Finding the Reset Button

Finding the Reset Button
D’var Torah for Parashat Bo (Exodus 10:1—13:16)
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

When the wonderful animated feature Prince of Egypt was still playing in theaters, I went to see it at a matinee showing. There weren’t many in the theater that day; it almost felt like a private screening. Still, a few rows behind me sat a father with his young son. Every once in a while, the father’s voice came across the rows, quietly explaining what was going on. As the climactic moment neared when the Divine energy gathered into one powerful lightball right before the last plague, the Death of the First Born, the tension increased noticeably. Suddenly, a second before the lightball burst and the plague struck, the boy’s voice came across: “Can we go home now, Daddy?”

Sad and funny at the same time, the boy’s plea showed he got it. He fully understood the immensity of what was about to happen. And though he couldn’t yet comprehend the implications of the terrible disaster about to happen, he felt to his very essence how unspeakably fearsome it was going to be.

Parashat Bo (“Come,” Exodus 10:1—13:16) relates the final three of the Ten Plagues—locust, darkness and the terrible Death of the First Born Son. Yet, powerful as the story is, the narrator allows an interruption right before the climax, just before the last plague. Intruding into the narrative, the Torah inserts a section that contains two of the most important laws of Passover—not eating bread for seven days and telling the story of the Exodus to our children. The latter is, of course, the core of the Four Sons section of the Haggadah. Each of the four, in his own individual way, asks the same question, spelled out in this parasha (Ex. 12:26): “What is this service to you?” The wise son asks it with a sincere desire to learn the rules and regulations. The wicked son asks the question with derision and rejection; the simple son asks simply, “what is this?” while the one who does not know how to ask is silent, only looking at the proceedings with wide eyes.

The answer we give our children—each according to his abilities to understand—is that it was through these terrible acts that God forced Pharaoh to recognize and obey God. It was only after Pharaoh saw the full and awesome might of God that he finally caved in and let the Israelites go free.

Yet, there is another question implied in this terrifying story, one that deserves its own special answer: How was God able to distinguish between the Israelites and the Egyptians? With the Death of the First Born, it was the Israelites who defined their own boundaries by smearing blood on their doorposts. But how did the total darkness—the ninth plague—not extend into their homes? For three days the Egyptians couldn’t seen in front of their noses, but for the Israelites there was light. How was that possible?

While some people might try to provide an answer through some laws of physics or astronomy, it’s much more likely that the darkness was really symbolic. It was really all about fear—the kind of fear the boy in the theater must have felt. The kind of fear that immobilizes us, a dark hopelessness, a foreboding that makes us unable to see our way through to the light.

We all sense that fear at some point or another. It’s totally debilitating; it’s the stuff nightmares are made of, when we try to cry out and find out we can’t even do that.

So how do we break through that kind of darkness? Is there some reset button we can press to wake up?

Fortunately for us, there is. It’s called education. If darkness is also symbolic of ignorance, then knowledge is its antidote. That is why the narrative of the Ten Plagues is broken right before that last, most terrifying one. Our guide through the darkness is the set of instructions we receive on observing the Passover. By retelling the story “throughout your generations” (Ex. 12:14), by emphasizing our faith in God, by encouraging questioning, by our attempts to understand our place in the universe, we guarantee our ongoing existence as a people.

By denying his own people access to that light, Pharaoh doomed his whole culture.

The wicked son is the one who rejects instruction; the wise one is the one who seeks enlightenment through understanding those instructions.

That is why the Passover seder isn’t only about eating; it’s also about the history lesson.

Throughout the generations there have been tyrants who tried to control their people by denying them access to knowledge. Burning books, suppressing questioning and doubt, oppressing those who sought light, they brought about one Dark Age after another. We, on the other hand, send our children to schools. We encourage them to seek understanding and not merely accept what some people insist must be truth.

Freedom is all about searching for knowledge. Light and life are the byproduct of learning.

That one afternoon, the frightened child in the movie theater sensed the truth inherent in the story of the Exodus. He just didn’t know what to do with it. He thought going home—escape—would release him from the nightmare. His father’s instruction, however, would prove to be the right reset button. That teaching is what would enable him to grow, to go forward, to break through the boundaries of fear and ignorance.

And that is why we retell the story to our children, taking a pause now and then to study the laws, to think about them anew, to see them through our children’s eyes and then again through our own, to find eternity within the very act of learning. It’s our reset button.

©2011 by Boaz D. Heilman