Taking Time To Hope
Va’era, 5784
When I ask you to picture the principal characters of the Exodus, who do you picture? Just a quick survey. Moshe? Aharon? Pharaoh? Maybe the magicians, if you’ve read the Torah closely or seen the Prince of Egypt. By the way, that’s Steve Martin and Martin Short as Pharaoh’s magicians in that movie, if you didn’t know. It’s a stacked cast. Maybe Miriam, if you’ve got a feminist bent or are thinking all the way to the Crossing of the Red Sea.
You know who often does not come up? The Israelites themselves. The common person. What were they thinking as the Exodus unfolded, as all these plagues occurred around them?
We know very little. We know that when Moshe came back to Egypt, before he met with Pharaoh, he told the Israelites that he spoke with God and showed them the signs, וַיַּאֲמֵן הָעָם, and the nation believed him. We know that what happened next was not great for the Israelites—Pharaoh did not believe Moshe, or let the Israelites go, but essentially doubled their work load by forcing them to gather their own straw for bricks. We know that the Israelites complain to Moshe that their work has become harder, that Moshe has essentially לָתֶת־חֶרֶב בְּיָדָם לְהׇרְגֵנוּ “put a sword in their [the Egyptians] hands to slay us.” Moshe cries out to God, and God promises Moshe that everything will turn out alright. But when Moshe goes to report this to the Israelites, לֹא שָׁמְעוּ אֶל־מֹשֶׁה מִקֹּצֶר רוּחַ וּמֵעֲבֹדָה קָשָׁה, “they did not listen to Moshe, because of anguish of spirit and hard labor.” And from there on, the thoughts of the Israelites disappear. The Israelites, or their chiefs, do not talk again to Moshe or Aharon in the Torah’s account throughout the plagues.
The commentators want to know: how could the Israelites have gone from believing in Moshe and God to complaining that Moshe was going to kill them, just because one thing went wrong? Some of them are not kind to the Israelites. Sforno writes that they compare unfavorably to Avraham, who always believed in God, and thus this generation would not inherit the Promised Land because of their disbelief. In a midrash in the Mekhilta d’rabbi Ishmael, Rabbi Yehuda ben Beteira even goes so far as to say that the Israelites were idolaters, and their anguish was caused by them refusing to give up their idols!
Yet I do not think that is a fair read of the Israelites. Rabbeinu Bahya I think puts its best: “it was not that they did not believe in Hashem or Moshe his servant, but it was because of this anguish of spirit and hard work that they were like a man who longs to die due to all his trouble.” In other words, the Israelites could not, psychologically, listen to Moshe. They were too distraught, too oppressed, to be able to receive Moshe’s words.
I can’t find it in myself to criticize the Israelites for not responding positively to Moshe’s words, because I’ve been there. A place where it just seems impossible to hope, where you can’t let yourself believe things could be better because then you just set yourself up for disappointment. No wonder the Israelites don’t believe in Moshe. Things only got worse after they let themselves hope. No wonder they don’t appear again to comment on the rest of the plagues.
And yet. Sneak peak of next week’s parsha, but the next time we see the Israelites, Moshe is commanding them to partake in a very odd ritual: to slaughter a lamb and dip its blood and their doorposts, because God was going to smite all the firstborn of Egypt, and finally take them out. And, we are told, וַיֵּלְכוּ וַיַּעֲשׂוּ בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, the Israelites went and did so.
You might say, there is nothing remarkable in that. The Israelites had just witnessed nine of the ten plagues! They had seen the power of God! Of course they were going to listen to what Moshe had to say! True, but consider. The Israelites had seen the plagues, but it isn’t clear from the Torah that they were unharmed from them. Only the plague of darkness singled out the Israelites as not suffering from the plague, and the Sages debate how much the Israelites were indeed affected by the plagues. But consider further: yes they had seen the plagues, and they had seen how Pharaoh reacted to them. Every time he seemed like he was about to break, his heart hardened. After the last plague Pharaoh yelled to Moshe that they would never see each other again, or Moshe would die. So, sure, to the Israelites, they could see evidence of God’s plagues, but also witnessed that Pharaoh would never let them go! And yet now they believe when Moshe tells them they will make it to the Promised Land?
Yes. They do. Because the mistake Moshe made was going to the Israelites directly after things got worse and counseling them that they would get better. Of course they didn’t listen. They were in the heat of despair. How could they have hope? It was only later, when they had time to process, to think things through, could they start to hope again, even though their conditions had not improved, even though Pharaoh was constantly saying no. Time helped return hope.
There’s a two part lesson to this story. The first is for us when we try to give hope and comfort to others. That attempting to brighten someone’s day who has undergone trouble or loss will not be effective, but that instead we should give them time to heal and come to terms with their grief. But the second lesson, and the challenge, is for all of us in that space the Israelites are in at the beginning of the parsha, the space where there is no hope. Allow yourself to take the time. Don’t tell yourself you need to be hopeful right away, that everything is automatically going to work out, that you just need to convince yourself things will get better. Be honest and acknowledge how you are feeling. And that over time, not instantaneously but over time, hope will return.
