By Nora Chong
I think you're all really going to like this week's parsha. You may be familiar with the content from the Seder Pesach. That's right, it's the Ten Plagues! And a bunch of other stuff! You can read a summary here (although I provide an exhaustive summary below), or the full text here.
Vaera starts out with God telling Moses (among other things) to tell the Israelites that God is going to free them and give them the land promised to the patriarchs. But the Jews won't or can't listen, so God tells Moses to tell Pharoah about this whole plan instead. Moses is really sensitive about his speech impediment, so God sends Aaron along with him. God tells them though, that he plans to harden Pharoah's heart, and that as such, the whole thing might take a minute, but it will be very impressive in the end. And then they do the plagues, which we know about.
There's a lot to wonder about in this parsha: Why is the plot interrupted by a genealogy break in the second aliyah? Why doesn't God just take the people out of Egypt straight away rather than creating a lot of chaos in mitzrayim? Why were the ten plagues those plagues and not some other plagues (why boils and not eczema?)?
But I'm going to skip most of that, and instead focus on the question of why the Jews didn't listen to Moses the first time, which could have saved everybody some time and effort, since Moses comes to them pretty much first thing in this parsha. The JPS Tanach tells us: "But when Moses told this to the Israelites, they would not listen to Moses, their spirits crushed by cruel bondage." What's the connection between the Jews having had their spirits crushed an not being able to listen? We can look at this question on a couple different levels. One is the interpersonal level. Who hasn't been intolerant or uncaring to those around us when we're in a spirits-crushed kind of mood? A central focus in our movement is how we relate to each other; we teach kids all the time that they need to be patient and kind
with each other, and we strive to model this behavior amongst ourselves. An important part of being able to treat others well is recognizing where you are emotionally at a given moment, and being aware of how that affects those with whom you're interacting. Maybe this is all really obvious, but I know that for me, at least, it's not always that easy. And if we're not aware of our emotional state, we can't always communicate effectively or respectfully with other people; that is, we might miss out on the memo about getting out of Egypt.
There's also a broader question about the needs of a people that have been oppressed for a long time. How much can they hear words of hope and believe them? I don't think it always take a huge show of brutal strength to convince people to stand up for themselves. But at the same time, there's a question of how effective civil disobedience can be. This is a relevant tension in terms of the movements for social and political change we discussed at this last winter seminar.
Back to the micro level for a minute, this parsha also asks us to look at our own insecurities in communicating with each other. Moses is worried that Pharoah won't listen to him or take him seriously because of his speech impediment. We too worry about being judged or rejected for our communication styles or the content of our messages. Sometimes this leads us to communicate in dishonest or ineffective ways. But if we let these insecurities trip us up, then we miss out on more fully communicating with each other and ultimately having better relationships to people/getting out of Egypt.