Rabbi Sacks on Parshat Vaera

Dedicated in memory of Alice Setton Parshat Vaera January 16, 2021 3 Shevat, 5781 TORAH Rabbi Sacks on Parshat Vaera ARTSCROLL 318 In this week’s parsha, was Pharaoh’s own obstinacy end of Bereishit, we read of HERTZ 232 before even the first that led him to refuse to let the how the Egyptians plague has struck Egypt, people go. Maimonides interprets accompanied Joseph and his God tells Moses: “I will God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s family in the funeral HAFTORAH harden Pharaoh’s heart heart as meaning that procession to bury Jacob. The ARTSCROLL 1149 and multiply My miraculous “repentance was withheld from Canaanites witnessed this and HERTZ 244 signs and wonders in him, and the liberty to turn from said, “The Egyptians are Egypt.” (Exodus 7:3) The his wickedness was not accorded holding a solemn ceremony of hardening of Pharaoh’s to him.” Albo and Sforno offer mourning.” They named the heart is referred to no less the opposite interpretation. God place, Abel Mizraim (Gen. Times than twenty times in the hardened Pharaoh’s heart 50:11). Note: they called it course of the story of the precisely to restore his free will. “the place of Egyptian Weekly Times Exodus. Sometimes it is After the succession of plagues mourning,” not Israelite Pharaoh who is said to that had devastated the land, mourning, despite the fact Shacharit: Sun. 8:30 am harden his heart. At other that it was for Jacob, a non- Mon - Fri. 7:45 am Pharaoh was under times, God is said to have overwhelming pressure to let the Egyptian. Then we read of Scholars’ Kollel 9:00 am done so. The Torah uses Israelites go. Had he done so, it how Joseph himself was (link in the daily three different verbs in this would not have been out of free embalmed and placed in a emails) context: ch-z-k, to choice, but rather under force coffin in Egypt. In the Torah, strengthen, k-sh-h, to majeure. God therefore only Joseph, and Jacob at Mincha 4:35 pm harden, and k-b-d, to strengthened Pharaoh’s heart so Joseph’s request, are make heavy. that even after the first five embalmed. So we have plagues he was genuinely free to already been forewarned Throughout the ages, the say Yes or No. It may be that all about the significance of commentators have been Shabbat Times three are right and are simply death to the Egyptian mind. concerned with one responding to the different Candle Lighting 4:34 pm problem. If God hardened However, there is one specific verbs. K-sh-h, “hardening,” Pharaoh’s heart, how could aspect of Egyptian belief that Mincha 4:35 pm supports Rashi’s reading. he have been to blame for opens up an entirely new Pharaoh was hard on the not letting the Israelites perspective on the references Hashkama Minyan 8:00 am Israelites, so God was hard on go? He had no choice in to Pharaoh’s heart. According him. K-b-d, “making heavy,” the matter. It was God’s to Egyptian myth, the Parsha Shiur 8:30 am supports Maimonides. Pharaoh doing, not his. That he and deceased underwent a trial to lacked the energy, the strength, Main 9:00 am his people should be establish their worthiness or to repent. Ch-z-k, “to punished seems to flout otherwise to enjoy life after strengthen,” supports Albo and Beit Midrash 9:15 am the fundamental principle death in Aaru, the Field of Sforno. The text allows for all of justice, that we are Reeds, where souls live on in Youth Minyan 9:45 am three possibilities. guilty only for what we pleasure for eternity. They Gemara Shiur 4:00 pm have freely chosen to do. However, part of the truth may believed that the soul resides However, the lie in a completely different in the heart, and the trial Mincha 4:30 pm commentators noted that direction. The Egyptians – consisted of the ceremony of for the first five plagues, Pharaohs especially – were The Weighing of the Heart. Shabbat Ends 5:43 pm Pharaoh is said to harden preoccupied by death. Their Other organs were removed Latest Times for his own heart. The funerary practices were after death, but the heart was Shema/Shemoneh Esrei obstinacy, the refusal, the astonishingly elaborate and were left because it was needed for intransigence are his. Only meant to prepare the person for the trial. On one side of the Jan. 16 9:40/10:28 am with the sixth plague is life after death. The tombs of the scales was a feather. On the God said to have done so. Pharaohs were among their most other, was placed the heart. Jan. 23 9:39/10:28 am This led to several lavish creations. Tutankhamun’s, If the heart was as light as explanations. discovered in 1922, is a dazzling the feather, the dead could Next Shabbat example. One of the greatest continue to Aaru, but if it was Rashi says that the Bo literary works of ancient Egypt heavier, it was devoured by hardening of Pharaoh’s was The Book of the Dead. The the goddess Ammit (a Candle Lighting 4:42 pm heart in the last five Torah notes the attention the combination of lion, plagues was a punishment Egyptians gave to death. At the hippopotamus and crocodile), Mincha 4:45 pm for the first five, when it 26 Old Mill Road, Great Neck, NY 11023 (516) 487-6100 Shabbat Announcements Vaera 5781 and its owner was condemned to live in Duat, the underworld. The religion of Israel is not intended to be the religion of all An illustration, on papyrus, in The Book of the Dead shows the humanity. Nowhere in the narrative does God imply that He ceremony, undertaken in the Hall of Two Truths, overseen by wants the Egyptians to adopt Israelite religious practices. The Anubis, the Egyptian God of the dead. point is quite different. Religion is particular. Morality is universal. If the story of the “heavying” of Pharaoh’s heart It follows that the root k-v-d, “to make heavy,” would have had does allude to the Book of the Dead, then the story of the a highly specific meaning for the Egyptians of that time. It Exodus is not simply a partisan account from an Israelite point would imply that Pharaoh’s heart had become heavier than a of view. It is telling us that certain things are wrong, whoever feather. He would fail the heart weighing ceremony and does them and whoever they are done against. They are therefore be denied what was most important to him – the wrong by Egyptian standards too. That was true of Pharaoh’s prospect of joining the gods in the afterlife. No one would have decision to kill all male Israelite children. That was an been in any doubt as to why this was so. The feather unforgivable sin against Ma’at. represented Ma’at, the central Egyptian value that included the concepts of truth, balance, order, harmony, justice, morality, Justice is universal. That is the point made plainly by the and law. Not only was this fundamental to Egyptian culture. It Torah’s three stories of Moses’ early life. He sees an Egyptian was the task of the Pharaoh to ensure that it prevailed. This hitting an Israelite and intervenes. He sees Israelites hitting had been an Egyptian principle since a thousand years before one another and intervenes. He sees Gentile shepherds the Exodus, found in Pyramid texts dating from the third behaving roughly to Jethro’s daughters and intervenes. The millennium BCE. Ma’at meant cosmic order. Its absence invited first was a case of non-Israelite against Israelite, the second chaos. A Pharaoh whose heart had become heavier than the was Israelite against Israelite, the third was non-Israelite Ma’at feather was not only endangering his own afterlife, but against non-Israelite. This is the simplest way of telling us that threatening the entire people over whom he ruled with turmoil Moses’ sense of justice was impartial and universal. and disarray. Finally, and most deeply, the Torah is hinting at a self- One of the things the deceased were supposed to do as part of contradiction at the heart of the Egyptian concept of Ma’at. The the trial was to make a series of negative confessions, 42 in all, most generous interpretation of Pharaoh’s refusal to let the declaring themselves innocent of the kind of sin that would people go is that he was charged with maintaining order in the exclude them from paradise. These are some of them: I have Empire. A successful minority like the Israelites could be seen not done injury to men. I have not oppressed those beneath as a threat to such order. If they stayed and thrived, they me. I have not murdered. I have not commanded murder. I might take over the country as the Hyksos had done several have not caused suffering to men. If the “heavying” of centuries earlier. If they were allowed to leave, other enslaved Pharaoh’s heart is an allusion to the Weighing of the Heart groups might be tempted to do likewise. Emigration is a bad ceremony, it allows us to read the story in a completely new sign when the place people are trying to leave is a superpower. way. First, it suggests that it is directed to Egyptians as well as That is why, for many years, the Soviet Union forbade Jews to Israelites; to humanity as a whole.

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