I am sure that I am not alone in feeling lonely. For many of us living here in the United States we understand that we are out of harms way, but still these last 105 days have been tough and we are feeling depressed. I took some hope from this quote I read recently. “The sun is a daily reminder that we too can rise again from the darkness, that we too can shine our own light.”

This got me thinking about the plague of darkness, the penultimate plague in Bo, this week’s Torah portion. Moshe was trying to convince Pharaoh to let the Israelites go. It is depicted as some sort of chemotherapy in which you needed to subject the body to increasing level of chemicals to kill the cancer before you killed the patient. Each plague is getting worse and worse. We all can understand how the death of the first born is the worst plague and ultimately their ticket out, but what do we make of the 9th plague? What is so horrible about a time of darkness?

There are many ways to answer this question. To my understanding, any one who has experienced depression this is a self-evident answer. Darkness is horrible and the feeling of hopelessness feels inescapable.

I wanted to offer an additional look at this question by way of a well-known midrash about Adam and the first winter he experienced, in the year he was created. We learn in Talmud:

The Sages taught: When Adam saw that the days were becoming progressively shorter, he said, “Woe is me! Perhaps it is because I sinned that the world is becoming dark around me, and returning to chaos and void. And this is the death that is imposed upon me by heaven.” He decided to spend eight days in fasting [and prayer].Once he saw the solstice of Tevet [winter solstice] and saw that the days [that followed it] were becoming progressively longer, he said, “This is the way of the world.” He went and made a festival for eight days. The next year, he observed both [periods of eight days] as festivals. He established them for the sake of heaven, while [the Romans] established them for idolatry. 

Avoda Zara 8a

In a deep way this is the Rabbinic backstory for Hanukah. But for our purposes it is interesting to get into Adam’s mind. He sees the increasing darkness as a consequence of his eating of the Tree of Knowledge. It was not enough for them to get kicked out from the Garden of Eden, Eve to have pain in childbirth, or for him to have to work for food. No, the impact of his transgression is that the world itself would come to an end. It is one thing to know that you have been kicked out. It is another to know that the world itself will collapse in darkness because of you.

Perhaps this comes to explain why the plague of darkness is so horrible. The visceral feeling of hopelessness is just the worst. Above and beyond the backbreaking labor of slavery and the lack of personal agency, autonomy, and liberty, the emotional toll is that the slave has no hope of escape. This plague is a consequence of the Egyptian mistreatment of the Israelite slaves. And at the same time this is meant to motivate them to let them go. Moshe is clearly saying that as you do down this long dark corridor you can get out and see the light if you just let them go. From Adam’s vantage point on darkness we also see how the plague of darkness was to evoke their global responsibility. In what way was/is the sin of slavery destroying the world?