Leave-Taking: Parashat Bo

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Parashat Bo
Exodus 10:1 – 13:16

There are two Exodus stories in our Torah portion. The Torah reports our leaving Egypt two separate times, each time within a different context. The first story (Ex. 12:31-42) relates that we are pushed out of Egypt by Pharaoh’s edict and, even more powerfully, by the Egyptian people, themselves. Overwhelmed by the death all around them, the Egyptians beseech the Israelites to leave. They give them all sorts of goods for the journey.

Some have read this episode cynically and seen it as our taking revenge upon our oppressors. But it is possible to read the situation differently. The relation between the tyrannical rule of Pharaoh and his own people is only vaguely indicated in our narrative. We know that Pharaoh was motivated by cruelty and murderous  hatred. But we also know that at least some of his people – including his own daughter! – did not share his attitudes. How much did they agree with him? How much did they silently go along with his policies? How much did they grimly resist, even secretly? How many were in these categories, or moved back and forth from one to the other? But we can plausibly imagine that there were Egyptians and Israelites who still maintained relationships with each other. Thus, we can see this moment as one in which the two peoples engage in leave-taking from each other. These Egyptians send the Hebrews off with gifts. The clothing they give them is the very fabric that allows the Hebrews to carry their matzah on their backs (vv. 34-35)

Thus, the first version of the Exodus event highlights the role of the Egyptians in sending us forth. “And at the end of 430 years, it was on that very day that all the myriads of the Eternal left the land of Egypt.” (v. 41) We leave, carrying on our backs, a very complicated bundle of feelings and memories toward these non-Hebrew neighbors of ours. The first Exodus tells of our leaving the past behind, with the remnants of that past upon our shoulders. We guard those memories “throughout all our generations.” (v. 42)

The second story of the Exodus positions the moment of our leaving Egypt at the conclusion of a set of instructions by God regarding the ritual of the Paschal sacrifice. The distinction between Hebrews and non-Hebrews, lived out in all its complexity and registered in the first Exodus story, is recognized and ordered through a set of regulations for this commemorative ceremony. We have moved from narrative to law and ritual. In the narrative we have experienced the abrupt cessation of our long wait for freedom, impelled by the strong burst of activity by the Egyptians (va-tehezaq mitzrayim – v. 33). In the second story, we are impatiently waiting to be set free and we must wait for God to finish setting forth the Divine mitzvot before God (not the Egyptians)  takes us out of bondage.

And there is another, profound difference between the narrative-based version of the Exodus and the law-based version. The law version does not point only to the past. It sets forth a ceremony for the present as it also points to the future. It imagines an Israelite society that will finally reach its homeland. In that homeland Israel will also have to deal with strangers in its midst, just as the Egyptians had to deal with us. As we wait impatiently to run to freedom, God insists on taking the extra time to declare a law that seemingly has no bearing on the present historical moment: “There shall be one law (torah) for the citizen and for the stranger living in your midst.” (Ex. 12:49)

The excellent contemporary commentator, Richard Elliott Friedman writes about this verse: “This is the first occurrence of the word ‘Torah’ in the Torah. It is impressive beyond description that its first appearance is in a verse declaring that a foreigner residing among the people of Israel has the same legal status as an Israelite.” (Commentary on the Torah, p. 212)

Only after God gives us this future-oriented Instruction does God set us free “And it was in this very day that the Eternal took the Children of Israel out of Egypt with all their myriads.” (v. 51)

Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi David Greenstein


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image:  “Exodus” © Giorgio Raffaelli altered and used with permission via Creative Commons License

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