"To be a teacher in the right sense is to be a learner.  I am not a teacher, only a fellow student."  (Soren Kierkegaard)

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A FEW PRE-SHABBAT WORDS FROM RABBI AARON

That Night, and The Blood on the Door
There is great night-time drama throughout parashat Bo. After checking out a few relevant texts, we can tie together these passages with the thread of the night. 

"...The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the members of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. Do not eat the meat raw or boiled in water, but roast it over a fire—with the head, legs and internal organs. Do not leave any of it till morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it. This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the Lord’s Passover. On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt."

The family meal (the Paschal Lamb) takes place at night. The Blood is smeared with hyssop upon the doors at night. God brings the devastating plague of death during the night. 

Last year's email drash on this parasha was focused upon the haste (chipazon - חפזון) with which the Israelites consumed their family meal. Avivah Zornberg's discussion of the Israelites' haste is a psychologically complex response  (guilt, unease?) to their salvation amidst the destruction unfolding all around. S. R. Hirsch understood the haste quite differently. He portrayed the Israelites' sense of security within their homes during that fateful night.   

This time around I want to consider the aspect of the darkness as well as the symbolism of the hyssop. 

Hyssop Brushing Blood Upon the Doorposts and Lintels
The Sfat Emet (Hassidic teacher whose writings I've cited from time to time) sees the hyssop and the doorway as symbols. The lowly hyssop stands for humility. The doorway is a hint of something much grander that lies just beyond the threshold. 

Consider these quotes from the Song of Songs:
Open [the door] for me, my sister, my love. [5:2]  
The king has brought into his chambers. [1:4] 

Commenting upon the first quote, the Sfat Emet cites a teaching from our sages: [God days] "You make an opening as wide as a needle's eye, and I'll open it up for you like the entrance-way to a palace." The doorway represents the redemption from Egypt; the palace [the second quote from the Song of Songs] represents the giving of the Torah. While the redemption from Egypt contained a hint of Revelation [God's awesome signs and wonders], even these awesome events were humble like the hyssop bush when compared to the Revelation at Sinai. The grand event still awaits. 

Darkness
Some writers have portrayed the ninth plague - Darkness - as a frightening moral darkness. They recast the verse "...a man couldn't [even] see his brother, neither could people get up from their chair for three days..."  [Exodus 10:23] The plain sense of the verse is that the darkness was so thick that visibility was reduced to zero. The metaphoric reading is that Egypt was such an unjust, darkplace that people felt no kinship or responsibility toward the stranger in dire need - even if they were right next to them. They didn't get up from their chairs; they simply couldn't bring themselves to get involved in someone else's problems.

Another take
...The Israelites went up out of Egypt ready for battle. [Exodus 13:18]
חמושים = armed, ready for battle.
חמש = five

According to one commentator, during the night many Israelites perished - 80% of them [!]. They were punished by God for not wanting to be redeemed. Darkness hid their corpses. Only one-fifth of the Israelites opted for redemption. This reading makes the angry parents' retort to the wicked child all the more chilling: if he [the wicked child] were there [in Egypt], he would not have been redeemed [because he would have denied God as the Redeemer]. Why did 80% of the Israelites prefer Egypt? Because they lost their way in the darkness of assimilation. They could no longer identify with their own people. They died a spiritual death. As for the blood on the door, the conventional understanding in that the Destroyer [or God] looked upon the blood and passed over the Israelite homes. Perhaps it's about coming out of the closet, about telling others honestly you you are. Another reading places the blood on the inside of the door. The identification as an Israelite is an internalized act. The thoroughly Egyptian-ized Israelites saw no reason for doing anything which would mark them as different from their neighbors.

Confusion in the text
Doesn't the Torah say that the Israelites were redeemed in the daytime? And weren't the Israelites confined to quarters on that fateful night?

“Go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the doorframe. None of you shall go out of the door of your house until morning.

Now the length of time the Israelite people lived in Egypt was 430 years. At the end of the 430 years, to the very day, all the Lord’s divisions left Egypt.  

But didn't Pharaoh chase them out [or beg them to leave] immediately - in the middle of the night?

During the night Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Up! Leave my people, you and the Israelites! Go, worship the Lord as you have requested. Take your flocks and herds, as you have said, and go. And also bless me.” The Egyptians urged the people to hurry and leave the country. “For otherwise,” they said, “we will all die!”

Nachmanides (Ramban) resolves the textual confusion in this way. The people were, indeed, redeemed at night. Pharaoh's ordering Moshe to leave fulfills the words Moshe had spoken earlier during a particularly heated exchange with Pharaoh: 

But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he was not willing to let them go. Pharaoh said to Moses, “Get out of my sight! Make sure you do not appear before me again! The day you see my face you will die.” “Just as you say,” Moses replied. “I will never appear before you again.”

Moses didn't return to the palace. In the middle of the night - the night when death stalked Egypt - a frightened and humiliated Pharaoh left his palace and desperately searched for Moses and Aaron. Why was the Exodus put off until daybreak? So that all of Egypt would witness the event.

Beyond parsing the text and bringing forth a few commentators, what is the take-home?

Darkness and Identity. What did it mean for the Israelites to leave Egypt, to march into the unknown? Surely Egypt was oppressive, but it was [for lack of a better word...] home. Moses was leading the people - where; into the wilderness?! Wouldn't it be easier topass, to blend in?

The lesson of humility - from the hyssop to foot of the mountain, from breaking the chains to accepting Torah. Pesach, that beloved festival which covers the first four parshiot of Exodus, is called zman cheruteinu - the time of our freedom. That holiday is intimately linked with Shavuot, zman matan torateinu - the time of the giving of our Torah. Tradition marks a countdown from one festival to the other, reminding us that while freedom is a cherished ideal, our ultimate sense of redemption is within the context of the covenant at Sinai. Another way to put it: Freedom makes us human. Torah makes us Jewish.

Within the lyrics of America the Beautiful, we find a roughly similar liberty-law equation is expressed:

O beautiful for pilgrim feet 
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat 
Across the wilderness! 
America! America! 
God mend thine every flaw, 
Confirm thy soul in self-control, 
Thy liberty in law! 

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Aaron

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