Archive for the '2.01 Shemot' Category

Vulture Culture: A Thought on Tzipporah

Published January 13, 2023 2.01 Shemot , Uncategorized Leave a Comment

As some might know the pantheon of ancient Egyptians  was a proverbial menagerie. They personified many of their major gods as birds.  Why they did is open to considerable debate.  Perhaps it was because birds could fly and thus be in areas unattainable by humans or perhaps maybe they were viewed as being powerful for being able to live in the harsh desert conditions.

One of these bird gods of Ancient Egypt was the vulture. The vulture was sacred to the goddess Nekhbet, the goddess of upper Egypt and also Mut, the ‘mother’ goddess.

The vulture represents eternal power and protection.  This makes a lot of sense, since vultures are scavangers by nature, it is no surprise that they had become associated with eternity.  As they eat the flesh of the dead, it can be assumed that they consume the soul of the departed.  When finished the vulture soars off into the sky, carrying the departed soul to heaven. 

The Egyptian dynastic mythology was caught up into immortality, it makes sense that the vulture was very often depicted in association with the many rulers of Egypt.

I was thinking about this culture of vultures when reading Shmot, this week’s Torah portion. There we meet the woman who will become Moshe’s wife Tzipporah. She was one of the seven daughters of Jethro, a Kenite shepherd who was a priest of Midian. There we read:

Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters. They came to draw water, and filled the troughs to water their father’s flock; but shepherds came and drove them off. Moshe rose to their defense, and he watered their flock. When they returned to their father Reuel, he said, “How is it that you have come back so soon today?” They answered, “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds; he even drew water for us and watered the flock.” He said to his daughters, “Where is he then? Why did you leave the man? Ask him in to break bread.” Moshe consented to stay with the man, and he gave Moses his daughter Tzipporah as wife.

Exodus 2:16-21

She has two children with Moshe, but she seems to be an NPC, barring the incident in the inn just before Moshe goes back to Egypt to liberate the Israelites. There we read:

At a night encampment on the way, the Lord encountered him and sought to kill him. So Tzipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin, and touched his legs with it, saying, “You are truly a bridegroom of blood to me!” And when [God] let him alone, she added, “A bridegroom of blood because of the circumcision.”

Exodus 4:24-26

Many interpreters depict Moshe as being “lazy” in not circumcising their sons. It is interesting in that a Bris and eating of the Korban Pesach are the two positive commandments for which not doing gets you koret- “cut off” from the Jewish people. In the case of Moshe this was the last thing he needed to do before going to Egypt and for the Israelites the Korban Pesach was the last thing they needed to do before leaving Egypt. In many ways both represent our version of Hernán Cortés‘ burning the ships.

But we should get back to Tzipporah. Why is this her role in the story? We all want life partners who help us succeed and keep our commitments, but what does this have to do with vultures? Well , Tzipporah means bird. And just as the Egyptian vulture goddess represented eternal power and protection, she did this for Moshe.

May we all blessed with a Tzipporah in our lives.

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Like a Reed: We Need Agility for Creativity

Published March 29, 2022 2.01 Shemot , 8.4.3 Passover , Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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It is hard to be be creative when your world is falling a part. But in so many ways this is the story of Passover. In many ways when we think about creative breakthroughs we focus on the paradigm shifting moments like the splitting of the Red Sea, but for me I find a lot more inspiration from a different, more subtle, image by the water. I am very moved by the image of Miriam standing in the bulrushes. There we read:

When she could hide him no longer, she got a wicker basket for him and caulked it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child into it and placed it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile. And his sister stationed herself at a distance, to learn what would befall him. The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe in the Nile, while her maidens walked along the Nile. She spied the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to fetch it. When she opened it, she saw that it was a child, a boy crying. She took pity on it and said, “This must be a Hebrew child.” Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get you a Hebrew nurse to suckle the child for you?”

Exodus 2: 3-7

It is noteworthy that it is Miriam, Moshe’s sister, and not Yocheved, Moshe’s mother, who is waiting in the bulrushes. Miriam has an idea as to what might happen. She put that idea into the world. When she saw Batya come forward she jumped in and improvised and got her mother in to care for her brother.

People often talk about necessity being the mother of invention, but I believe it is the ability to take a risk and be creative that is actually the sister of invention. Miriam had an idea and then she shifted on the fly to meet the changing needs. If she were too committed to her plan it would have broken like a cedar. Indeed Miriam is not just standing among the reeds, but as a reed.

To be creative we do not need to split the Red Sea, we just need to put ideas out there with confidence without knowing how our offering will be received. We need to let go of our rigidity. If we are too close to ideas we will not be agile enough to allow the idea to morph and flex. To be creative we need to be flexible like a reed. As we learn in the Talmud, “A man should always be gentle as the reed and let him never be unyielding as the cedar.” (Ta’anit 20a-b)

The Shoes They Filled: NYT & Moshe’s Sandals

Published December 26, 2021 2.01 Shemot Leave a Comment
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There is an incredibly poigniant moment in Shmot, last week’s Torah portion, when Moshe is told to remove is footwear. There we read:

And God said, “Do not come closer. Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy ground.

 Exodus 3:5

Why is Moshe made to shuck shoe? There are many good answers to this question.

Sandals were made of leather. It is possible that God wanted him to remove the impurity of the dead flesh from his body before connecting with God. Another answer is that God was trying to communicate that Moshe need to give up ownership in the world to walk with God. Similarly on this question Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik said

The shoe is the symbol of vulgarity and uncouthness, of superficiality, of raw power… To understand holiness, to gain sensitivity, a person must remove his shoes.

Chumash Mesoras Ha-Rav, p. 24.

On this question Rabbi S.R. Hirsch said,

Taking off one’s shoes expresses giving oneself up entirely to the meaning of a place, to let your personality get its standing and take up its position entirely and directly on it without any intermediary.

Hirsch’s reading is asking Moshe if he is open to the world around him. Is he allowing himself to be vulnerable? As  Brené Brown, my vulnerability Rebbe, teaches:

Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity. If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.

Daring Greatly

Anyone with kids with their Legos knows the pain of stepping on Lego barefoot. To parent means you have to be open to being hurt and being humble. You need to know as much as you might be a creator, you are not God. That it means to be open to being hurt. Unlike the traditional definition of humility, the Jewish definition of a person who has humility is someone who takes up just the right amount of space. A humble person is one who has a healthy sense of self-esteem and is hospitable to others. That means that he does not think he is better than others but also does not feel that he is worse. In many ways Moshe being told to take his shoes off is really just setting him up to put them back on. What space does he need to occupy to become the leader of this liberation movement?

I was thinking about this idea this week when looking at the the New York Times Magazine. Like every year this time the Times runs a spread on famous people who died the prior year. This year they ran a great story about the iconic shoes of people who made a huge impact on our world who passed away this past year. The paint splattered shoes of Eric Carle spoke to me.

Looking at their shoes gives us pause to consider what it would take for each of us to achieve our own potential. Like Moshe we need to take a moment to remove our shoes so that when we step into them we can take up the right amount of space in the world.

Why Return? Allegory of the Good

Published December 24, 2021 2.01 Shemot , Uncategorized Leave a Comment

In Plato’s Republic Socrates presents the most beautiful and famous metaphor in Western philosophy: the allegory of the cave. This metaphor is meant to illustrate the effects of education on the human soul and what might ultimately brings him to the Form of the Good.

In the allegory Socrates describes a dark scene. A group of people have lived in a deep cave since birth, never seeing the light of day. These people are bound so that they cannot look to either side or behind them, but only straight ahead. Behind them is a fire, and behind the fire is a partial wall. On top of the wall are various statues, which are manipulated by another group of people, lying out of sight behind the partial wall. Because of the fire, the statues cast shadows across the wall that the prisoners are facing. The prisoners watch the stories that these shadows play out, and because these shadows are all they ever get to see, they believe them to be the most real things in the world. When they talk to one another about “men,” “women,” “trees,” or “horses,” they are referring to these two dimensional shadows. These prisoners represent the lowest stage on the line—imagination.

A prisoner is freed from his bonds, and is forced to look at the fire and at the statues themselves. After an initial period of pain and confusion because of direct exposure of his eyes to the light of the fire, the prisoner realizes that what he sees now are things more real than the shadows he has always taken to be reality. He grasps how the fire and the statues together cause the shadows, which are copies of these more real things. He accepts the statues and fire as the most real things in the world. This stage in the cave represents belief. He has made contact with real things—the statues—but he is not aware that there are things of greater reality—a world beyond his cave.

Next, this prisoner is dragged out of the cave into the world above. At first, he is so dazzled by the light up there that he can only look at shadows, then at reflections, then finally at the real objects—real trees, flowers, houses and so on. He sees that these are even more real than the statues were, and that those were only copies of these. He has now reached the cognitive stage of thought. He has caught his first glimpse of the most real things, the Forms.

When the prisoner’s eyes have fully adjusted to the brightness, he lifts his sight toward the heavens and looks at the sun. He understands that the sun is the cause of everything he sees around him—the light, his capacity for sight, the existence of flowers, trees, and other objects. The sun represents the Form of the Good, and the former prisoner has reached the stage of understanding.

The might have been the end of the allegory as it is the discovery of the Good, but something drives the enlightened free slave back into the cave to free his fellow slaves. Why does the philosopher return to the cave after seeing the Good?

One answer is that the philosopher returns to the cave to free the cave dwellers out of empathy and pity. Not so long ago he was one of one of them and understands their pain in ways they might not know. Another answer is they he goes back to rule over them. This reason might be for the good or the bad, but the philosopher has a calling to lead. And yet another answer is that he feels some compulsion in that he never really understood how he ended up free. Maybe he has to pay it forward in gratitude for his own experience of freedom. Another version of this answer is this act of freeing the other slaves is an act of resistance against the system that empoisoned him. So this would be less gratitude than vengeance.

I was thinking about this question as to why the philosopher return to the cave after seeing the Good this week when reading Shmot, this week’s Torah portion. There we read the story of Moshe. He was born to slaves. Through was seems like a miraculous story he is unshackled from a grueling life as a slave to be raised in Pharaoh’s house. From there he stands up to the slave masters and must evade them and leaves the cave of Egypt. There he finds shelter and employment with Yitro. One day when working as shepherd for Yitro he goes looking for a lost sheep when he discovers God. Here the Good is not revealed to him as the sun, but the Burning Bush.

And again we are left with the question, why would Moshe return to the cave after seeing the Good? Any of the answers given above for Plato’s philosopher might be accurate. An additional answer given in the Torah is beyond the compulsion of the Good, but the commandment of God.

Sitting to write this post I was listening to Yishai Ribo’s song LaShuv HaBayta and thought of another reason why Moshe and the philospher might have returned. If you have not, listen to this song:

There Ribo sings:

The time has come to wake up

To leave everything- to overcome

To return home

Not to search for any other place.

It is possible that Moshe and the philosopher just wanted to go home. Even if we cannot ultimately stay at home, there is something compelling about homecoming.

In all of these answers to this question there is a profoundness of our individual and collective obligation to serve others in need. At its core this is the foundation of education.

I am Me: Modeling Authenticity

Published February 5, 2021 2.01 Shemot , 2.05 Yitro Leave a Comment
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In Yitro, this week’s Torah portion, we get the Ten Commandments. In simple terms it seems that the commandment are directives as to what we should or should not do. For this reason that first commandment seems complicated. There we read, “I the Lord am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage.” (Exodus 20:2) This seems more like a PSA than a law. Most interpret this as a negative precept “not to entertain the idea that there is any god but the Eternal.” ( Rambam Minyan Mitzvot) Clearly the belief in God is foundational to the Bible and I know that they believed in other gods in Egypt, but I have trouble imagining that this was first message that God wanted to give this band of recently liberated slaves. If this is the case,, what is the true meaning of this commandment?

At the simplest level in this first commandment God is identifying God’s self to the Israelites. As if God is saying, “I am Me”. In this context, it is less of a injunction against believing in other gods and more of God showing up as God’s authentic self. It resonates with the words of Polonius when he said:

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell, my blessing season this in thee! (Hamlet, Act-1, Scene-III)

To these slaves who have been told who they are and who they are supposed to be this is a powerful message. God is modelling what it means to be free. Show up as who you want to be. As Brené Brown says:

Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing we’ll ever do.

That must have felt liberating. This ideating set a foundation of authenticity upon which to build the rest of the commandments, Torah, and Jewish life.

I have been thinking about this recently during the entire Bernie Meme experience after the inauguration. Most people might have been offended by being the butt of all of these jokes, but not Bernie. He is the model of authenticity. Bernie knows exactly who he is. He was right on brand. Not only was Bernie not offended, he used the moment to get attention for the causes he believes in and the meme to sell merchandise which earned over $1.8 Million for Vermont charities he supports.

Image
Forget it, Donny, you’re out of your element!

On another level there might be deep connection between being true to yourself and the prohibition to believe in other gods. As Oscar Wilde said, “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” If God knows who God is and we know who we are, everything else is already taken.

Merit of Female Leadership: Exodus and Our Generation

Published January 15, 2021 2.01 Shemot , 2.02 VaEra , 2.03 Bo , 2.04 Beshalach , Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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Recently I have found myself listening to to Kings & Queens by Ava Max. Yes it is pop, but I do think it has a powerful messages here about female leadership. Give it a listen:

But why have I been thinking about this song? Yes, I am also excited for Vice President Harris’s inauguration. There is also the line “Disobey me, then baby, it’s off with your head” is taken from the 1865 book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by the Queen of Hearts . This is resonating for me with Pelosi‘s handing Trump his second impeachment. And how much do we owe Stacey Abrams for getting Georgia to give the Democrats the Senate.

In light of the insurrection in DC this song took on new meaning after the I heard U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois) speech on January 6th. A combat veteran of the Iraq War, Duckworth served as a U.S. Army helicopter pilot. In 2004, after her helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade fired by Iraqi insurgents, she suffered severe combat wounds, which caused her to lose both of her legs and some mobility in her right arm. She was the first female double amputee from the war. Despite her grievous injuries, she sought and obtained a medical waiver that allowed her to continue serving in the Illinois Army National Guard until she retired as a lieutenant colonel in 2014. Standing in the Senate floor in front of her “Law and Order” Republican colleagues she said:

I earned my wounds, proudly fighting in a war I did not support, on the orders of a president that I did not vote for – because I believed in, and still believe in, the values of our nation… I regret that I have no rucksack to pack for my country, no Black Hawk to pilot, nor am I asking for any grand gesture to my Republican colleagues. All that I’m asking of you is to reflect on the oath that you have sworn, the damages done to our union today, and the sacrifices that have given so much to this nation.

Hearing the depth of what she was saying I found myself singing the line from Kings & Queens when she sings:

And you might think I’m weak without a sword
But if I had one, it’d be bigger than yours

In the Torah portions we read around now we read about the lives of the Israelites in slavery and their exodus from Egypt. We learn in the Talmud:

In the merit of the righteous women who were in that generation, [the children of] Israel were redeemed from Egypt. (Sotah 11b)

Again it is clear that redemption will come from the merit of the righteous women female leaders of our generation. Thank you.

Taken: Coaching Moshe to Lead

Published January 17, 2020 2.01 Shemot Leave a Comment
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At the beginning of the book of Shemot we are introduced to Moshe. We will spend the rest of the Torah learning of his character as the person who would liberate his people from Egypt, guide them through the desert, get the Torah at Sinai, and deliver them to the Promised Land. It takes a very defined group of skills to be such a profound leader. What do we learn from his early days that might have prepared him for his leadership?

There seems to be a myriad of elements of his life that led to his leadership. At the start he is a person between two worlds. He is an Israelite being raised in the house of the king. At some point we see his inner life emerge as he is moved to stand up to the taskmaster who was beating the Israelite slave. Out of fear that his intervention will be discovered he escapes Egypt. There he find himself as a shepherd of Yitro. It is in this context that he gets the call to action to be the leader of the Israelite slave rebellion.

Thinking of this moment in the context of his life I got to thinking about the iconic phone scene from Taken by Liam Neeson. Watch this:

He he says:

I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom I can tell you I don’t have money, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you, but if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you and I will kill you. —Liam Neeson, Taken

At this moment when Moshe has his phone call he lacks confidence. There we read:

But Moshe said to the Lord, “Please, O Lord, I have never been a man of words, either in times past or now that You have spoken to Your servant; I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” And the Lord said to him, “Who gives man speech? Who makes him dumb or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? ( Exodus 4:10-11)

I can imagine God echoing Liam Neeson in his talk with Moshe. God would say:

Moshe you have a very particular set of skills. Over your very long career you have acquired  skills that make you a nightmare for people like Pharaoh. Go to Pharaoh and tell him, ” If you let my people go now that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you, but if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you and I will kill you.”

Moshe had a very particular set of skills. He just needed God to point them out to him. For many of us we cannot see the skills we have acquired. We need someone to point out our unique gifts and how they would best be put to use. God is modelling what it means to be a great mentor or coach. While the skills and gifts are critical, too often the person helping you best put them to use is taken for granted.

A Ploce to Call Home

Published December 28, 2018 2.01 Shemot Leave a Comment

In this week’s Torah portion Moshe meets God and God instructed him to return to Egypt to free the Israelites. At this point Moshe asks God what seems to be a logical question.  What should I call you? And then God replies in an enigmatic way. There we read:

Moshe said to God, “When I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them?” And God said to Moshe, “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh.” God continued, “Thus shall you say to the Israelites, ‘Ehyeh sent me to you.’”( Exodus 3:13-14)

So what does “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh” mean? We tend to translate it as “I am that I am”. So what does that mean? “I am that I am” is a ploce, the repetition of a word or phrase to gain special emphasis or to indicate an extension of meaning. 

In digging deeper into this question I found myself exploring the word ploce. The uncommon English rhetorical term ploce comes via Late Latin plocē from Greek plokḗ, a noun with many meanings: “twining, twisting, braid; complication (of a dramatic plot); construction (of a syllogism); web, web of deceit; (in biology) histological structure; (in rhetoric) repetition of the same word in close succession in a slightly different sense or for emphasis” (e.g., “A man should act like a man”). Greek plokḗ comes from the verb plékein “to weave, braid, twine,” from the Proto-Indo-European root plek-, plok-, source of Latin plicāre “to fold, bend, roll, twine” and the combining form -plex, used in forming numerals (equivalent to English -fold). The Proto-Indo-European neuter nounploksom becomes flahsam in Germanic and flax in English. In Slavic (Polish),plek- forms the verb pleść “to plait, weave.”

The name of God that will redeem the Israelites from Egypt is manifold. This repetition seems to imply that the God of the Torah is a God of being, but limited to the land of Egypt. Where HaMakom – God’s name being the place might be limited, they will be redeemed by the God of the ploce of being. The Ploce will help them find a new place to call home.

Baby Moana Baby Mosche

Published January 26, 2018 2.01 Shemot , 2.04 Beshalach Leave a Comment

Ever morning for the last few months our two -year-old daughter Libi has gotten up and asked to watch Moana. The movie is set on a Polynesian island. The inhabitants worship the goddess Te Fiti, who brought life to the ocean, using a special stone. Maui, the shape-shifting demigod and master of sailing, steals the stone to give humanity the power of creation. However, when he steals the stone Te Fiti disintegrates, and Maui is attacked by Te Kā, a volcanic demon, losing both his magical giant fishhook and the stone to the depths. A millennium later, Moana, daughter of the island’s chief, is chosen by the ocean to return the stone to Te Fiti.  Years later, after Moana has grown older, a blight strikes the island, rotting the coconuts and dwindling the number of fish caught. Most of the movie is her finding Maui and coaxing him into helping her. In the end Moana plays a critical role in manipulating the water helping Maui return the magical stone to Te Fiti.

This was an enjoyable if not formulaic Disney instant classic. What is interesting about Libi’s wanting to see it all the time is that she is only interested in watching the beginning of the movie- or as she says, “Baby Moana, Baby Moana”.

The part that she likes most is when Moana is a curious little girl and goes to see the “scary” beach. There she follows a baby turtle and protects it so the turtle can return unharmed to the ocean. Once there the ocean magically coaxes her to go in by dividing drawing her further and further out until she actually sees the lost stone of Te Fiti. It is clear that baby Moana has an insatiable curiosity and a special connection with the ocean.

Seeing this scene made me think about the connections between baby Moana and baby Mosche. When we first meet Mosche  he saved from the Nile by Pharaoh’s daughter Batya. She “draws him out of the water” giving him the name Mosche. Like Moana his identity is connected to water. Like Moana, Mosche grows up as royalty and feels a deep need to save his people. Like Moana, the small act of protecting a defenseless animal ( substitute sheep for turtle here) is the sign that this child will grow up to be the savior. Like Moana, in order to save his people Mosche must get them to leave the comforts of the world they know in order to thrive. The most iconic parallel is the images from this scene which we see in reading B’Shalach , this week’s Torah portion. What a powerful image of the water splitting for Mosche and Moana? One could say it is just derivative, or we could enjoy the similarities of these stories pointing to the holiness in the commonality of our humanity.

Almond Prequel: On the Collapse of Empire

Published January 12, 2018 2.01 Shemot , 2.02 VaEra , Uncategorized 1 Comment

In this week’s Torah portion, Vayera, we read about the plagues. Aaron’s encounter with Pharoah’s magicians is an interesting prequel to the plagues. There we read:

Aaron cast down his staff before Pharaoh and before his servants, and it became a serpent. Then Pharaoh also called for the wise men and the sorcerers; and they also, the magicians of Egypt, did in like manner with their secret arts. For they cast down every man his staff, and they became serpents; but Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staves.(Exodus 7:10-12)

What is the significance of it being Aaron’s staff and not Moshe’s? What is the meaning of this prequel to the plagues?

Later in the book of Numbers we read that Aaron’s staff blooms into an almond branch (Numbers 17: 23). The almond tree is thought to grow very quickly. In the Talmud Yerushalmi, we learn that the rabbis thought that it took 21 days from the first bloom of the almond tree until it bore fruit (TJ Taanit 4:7). This period of 21 days corresponds to the time between the breaching of the wall in Jerusalem and the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. Thus, there is a connection between the collapse of the Second Commonwealth and the almond tree.

With all of this in mind, what was the significance of Aaron’s interface with Pharaoh? Not only was his staff going to eat up the staffs of Pharaoh’s magicians, the Israelites were going to grow quickly, and Aaron was also giving them notice of the upcoming collapse of the Egyptian empire. It seems that nothing lasts forever, especially empires.

As I have quoted a couple of times before, in a 2012 appearance in New Hampshire  former Supreme Court Justice David Souter made some striking and prescient remarks about the dangers of “civic ignorance”. This video has been circulating and worth seeing:

 I was most struck when he said:
I don’t worry about our losing republican government in the United States because I’m afraid of a foreign invasion. I don’t worry about it because I think there is going to be a coup by the military as has happened in some of other places. What I worry about is that when problems are not addressed, people will not know who is responsible. And when the problems get bad enough, as they might do, for example, with another serious terrorist attack, as they might do with another financial meltdown, some one person will come forward and say, ‘Give me total power and I will solve this problem.’… That is how the Roman republic fell. Augustus became emperor, not because he arrested the Roman Senate. He became emperor because he promised that he would solve problems that were not being solved.
Civics is important. We need to know who is responsible and then we can demand performance from those people. If we are ignorant of civics, we are at risk of peril. This is not a risk from the outside, but the inside.
As we learned in last week’s Torah portion the new King of Egypt did not remember Yosef and enslaved the people out of fear. There we read:
Let us deal shrewdly with them, so that they may not increase; otherwise in the event of war they may join our enemies in fighting against us and rise from the ground.( Exodus 1:10)
Is it possible to understand this in light of Justice Souter’s insight? Was there really a reason for Egypt to fear their enemies, let alone that the Israelites would join them? Maybe this tyrant only became king because he enslaved the Israelites.  Like Augustus and Trump, with little regard for democratic norms and political institutions, this new King came forward seeking power, assuring the public that he’ll solve their problems, exploiting fears and civic ignorance. As we see with the plagues, the destruction of Egypt is not because the Israelites joined a foreign invasion, rather the process of the plagues Egypt was destroyed from the inside out. Aaron presents his almond staff to express how Egypt will collapse. It is a cautionary tale. 

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