Parshat Bo: Reconciliation, Repentance, and Redmption

This week parashah/portion is Bo (Exodus 10:1 - 13:16). In the beginning, God sends the eighth and ninth plagues, locusts and darkness, but Pharaoh still refuses to free the Israelite slaves. God then tells Moses that the 10th plague will be killing all the firstborn Egyptians. God commands each Israelite home to slaughter a lamb and spread the blood on their doorposts, in order to protect their firstborns. After the death of the firstborns, Pharaoh demands that the Israelites leave.

Then God commands Moses “...have all the Hebrews ask the Egyptians for their objects of gold and silver. God disposed the Egyptians favorably toward the people. Moreover, Moses himself was much esteemed in the land of Egypt, among Pharaoh’s courtiers and among the people. (Exodus 11:2-11:3)” This last line implies that the Egyptian people willingly gave up their gold and silver when asked. 

This passage has confused, interested and disturbed rabbis and scholars through the centuries. What is happening here?

Some rabbis have stated that the taking of the gold and silver from the Egyptians was a form of reparations being paid for 400+ years of slavery. This idea of reparations has played a part in modern Jewish history as well. In the early days of the State of Israel, receiving reparations from Germany was hotly debated. Some felt that it was the least that the new German government could do after murdering six million of their brothers and sisters. Others felt strongly that they didn’t want the money and that receiving it was actually a desacration of the memory of the six million. Ultimately the State of Israel accepted reparations in order to help resettle the survivors of the Shoah, and the family members of those murdered by the Nazis also were able to receive reparations as well.

In the case of the Israelites the same dilemma is discussed by the commentators. Was the gold and silver reparations? If so, was this desirable? Rashbam (12th century France) believed that the gold and silver were not actually reparations. He believed that it was a gift freely-given by the Egyptians to their neighbors upon leaving. Nahum Sarna (20th century USA) and others viewed them as justified “spoils” in response to the Israelite victory over the Egyptians, who had treated them so cruelly. 

I can see the later interpretation speaking to Jews after the Shoah. Yet, the former interpretation really makes more sense, given how the Torah describes the relationship between the Egyptians and the Israelites and Moses. 

Meanwhile, as the Egyptians seem to be sharing their wealth with the soon-to-be former slaves, Pharaoh is seathing in his palace. His stubbornness is about to cause the death of his eldest son and all of the first born Egyptians. If only Pharaoh and his advisors had looked outside of the palace and seen what was happening between the people, perhaps the tenth plague could have been avoided. Perhaps then Pharaoh’s heart would have been softened. 

One interpretation which fascinated me was that of Polish-German Rabbi Benno Jacobs (1862-1945). Jacobs believed that actual healing happened between the Israelites and the Egyptians. To adapt a phrase, God turned the hearts of the Egyptians towards the Israelites and the hearts of the Israelites towards the Egyptians. He believed that this “was of major importance to the Torah in our drama of liberation, as it showed a moral change; the receptive heart of the Egyptian people was now contrasted to the hard heart of Pharaoh.” 

In addition, in Jacobs’s commentary, the Israelites’ hearts were softened as well. They did not gloat or lord it over the Egyptians because of their victory. Rather, they accepted the gifts with gratitude and as neighbors.

According to Jacobs, “God’s primary concern during the Israelites’ final hours [in Egypt] was ‘peace between the two peoples’. And this was in fact achieved: ‘The Israelites stretched out their hands in friendship and the Egyptians responded with farewell gifts’.” (Rabbi Shai Held, The Heart of Torah, pg. 153)

Rabbi Shai Held views this interpretation with skepticism. I too think it’s a bit of a stretch to imagine this lovefest between the Egyptians and their former slaves as the tenth plague was about to descend upon the slaying their first born.

However, Held reminds the reader that Jacobs was a rabbi living in the time of the Shoah, witnessing the murder of his people having fled to London in 1939. And so, it is not surprising that he might imagine this rapprochement in spite of all that happned the centuries prior. 

As Held wrote “In a world suffused with bigotry and hostility, a world in which people of faith often marsha sacred texts to legitimate acts of cruelly and to extol hatred as virtue, there is great power in reading Jacobs’s words and being reminded: At the heart of the religious enterprise is the attempt to soften, and open, one’s heart, to God and to one another. If even the Egyptians and the Israelites can be (successfully!) called to love one another, then perhaps, even in the darkest of times, slim glimmers of hope are available to us.” (pg. 154)

This description of the world could easily be applied to the recent situation in the USA.

The conversation about reparations is a very real one for the African American community. Just as the Israelites in Egypt, enslaved Africans and their descendants have been in the USA country for over 400 years. As with the Israelites, they too were freed from slavery. However, here the parallel ends. For the Israelites went out into freedom and into the unknown eventually to enter the land which was promised to them by God in which they could live freely. At least for a while. 

Unfortunately, the reality for African Americans is that they were never truly freed after emancipation, nor are they truly free today. First enslavement was enshrined in both custom and law, whether during the days of slavery or the days of Jim Crow. Today when the law is still used as a weapon against BIPOC (Black, Indegenous, and People of Color). It is still a form of enslavement, even when there is supposedly equal protection under the law.

In addition to repairing a broken racist system, I believe that true repentence and reparations are needed. What form the reparations take, whether actual money or something more symbolic, I don’t know. But we need to acknowledge what we have done as a nation, and as White people, and truly make ammends. Only then can we move on to the next step and follow in the mythical footsteps of the Egyptians and Israelites on the night of the first Passover.

As Pharoah and his entourage plotted and schemed in the palace, the people were finding their way to reconciliation through reparations and through and with softened hearts.  I imagine this process would have had to start long before that night, because that type or reconciliation does not happen in one night. But Phaoraoh never saw it because Pharaoh didn’t care to look outside his own little world. 

I agree with Rabbi Held’s critique that Jacobs’s belief that God’s main goal that night was to bring peace to these two peoples is a bit of a stretch. Still, what a beautiful image it is. Just imagine, if that spirit had pervaded our land over not only the last 4 years, but long before then. 

What if, as our leaders plotted, planned, and fought one another, often using their understanding of God and religion as a weapon against our citizens, the people were to stop and realize “this is ridiculous!” What if the sprit of the divine, in the form of moral leaders, prevailed and were able to bring about peace regardless of what our leaders were doing. What if Martin Luther King, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and so many others were able to turn the heart of the haters toward others. What if their prophetic vision were to become the vision of all people. Then freedom would truly ring.

Impossible? Perhaps. But as the rabbis said 200 years ago in Pirkei Avot (the Ethics of our Ancestors) “it is not up to us to finish the work, but that does not mean were are free to desist.”

Now is the time to begin the work of listening to prophetic voices. At the same time politicians need to hold people accountable for their actions and people need to acknowledge their wrongs. Whether they be white supremacists, domestic terrorists, people in uniform, or elected leaders in our land, they must be held accountable and they must be punished appropriately. After that, let the people start the difficult work of finding a path towards peace and reconciliation.

Maybe it will never happen completely in our time (I doubt it will). Maybe it will barely happen. And yet we must persist. We must do whatever we can to bring bring justice,in all of its forms, to our land. We must continue the fight. Only in that way can every American truly live freely as if they have crossed the sea into a new land.