Plagues: The Path to Healing | Passover haggadah by Sophia + Jacob

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Moses and Aaron approach the enslaved Israelite people, and they are broken in body and in spirit. And they tell them that the redemption is near. But we know that that redemption is only going to come after ten horrible plagues decimate Egypt. These are plagues that are so devastating that the will of Pharaoh and his people is finally broken, and he cedes to Moses’ demands that he let the people go. Now that seems like a very simple and clear narrative thread: this is the story of an evil empire that's brought to its knees as divine punishment for the cruelties that visited on generations of vulnerable citizens.

And yet I want to share with you tonight an insight brought by Sforno, a 15th century Italian rabbi, who argues that we have to be clear that these plagues were never designed to be punitive to Pharaoh or the Egyptian people. They were intended to awaken the conscience of Pharaoh and the people, to help them see the truth that they could not see before. What was the intention of this campaign of shock and awe? The idea here was to wake Pharaoh up, to poke his conscience, to help him decide of his own free will to change his ways and to follow a just path. God didn't want to give up on Pharaoh. Those plagues were designed to inspire Pharaoh to repent, to get better.

And that's why it says repeatedly in Exodus that Pharaoh's “heart was hardened.” It was hardened after almost every single plague: “God hardened Pharaoh's heart.” But really, Sforno explains, what was happening was: God wanted to make sure that when the Israelites were liberated by Pharaoh, it wouldn't be out of impulse or out of fear of punishment or retribution. God wanted to elicit in Pharaoh and in the people a true change of heart. God wanted those people to realize that they were wrong. God wanted Pharaoh to take responsibility and then make amends and chart a new course.

Our story is about the oppressed and the enslaved and ultimately the liberated. So why does Pharaoh state of mind matter to us so much? Because it is clear from our Torah that the objective of this effort was not only the liberation of the Israelites, but the liberation of the Egyptians, too—from a failed moral narrative that had allowed them to enslave other human beings in the first place. True redemption required not only the transformation of the oppressed but also of the oppressors. And Pharaoh in Egypt were offered a chance to become a part of the greatest redemption story ever written, to move from being corrupt oppressors to collaborators in building a new society that would be rooted in justice for every person. That would have required a real change of heart. Nine times, God signaled the need for an honest reckoning with Pharaoh's past behavior. But again and again and again, Pharaoh failed to wake up out of his fear-fueled, greed-driven slumber.

Now, maybe this should not surprise us. As described recently by Timothy Snyder, the Big Lie is a fiction that is created by authoritarian leaders that separates them and their followers from reality and from the rest of the world. And once you become intoxicated by the Big Lie, it's extremely difficult to pull away from it. At some point, you can't even tell what the truth is. Pharaoh built an empire on the Big Lie: that the Israelites were a dangerous internal enemy, who threatened his insatiable hunger for power and profit. And that Big Lie allowed him to oppress and enslave and degrade and even murder, because you'll do anything for the Big Lie. And no lice or locusts swarms or even pandemic could convince him otherwise. Because, in the words of Jonathan Safran Foer, “no amount of noise will wake someone who is pretending to be asleep.”

If you fail to awaken from the Big Lie, it will destroy you eventually. Sforno argues that was only after it was only after the first nine plagues failed to awaken Pharaoh, to see the error of his ways, that God ultimately determined that Pharaoh needed to be punished. Because, at the end of the day, justice needed to be served, and Pharaoh wasn't going to get there on his own. So, the tenth plague came with a swift fury. The trauma to the collective system was blunt and unforgiving. But after all of those warnings, there was simply no other choice.

I've been thinking so much about this story amidst calls for healing that have come from some of our elected officials in the wake of the violent insurrection on January 6th, like: “Seeking punishment would only further divide our country,” “Calling political opponents Nazis does nothing to bring us together,” and “Let's move forward.” And healing and unity are things I believe in, lofty and admirable aspirations. But we have to be very clear right now: the path to healing and reconciliation leads only through truth-telling and accountability. There is no healing without acknowledgement of complicity in a system that is rooted in greed, cruelty, and supremacist thinking. Pharaoh and the taskmasters had a chance to awaken to this truth, but again and again, their stubborn persistence led their society to the brink of collapse. The calls today for healing are cynical. They are politically unsubtle attempts to shift the narrative: to refuse to accept responsibility when real harm has been done.

The call of our time is not to subdue the fierce yearning for justice in the name of coming together and healing. God did not tell the Israelites to quiet their hunger for liberation, so as not to stir up disunity in Egypt. Sometimes a healthy tension is needed in order to create a just and loving collective body.

I want to lift up tonight the words of Dr. Martin Luther King in 1955. He writes about Pharaoh's hardened heart, which revealed to us a great truth about evil: Evil “never voluntarily relinquishes its throne. Evil is stubborn, hard, and determined. It never gives up without a bitter struggle and without the most persistent and almost fanatical resistance.”

Someone asked me if I believe that some people are irredeemably evil. I do not. But I do believe that some ideologies are irredeemably evil. And when those who hold those ideologies—who benefit from them, who perpetuate them, who profit off of them—are given the chance to wake up, to change their heart, to grow, to adapt, to repent, but they stubbornly refuse, they, like Pharaoh, will inevitably pay the price.

The demand for justice is an act of resistance against evil. It was true back then, and it is true today. Justice is the only response to supremacist thinking and violence. Accountability is the only way to move forward on the path toward healing.

haggadah Section: -- Ten Plagues

Source: Rabbi Sharon Brous