of the plagues. Opinions differ, but it is thought that these plagues took place over the course of one year. We ask how the people reacted to the plagues and what they tried to do combat them. What did people caught up in Pharaoh's battle eat? Where did they live when their homes were destroyed? What did they use to help with their bug bites and boils? What was public sentiment toward Pharaoh and the Hebrews who worked nearby?
Was there a lot of blame being spread from neighborhood to neighborhood?
Of course, we can better understand the concept of plagues when most of Planet Earth experienced a plague which we began to hear about just about five years ago in January, 2020. The same terror experienced five years ago was surely felt by the Egyptians during that fateful time of the ten plagues. The following short piece is a connecting cord between two periods of plague, coming many centuries apart, but connected by the dread it created and its terrible impact upon society .
On Shabbat we saw the first of this group of hostages released. May the good news continue.
Kol Tuv,
Leann
Oh Yes, We Have Witnessed a Plague
Oh, yes, we have witnessed a plague
We scoffed at its insidious beginnings
as it crept in
stealthily, like a hairy spider slowly creeping
Like Pharaoh in Egypt, we were unbelieving
looking the other way, pretending it wasn’t there,
some making light while others proclaimed
it was the beginning of
the end of the world
as we knew it.
We could not see what we could not see.
The plague was just a fiction in our world of non fiction
And then like a sudden storm,
like an attack of lice,
it spread from person to person
from town to town,
leaping over continents with ease.
The Plague was invisible
but it swiftly found its way to the old
the poor, the vulnerable
but also to the rich, the powerful.
It’s appetite was voracious
No sacrifice could quench its appetite.
There were no exemptions to the plague.
and as if in slow motion it found its way from far to near,
from there to close,
to here,
to our own homes.
and our shutters were closed tight.
Oh, yes, we remember the plague
the stench of fear, raw and gristly
the terror of what we did not know
a future suddenly turned on its head.
We recall with horror,
the isolation of the many,
such loneliness.
And there was the hope of a fix;
really, any fix would do.
As we look back, we can picture the funerals,
hear the sirens,
picture the deaths of the elderly and the young.
We watched as childhoods were wasted
and we heard the vengeful rip of an economy ripped apart.
It’s what a plague does best.
It kills people, it destroys life as we know it.
And we remember the array of poisons that accompanied the plague,
trailing right behind it like cloak of destruction.
A cloak weighed down with empty promises,
a ballooning lack of trust,
the sharpened swords of acrimony between citizens,
and many people's hearts hardened,
which yielded the twin calamities
of politicization and unending blame.
Oh, yes, our plague spread its tentacles far and wide,
brushing it cold fingers onto us and tightening like a vice.
Looking back now, as years have passed,
its shape begins to fade,
but even now we are being reshaped by the long shadows
of what it dragged behind.
Among all the uncertainty,
the lives lost and the refashioning of a world,
like Pharaoh, like those people in Egypt
we learn that plagues do somehow come to an end,
but take heed not to erase their memories
lest they return to bite us.
Image taken from The Creative Commons
Other posts from Words Have Wings For Parshat Vaera
וַיַּֽעֲשׂוּ־כֵ֛ן חַרְטֻמֵּ֥י מִצְרַ֖יִם בְּלָטֵיהֶ֑ם וַיֶּחֱזַ֤ק לֵב־פַּרְעֹה֙ וְלֹא־שָׁמַ֣ע אֲלֵהֶ֔ם כַּאֲשֶׁ֖ר דִּבֶּ֥ר יְהֹוָֽה׃
But when the Egyptian magicians did the same with their spells, Pharaoh’s heart stiffened and he did not heed them—as the LORD had spoken.
וַיִּ֣פֶן פַּרְעֹ֔ה וַיָּבֹ֖א אֶל־בֵּית֑וֹ וְלֹא־שָׁ֥ת לִבּ֖וֹ גַּם־לָזֹֽאת׃
Pharaoh turned and went into his palace, paying no regard even to this.
Exodus 7:22-23
דָם֙ צְפַרְדְּעִים֒ כִנִּ֖ים עָרֹ֑ב דֶּ֖בֶר שְּׁחִ֔ין בָּרָ֖ד
Let’s hope they’ll be no moe. But there will be more, in one form or another. Until all peoples and nations unify towards the universal common good, we will suffer. Hoping successding generations heed the call and work towards peace. 🙏