VaEira
Exodus 6:2 – 9:35
Every year, as I meet the text narrating the plagues of Egypt, I am confronted with the same paradox. God commands Moses to ask Pharaoh to free the Israelites. Pharaoh refuses. God brings down a plague, and Pharaoh yields to Moses’ demands. But then, inexplicably, God hardens Pharaoh’s heart so that the latter reverses his edict and keeps the Israelites enslaved. Why is God playing both sides? And why does God need to replay this scene ten times? We can take this questioning further and ask why God sets up the whole thing in the first place? Why, already in the time of Abraham, had God determined that the Hebrews would descend into Egypt, be enslaved there for four hundred years, and only then be liberated and brought to the Promised Land? Why did reaching the Promised Land had to go through Egypt?
We find the answers to our questions in the early verses of this week’s parashah. To discover it for ourselves, however, we must recall that our way of reading the text includes understanding that all the characters participating in the unfolding of the biblical narrative, are aspects of us. God, Moses, the enslaved Israelites, the Egyptian enslavers and Pharaoh himself are all present in, facets of my own being.
As the Torah portion opens, a piercing voice from Elohim – the part of the Absolute Unmanifest YHVH that interfaces with the Relative Manifest of our world – tells our inner awakened awareness, Moses, that He has “now heard the moaning of the Israelites because the Egyptians are holding them in bondage” (Exod. 6:5). The moaning Israelites are the parts of our self currently enslaved to the illusion of separateness, to Egypt or Mitzrayim in Hebrew – meaning “narrow consciousness.” These parts of self, living in the bondage of a narrow, mistaken identity, must be freed. Such is the promise and, perhaps, the purpose of existence: “I am YHVH; I will free you from the burdens of Egypt” (Exod. 6:6). God is a force within us that liberates us, an energy that frees us from the addiction to power, to control, plaguing the narrow consciousness of our separate sense of self. A force that leads us into a Promised Land of inclusiveness, compassion, serenity, awe, and humility. Why? So that “you shall know that I Am YHVH” (Exod. 6:7). So that our separate sense of self may dissolve in our knowing the Greater “I Am” that we are.
The journey into and then out of Egypt that God has set up for each of us is, therefore, part of the process of spiritual awakening. We must first forget in order to remember. The plagues are a necessary part of that process. We might mistakenly think they are directed at the Egyptians, but I would venture to say that the plagues are for the ultimate benefit of the Israelites. They are for us. Because “when Moses told this [i.e. that freedom is possible] to the Israelites, they would not listen to Moses, out of shortness of spirit” (Exod.6:9). The reality of our conditioned ego self is that it can’t hear the voice our inner awakened Moses-consciousness, no matter how powerful the Truth it speaks. The ego first needs to be confronted with the plagues. It needs to face the crucible of life and/or of the spiritual path which might allow for multiple small breakthroughs necessary to glimpse into a deeper Truth. It needs to also recognize for itself that after each such miraculous opening, our Pharoah-heart closes off and hardens again, and we fall back into believing ourselves to be the enslaved separate ego. Perhaps our Exodus narrative is telling us that liberation requires ten (i.e., umpteen) repeated small glimpses into Truth, ten awesome displays of God’s Presence.
There may be, therefore, no other way to get to the Promised Land but via the enslavement of Egypt. Without Egypt, we might never feel the need to free ourselves from Egypt. We might never care to look for a Promised Land let alone know that one exists. In order for us to know the Light of the One we are, we first need to recognize the bondage that keeps us in darkness. May we all break through our “shortness of spirit” this year, and finally allow our inner Moses to bring us out of our own Mitzrayim.