VOL. XIV NO. 5 — APR. 4, 2015

The 10PlaguesIbn Ezra’s Clues

Matza:You Don’tKnow the WholeStoryDeciphering God’s Clues

Silver &TreasuresThe Rabbi’s Messagefor Passover

The 10PlaguesIbn Ezra’s Clues

Matza:You Don’tKnow the WholeStoryDeciphering God’s Clues

Silver &TreasuresThe Rabbi’s Messagefor Passover

theMeaning of

LIFERamban on Miracles

theMeaning of

LIFERamban on Miracles

FreedomPassover’s Theme

ReadersLetters

BitachonThe Evil Eye

KabbalaHeaven’s Praises

FreedomPassover’s Theme

ReadersLetters

BitachonThe Evil Eye

KabbalaHeaven’s Praises

’

PASSOVER ISSUE

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Apr.4BitachonReader: If Emuna comes from reason, where does Bitachon comes from? Is it an “upgrade” of Emuna?

Rabbi: “Emuna” or conviction (as in “amen” said after hearing a blessing) as you said, is based on reason. We respond “amen” (this is true) to one who blesses God for any of His various gifts. We thereby testify to our conviction in this truth of God’s kindness.

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The Journal on Jewish Thought

LETTERS

WWW.MESORA.ORG/JEWISHTIMES APR. 4, 2015 | 3

We are convinced of a given point when either, it complies with with reason, we experienced it, or it is based in God’s Torah, as Maimonides taught. “Bitachon” or trust does not exclusively concern reason, for it concerns God’s word and His promises. God is not confined to how our minds work, or natural law that He controls. For example, we are “convinced” that 2+2=4, but we “trust” God’s promises, as in His rewarding our good deeds; viz., that charity enriches us, although we don’t understand how diminishing wealth actually enriches us.

One does not have bitachon about a witnessed event; one has conviction. But even though bitachon concerns God’s promises, it is not devoid of reason, since all Torah finds its basis in Revelation at Sinai, which is undisputed truth. Thus, we are convinced that Revelation occurred, and therefore we trust in all of God’s words that form part of His Torah commu-nication.

Conviction concerns intelligence and reasoned truths.

Bitachon concerns our beliefs and actual response to God’s promises.

Kabbala vs. ProphetsReader: What is the distinction between

Kabbalistic works (Zohar, Tanya, etc.) and Prophets and Writings, that you claim the former possess flaws?

Rabbi: Kabbalistic writings are not Divinely inspired, but are man-made and thus, they are subject to human error. In contrast, Prophets and Writings are God's communications through the Prophets. The tendency to deify authors of Kabbalis-tic is the source of the error, to view such

writings as infallible. Jewish communities promote Rebbe worship, or Tzaddik worship, like Christian saints. People have become overly attached to man, and are less attached to God and His words. King Solomon rejects such deification of man, “For man is not righteous in the land who performs good and does not sin (Ecclesi-astes, 7:20).” These are the words of the second wisest man to have ever lived. Yet, Jews today prefer to endorse a contrary view in order that they might feel there is an infallible rebbe or Tzaddik, to save them. Their personal desires for wealth, health, a shidduch or other needs drive them to deify flawed humans to lead them, and many times, these Rabbis rob misguided Jews, lying to them and creating the worst Chillul Hashem. Deifying authors of Kabbala by claiming their writings are without flaw is merely another expression of human worship, again violating King Solomon’s words.

It's crucial that your goal be to validate "ideas”, not the author. That's the purpose and primary function of the intellect. Intelligence distinguishes truths from falsehoods, not one author from another. This being the case, it is clear that God's will is that man distinguish truth from fallacy, and abandon human deification. And if one reads in any work, regardless of the author, that there is a piece of God in a human, he must dismiss such heresy as this violates reason, and God's words to Moses, the Prophets and Writings.

The Evil EyeReader: What do you think of the ability

for one person to harm another by using the “Evil Eye”?

Rabbi: The understanding most people

have is that the Evil Eye is some power one possesses to hurt another. But we must ask, as one is not born displaying such powers, at what point, and through what mechanism is this power acquired? What are the limitations of such power? These questions unveil this understanding to be fallacy.

The Rabbis referred to the Evil Eye as a person who will “look” (eye) viciously at others, suspect others, and cause unfair harm due to their “actions”, not mere sight. Such actions are evoked through jealousy, competition, or other infantile emotions. The Rabbis and intelligent people know there are no powers man possesses other than his muscular strength. This is why God commands us to kill a witch or warlock: as their professed abilities are false, and more so, as they obscure God as the sole power in the universe, they must be killed. But not because they possess any ability at all. The Hebrew term for witch is “mach’shay-fa”, which the Talmud teaches is an acronym for conflicting with heaven (God). Ironically, if the witch had real powers, why can she not save herself from the death penalty? How can God even say she must be put to death, if this is impossible? The same can be said of the Evil Eye practitioner. Additionally, no evidence exists for either.

On a fundamental level, God’s system of justice, or Reward and Punishment, demands that only evil people are punished. Thus, for God to have created a power where infantile people can vent their jealousy and harm innocents, Reward and Punishment would have to be rejected. But, as we know Reward and Punishment is a perfect and just system, as our brilliant founder Abraham expressed, where only man is ignorant of God’s complete control and justice, we conclude from reason and from evidence that the Evil Eye, as is understood, is a fallacy. ■

(CONT. ON NEXT PAGE)

Torah (Exod. 9:16) with regards to these plagues, “...in order that they tell of My name in the whole world.”

Interestingly, the three plagues designed in the heavens were hail, locusts and darkness. Why these three? Perhaps to address three errors of the Egyptians. Egypt assumed meteorological phenomena to be divine, so God responded with a hail/fire plague to display His exclusive control in this area. Wind was also a heavenly phenomena, but now they experienced an unnatural wind blowing the entire day, the entire night, until the next morning when it delivered the terror of locusts destroying all vegetation remaining of the hail’s previous destruction (Exod 10:13). Finally, with the plague of darkness, God displayed control over the primary focus in heaven - the sun. Weather, the atmosphere and outer space were all shown as false deities and under the exclusive control of Israel’s God. Additionally, the plague of “darkness” had one other facet - it was palpable, perhaps to show that it was not a simple solar eclipse.

Ibn Ezra also made specific note of two plagues where no staff was used. These two also included the lesson of national distinc-tion: Exod. 8:18, “And I will distinguish on that day the land of Goshen that My people stand on it, to prevent from being there the wild beasts...” Exod. 9:4, “And God will d i s t i n g u i s h between the cattle of Israel and the cattle of Egypt, and nothing will die of the Israelites.” Why were both of these plagues designed to distinguish Egypt from Israel? I believe the answer is that by designing not just one plague - which could be viewed as a freak incident, but two plagues which d i f f e r e n t i a t e d “Egyptians” and “Jews” - the goal was to teach that God works differently than Egypt’s view of the ‘divine’. The Egyptians thought that to please their gods was man’s correct obligation, and precisely how gods

operated - a natural outgrowth of a child/par-ent relationship. How would such an infantile idea be corrected in order to teach God’s true system? By Egypt witnessing punitive measures only on their ‘side of the river’, they were awakened to a new idea: objective morality. They were held accountable. They also realized something even more essential: their relationship to their gods was one where their gods benefited from man’s actions. Egypt felt that their gods need man to serve their needs, which were projections of man’s own needs. But Judaism teaches that relating to God is not for God, but truly only for man. God does not need man. Man cannot affect God, as if God does not previously know our actions. Man must do that which is proper for himself, and if he does not, he will not only be punished, but he will lose the true good for himself. The Egyptian’s exclusive receipt of these two plagues - a system of “reward and punishment” - awoke them to a realization that service of God means not catering to a god’s needs, but rather, an alignment with proper ideals and morality. This is a drastic difference from Egypt’s primitive notion of worship and pleasing their gods.

Simultaneously, these two plagues attacked the very core of Egyptian gods; animals.

Their own animals died, and then, wild animals attacked them. It was a devastating blow to their esteemed deities. Their deification of animal gods was d e s t r o y e d . Pharaoh’s response (Exod. 8:21), “sacri-fice to your God” confirms his lowered estimation of animals, to the point that he encourages Moses to slaughter them, and to do so to his God. In other cases, Pharaoh does gesture to free the Jews, but only here in connection with the animal plagues does Pharaoh say

“sacrifice to your God.” I believe the Torah includes these words of Pharaoh to inform us that the plague had the desired effect on Pharaoh. God understands what will affect

idolatrous practice of prostrating to wooden idols. He wished to teach that the heavens do not hold any greater powers than wooden sculptures. Man’s idolatrous emotions project the same imagined authority onto both, the heaven and the trees. But the underlying message is that man does in fact ascribe greater veneration to the skies, as Maimonides taught above. It appears that based on man’s first error that God occupies space and lives in the skies, man erred again, ascribing greatness to the spheres and stars that are assumed to be “in close proximity” to God.

The primitive view of the heavens determining man’s fate, was not alien to the Egyptians. God corrected this error with one aspect of His plagues. Commanding Aaron to perform the plagues limited to the earthly realm, and Moses to perform those of the “higher”, heavenly realm, God discounted the dangerous esteem man held towards the heavens. God showed that the only difference between the heavens and Earth is the level of understanding required to comprehend their natures, as the wiser man - Moses - addressed the heavenly plagues, and Aaron addressed the earthly plagues. Laws control both realms, and both could be understood. Understanding a phenomenon removes one’s false, mystical estimations. Realizing they are ‘guided’ means they are subordinate to something greater. These realms did not “control”, but were “controlled”, teaching the Egyptians that their views were false.

The Egyptians erred by assuming that the heavens were a governing and mystical realm. God corrected this disproportionately high, heavenly grandeur. God did so in two ways: 1) by showing the heavens’ subordina-tion to a Higher will, God demoted heaven’s status from the divine to the mundane, and, 2) by aligning the plagues with Moses’ and Aaron’s participation, Egypt would under-stand that not only are the heaven’s not divine, but they are in equal realms (created and subordinate entities), just as Moses and Aaron are equally human. Additionally, Moses and Aaron each performed three miracles independently to equate heaven and earth, dispelling a false supremacy of heaven and meteorological phenomena. Hopefully, the Egyptians would comprehend that both heaven and Earth are equally under God’s control, as Jeremiah intimated, and that neither one is significantly greater. Egypt would then realize that Something higher was responsible for all creation. God wanted the good for the Egyptians. The ‘good’ means knowledge of what is true. As it says in the

I bn Ezra directs our attention to the performers of the Ten Plagues (Exod. 8:12): “Know, that by the hand of Aaron were the first

three plagues and these signs were in the lower matter as I explained earlier, because two (of them) were in water, and the third was in the dust of the earth. And the plagues performed by Moses with the staff were in the higher elements, just as his (Moses) status was higher than Aaron’s status. For example, the plague of hail and locusts were brought by the wind, and (so too) the darkness, it was in the air; also the plague of boils was through him (Moses). Only three (plagues) were without the staff; the wild animals, the disease of the animals, and the death of the firstborns. And one (plague) with no staff was through Moses, with a little connection with Aaron, and it was the plague of boils.”

Ibn Ezra grabs our attention by his first word, “Know”, which urges the reader to think into this specific commentary. He intimates that there is more here than meets the eye. What is he driving at? He does not simply list each plague with its performer, or describe the involvement of the staff. We are not interested in dry statistics when studying God’s wisdom. Here, Ibn Ezra is teaching important princi-ples. Beginning with the word “Know”, Ibn Ezra is teaching an important lesson.

Each of the Ten Plagues was used as a tool to teach Egypt and the world the following: 1) Aaron and Moses were each assigned specific plagues, in the lower and higher realms respectively, and they performed a similar number of plagues independently, 2) The staff was present in only certain miracles, 3) Moses joined with Aaron in a single plague of boils, 4) God distin-guished between Egypt and the Jews through two plagues, in which no staff was used, and which was placed in the center of the series of plagues.

In his Laws of Idolatry, 1:1, Maimonides teaches that early man already began projecting greatness onto the heavenly bodies. Man thought, since the planets, stars and spheres “minister before God”, they too are worthy of man’s honor. Eventually, man’s corrupt thinking and sin increased as he replaced simple honor of stars with his worship of them as deities, until God was no longer recognized. Star worship reveals man’s false estima-tion that the heavens deserve to be worshipped. Man feared not only the spheres, but also the heavens. Jeremiah 10:2-3 reads, “So says God, ‘To the ways of the nations do not learn, and from the signs of the heavens do not fear, because from them the nations fear. Because the statutes of the peoples are false, because a tree from the forest they cut, fashioned by an artisan with an adze.” Jeremiah teaches that man did in fact fear the heavens. But their fear stemmed from a false projection - not based in reality. Jeremiah’s lesson is insightful: he equates the fear of heavens with the

3 LettersPopular attitudes and beliefs are questioned by our readers.

5 Freedom RABBI REUVEN MANN

Rabbi Mann elaborates on the central theme of the Passover holiday.

7 The 10 Plagues RABBI MOSHE BEN-CHAIM

Ibn Ezra hints to fundamentals by distinctions in the Plagues.

11 Meaning of LifeWe explore Ramban’s words in connection with miracles, and thier vital lessons.

13 Praising GodA reader’s question on Psalm 148 offers insight into the structure of this Psalm and praises of God.

14 MatzaFrom the Torah’s unusual details and strong questions, we discover primary Passover messages.

19 Rabbi’s MessageTo arrive at Torah’s astonishing insights, our attitude towards Torah study must be demanding, dilligent and disastified with anything mediocre.

Removing the staff might effectively teach this lesson, as nothing was smitten to bring on these plagues.

I heard another explanation for the use of the staff: Although God did not need it (He needs nothing) for Moses and Aaron to initiate the plagues, it’s presence was to remove any divinity projected by Egypt onto Moses and Aaron, lest onlookers falsely believe these two mortals possessed some powers. The staff might have been employed as a redirecting agent, a pointer. By seeing the staff incorporated into the miracles, Moses’ and Aaron’s significance was diluted in Egypt’s eyes. But wouldn’t people then believe the staff to have those powers? I believe for fear of this erroneous notion, God created a miracle where the staff itself turned into a snake. This was to show that it too was under the control of God. Had there been no use of a staff, focus would have remained on the announcers of the plagues (Moses and Aaron) thereby deifying man, not God. But I feel the first possibility is most correct, i.e., that God must be viewed as the sole cause of human justice.

Why did the plague of boils require Moses and Aaron to work together? My friend Jessie Fischbein made a sharp observation. She said that just as Moses and Aaron addressed the higher and lower forms of matter in their respective plagues, the plague of boils executed by both Moses and Aaron included the higher and lower matter: ashes from Earth, and they were command-ed to be thrown towards the heavens (Exod.

9:8). Her parallel revealed another facet of the boils, as God’s plagues contain many strata of insights. I believe the boils’ combi-nation of realms was to teach that heaven and Earth do not operate in two separate, encapsulated systems. The very act of throwing ashes towards the heavens teach-es that both Earth and heaven work togeth-er. This was a necessary lesson in the reduc-tion of the heaven’s exaggerated status. By showing this further idea that the heavens participate in earthly phenomena, the heavens’ false, divine status was stripped that much further. Just as his subjects will view a king who spends time with common-ers in a less regal light, so too the heavens now lost their reputation by participating in Earthly matters. Moses could have collect-ed the ashes himself, but by working with Aaron, together, they underlined this point.

One question remains: Why are the two animal-related plagues placed in the middle of the series of the Ten Plagues? Perhaps, as these plagues specifically intended to distinguish Egypt from Israel, the evildoers from the victims, this theme of “justice” is placed smack in the middle of the set of 10 Plagues. Thereby, justice emerges as a highlighted message of all the plagues. A story or a dinner does not commence with the primary plot or the guest of honor…in both they are placed at the midway point. Here too, perhaps God placed His plagues of justice in the midway point of all the plagues, to underline the theme that all the plagues were in fact an expression of justice, not viciousness. ■

man, and so it does. The Egyptians were all the more confused when they saw that Israel was not affected, even though they did not serve animals. In Exod. 9:7, Pharaoh himself sends messengers to see if Israel was harmed. This plague of the animal’s death concerned him greatly.

God displayed His control of the complete universe: the first three plagues showed His control of the Earth, the last three over the heavens, and the middle three displayed His control over man, meaning an expres-sion of justice: only Egypt’s population was attacked by animals, only their herds were killed, and their astrologers were exposed as charlatans when they cold not remove boils from their own bodies.

Perhaps the staff is not employed in these three plagues, since these were more clearly God’s measures of justice, distinguishing Egypt from Israel as the verses state. As such, human participation through direct-ing these plagues (the staff) would suggest God does not exact justice alone. Therefore, God did not instruct Moses or Aaron to employ the staff in these three plagues. God must be viewed as the only one who determines man’s justice.

An additional reason suggests itself why these two animal plagues were bereft of the staff. Perhaps the staff carried with it some element of cause and effect; man would hit something, and only then would the plague commence. Perhaps, God wished to teach that He is in no way bound by the physical. A plague may occur with no prior cause.

RABBI MOSHE BEN-CHAIM

Apr.4BitachonReader: If Emuna comes from reason, where does Bitachon comes from? Is it an “upgrade” of Emuna?

Rabbi: “Emuna” or conviction (as in “amen” said after hearing a blessing) as you said, is based on reason. We respond “amen” (this is true) to one who blesses God for any of His various gifts. We thereby testify to our conviction in this truth of God’s kindness.

4 | WWW.MESORA.ORG/JEWISHTIMES APR. 4, 2015

We are convinced of a given point when either, it complies with with reason, we experienced it, or it is based in God’s Torah, as Maimonides taught. “Bitachon” or trust does not exclusively concern reason, for it concerns God’s word and His promises. God is not confined to how our minds work, or natural law that He controls. For example, we are “convinced” that 2+2=4, but we “trust” God’s promises, as in His rewarding our good deeds; viz., that charity enriches us, although we don’t understand how diminishing wealth actually enriches us.

One does not have bitachon about a witnessed event; one has conviction. But even though bitachon concerns God’s promises, it is not devoid of reason, since all Torah finds its basis in Revelation at Sinai, which is undisputed truth. Thus, we are convinced that Revelation occurred, and therefore we trust in all of God’s words that form part of His Torah commu-nication.

Conviction concerns intelligence and reasoned truths.

Bitachon concerns our beliefs and actual response to God’s promises.

Kabbala vs. ProphetsReader: What is the distinction between

Kabbalistic works (Zohar, Tanya, etc.) and Prophets and Writings, that you claim the former possess flaws?

Rabbi: Kabbalistic writings are not Divinely inspired, but are man-made and thus, they are subject to human error. In contrast, Prophets and Writings are God's communications through the Prophets. The tendency to deify authors of Kabbalis-tic is the source of the error, to view such

writings as infallible. Jewish communities promote Rebbe worship, or Tzaddik worship, like Christian saints. People have become overly attached to man, and are less attached to God and His words. King Solomon rejects such deification of man, “For man is not righteous in the land who performs good and does not sin (Ecclesi-astes, 7:20).” These are the words of the second wisest man to have ever lived. Yet, Jews today prefer to endorse a contrary view in order that they might feel there is an infallible rebbe or Tzaddik, to save them. Their personal desires for wealth, health, a shidduch or other needs drive them to deify flawed humans to lead them, and many times, these Rabbis rob misguided Jews, lying to them and creating the worst Chillul Hashem. Deifying authors of Kabbala by claiming their writings are without flaw is merely another expression of human worship, again violating King Solomon’s words.

It's crucial that your goal be to validate "ideas”, not the author. That's the purpose and primary function of the intellect. Intelligence distinguishes truths from falsehoods, not one author from another. This being the case, it is clear that God's will is that man distinguish truth from fallacy, and abandon human deification. And if one reads in any work, regardless of the author, that there is a piece of God in a human, he must dismiss such heresy as this violates reason, and God's words to Moses, the Prophets and Writings.

The Evil EyeReader: What do you think of the ability

for one person to harm another by using the “Evil Eye”?

Rabbi: The understanding most people

have is that the Evil Eye is some power one possesses to hurt another. But we must ask, as one is not born displaying such powers, at what point, and through what mechanism is this power acquired? What are the limitations of such power? These questions unveil this understanding to be fallacy.

The Rabbis referred to the Evil Eye as a person who will “look” (eye) viciously at others, suspect others, and cause unfair harm due to their “actions”, not mere sight. Such actions are evoked through jealousy, competition, or other infantile emotions. The Rabbis and intelligent people know there are no powers man possesses other than his muscular strength. This is why God commands us to kill a witch or warlock: as their professed abilities are false, and more so, as they obscure God as the sole power in the universe, they must be killed. But not because they possess any ability at all. The Hebrew term for witch is “mach’shay-fa”, which the Talmud teaches is an acronym for conflicting with heaven (God). Ironically, if the witch had real powers, why can she not save herself from the death penalty? How can God even say she must be put to death, if this is impossible? The same can be said of the Evil Eye practitioner. Additionally, no evidence exists for either.

On a fundamental level, God’s system of justice, or Reward and Punishment, demands that only evil people are punished. Thus, for God to have created a power where infantile people can vent their jealousy and harm innocents, Reward and Punishment would have to be rejected. But, as we know Reward and Punishment is a perfect and just system, as our brilliant founder Abraham expressed, where only man is ignorant of God’s complete control and justice, we conclude from reason and from evidence that the Evil Eye, as is understood, is a fallacy. ■

Torah (Exod. 9:16) with regards to these plagues, “...in order that they tell of My name in the whole world.”

Interestingly, the three plagues designed in the heavens were hail, locusts and darkness. Why these three? Perhaps to address three errors of the Egyptians. Egypt assumed meteorological phenomena to be divine, so God responded with a hail/fire plague to display His exclusive control in this area. Wind was also a heavenly phenomena, but now they experienced an unnatural wind blowing the entire day, the entire night, until the next morning when it delivered the terror of locusts destroying all vegetation remaining of the hail’s previous destruction (Exod 10:13). Finally, with the plague of darkness, God displayed control over the primary focus in heaven - the sun. Weather, the atmosphere and outer space were all shown as false deities and under the exclusive control of Israel’s God. Additionally, the plague of “darkness” had one other facet - it was palpable, perhaps to show that it was not a simple solar eclipse.

Ibn Ezra also made specific note of two plagues where no staff was used. These two also included the lesson of national distinc-tion: Exod. 8:18, “And I will distinguish on that day the land of Goshen that My people stand on it, to prevent from being there the wild beasts...” Exod. 9:4, “And God will d i s t i n g u i s h between the cattle of Israel and the cattle of Egypt, and nothing will die of the Israelites.” Why were both of these plagues designed to distinguish Egypt from Israel? I believe the answer is that by designing not just one plague - which could be viewed as a freak incident, but two plagues which d i f f e r e n t i a t e d “Egyptians” and “Jews” - the goal was to teach that God works differently than Egypt’s view of the ‘divine’. The Egyptians thought that to please their gods was man’s correct obligation, and precisely how gods

operated - a natural outgrowth of a child/par-ent relationship. How would such an infantile idea be corrected in order to teach God’s true system? By Egypt witnessing punitive measures only on their ‘side of the river’, they were awakened to a new idea: objective morality. They were held accountable. They also realized something even more essential: their relationship to their gods was one where their gods benefited from man’s actions. Egypt felt that their gods need man to serve their needs, which were projections of man’s own needs. But Judaism teaches that relating to God is not for God, but truly only for man. God does not need man. Man cannot affect God, as if God does not previously know our actions. Man must do that which is proper for himself, and if he does not, he will not only be punished, but he will lose the true good for himself. The Egyptian’s exclusive receipt of these two plagues - a system of “reward and punishment” - awoke them to a realization that service of God means not catering to a god’s needs, but rather, an alignment with proper ideals and morality. This is a drastic difference from Egypt’s primitive notion of worship and pleasing their gods.

Simultaneously, these two plagues attacked the very core of Egyptian gods; animals.

Their own animals died, and then, wild animals attacked them. It was a devastating blow to their esteemed deities. Their deification of animal gods was d e s t r o y e d . Pharaoh’s response (Exod. 8:21), “sacri-fice to your God” confirms his lowered estimation of animals, to the point that he encourages Moses to slaughter them, and to do so to his God. In other cases, Pharaoh does gesture to free the Jews, but only here in connection with the animal plagues does Pharaoh say

“sacrifice to your God.” I believe the Torah includes these words of Pharaoh to inform us that the plague had the desired effect on Pharaoh. God understands what will affect

idolatrous practice of prostrating to wooden idols. He wished to teach that the heavens do not hold any greater powers than wooden sculptures. Man’s idolatrous emotions project the same imagined authority onto both, the heaven and the trees. But the underlying message is that man does in fact ascribe greater veneration to the skies, as Maimonides taught above. It appears that based on man’s first error that God occupies space and lives in the skies, man erred again, ascribing greatness to the spheres and stars that are assumed to be “in close proximity” to God.

The primitive view of the heavens determining man’s fate, was not alien to the Egyptians. God corrected this error with one aspect of His plagues. Commanding Aaron to perform the plagues limited to the earthly realm, and Moses to perform those of the “higher”, heavenly realm, God discounted the dangerous esteem man held towards the heavens. God showed that the only difference between the heavens and Earth is the level of understanding required to comprehend their natures, as the wiser man - Moses - addressed the heavenly plagues, and Aaron addressed the earthly plagues. Laws control both realms, and both could be understood. Understanding a phenomenon removes one’s false, mystical estimations. Realizing they are ‘guided’ means they are subordinate to something greater. These realms did not “control”, but were “controlled”, teaching the Egyptians that their views were false.

The Egyptians erred by assuming that the heavens were a governing and mystical realm. God corrected this disproportionately high, heavenly grandeur. God did so in two ways: 1) by showing the heavens’ subordina-tion to a Higher will, God demoted heaven’s status from the divine to the mundane, and, 2) by aligning the plagues with Moses’ and Aaron’s participation, Egypt would under-stand that not only are the heaven’s not divine, but they are in equal realms (created and subordinate entities), just as Moses and Aaron are equally human. Additionally, Moses and Aaron each performed three miracles independently to equate heaven and earth, dispelling a false supremacy of heaven and meteorological phenomena. Hopefully, the Egyptians would comprehend that both heaven and Earth are equally under God’s control, as Jeremiah intimated, and that neither one is significantly greater. Egypt would then realize that Something higher was responsible for all creation. God wanted the good for the Egyptians. The ‘good’ means knowledge of what is true. As it says in the

I bn Ezra directs our attention to the performers of the Ten Plagues (Exod. 8:12): “Know, that by the hand of Aaron were the first

three plagues and these signs were in the lower matter as I explained earlier, because two (of them) were in water, and the third was in the dust of the earth. And the plagues performed by Moses with the staff were in the higher elements, just as his (Moses) status was higher than Aaron’s status. For example, the plague of hail and locusts were brought by the wind, and (so too) the darkness, it was in the air; also the plague of boils was through him (Moses). Only three (plagues) were without the staff; the wild animals, the disease of the animals, and the death of the firstborns. And one (plague) with no staff was through Moses, with a little connection with Aaron, and it was the plague of boils.”

Ibn Ezra grabs our attention by his first word, “Know”, which urges the reader to think into this specific commentary. He intimates that there is more here than meets the eye. What is he driving at? He does not simply list each plague with its performer, or describe the involvement of the staff. We are not interested in dry statistics when studying God’s wisdom. Here, Ibn Ezra is teaching important princi-ples. Beginning with the word “Know”, Ibn Ezra is teaching an important lesson.

Each of the Ten Plagues was used as a tool to teach Egypt and the world the following: 1) Aaron and Moses were each assigned specific plagues, in the lower and higher realms respectively, and they performed a similar number of plagues independently, 2) The staff was present in only certain miracles, 3) Moses joined with Aaron in a single plague of boils, 4) God distin-guished between Egypt and the Jews through two plagues, in which no staff was used, and which was placed in the center of the series of plagues.

In his Laws of Idolatry, 1:1, Maimonides teaches that early man already began projecting greatness onto the heavenly bodies. Man thought, since the planets, stars and spheres “minister before God”, they too are worthy of man’s honor. Eventually, man’s corrupt thinking and sin increased as he replaced simple honor of stars with his worship of them as deities, until God was no longer recognized. Star worship reveals man’s false estima-tion that the heavens deserve to be worshipped. Man feared not only the spheres, but also the heavens. Jeremiah 10:2-3 reads, “So says God, ‘To the ways of the nations do not learn, and from the signs of the heavens do not fear, because from them the nations fear. Because the statutes of the peoples are false, because a tree from the forest they cut, fashioned by an artisan with an adze.” Jeremiah teaches that man did in fact fear the heavens. But their fear stemmed from a false projection - not based in reality. Jeremiah’s lesson is insightful: he equates the fear of heavens with the

Removing the staff might effectively teach this lesson, as nothing was smitten to bring on these plagues.

I heard another explanation for the use of the staff: Although God did not need it (He needs nothing) for Moses and Aaron to initiate the plagues, it’s presence was to remove any divinity projected by Egypt onto Moses and Aaron, lest onlookers falsely believe these two mortals possessed some powers. The staff might have been employed as a redirecting agent, a pointer. By seeing the staff incorporated into the miracles, Moses’ and Aaron’s significance was diluted in Egypt’s eyes. But wouldn’t people then believe the staff to have those powers? I believe for fear of this erroneous notion, God created a miracle where the staff itself turned into a snake. This was to show that it too was under the control of God. Had there been no use of a staff, focus would have remained on the announcers of the plagues (Moses and Aaron) thereby deifying man, not God. But I feel the first possibility is most correct, i.e., that God must be viewed as the sole cause of human justice.

Why did the plague of boils require Moses and Aaron to work together? My friend Jessie Fischbein made a sharp observation. She said that just as Moses and Aaron addressed the higher and lower forms of matter in their respective plagues, the plague of boils executed by both Moses and Aaron included the higher and lower matter: ashes from Earth, and they were command-ed to be thrown towards the heavens (Exod.

9:8). Her parallel revealed another facet of the boils, as God’s plagues contain many strata of insights. I believe the boils’ combi-nation of realms was to teach that heaven and Earth do not operate in two separate, encapsulated systems. The very act of throwing ashes towards the heavens teach-es that both Earth and heaven work togeth-er. This was a necessary lesson in the reduc-tion of the heaven’s exaggerated status. By showing this further idea that the heavens participate in earthly phenomena, the heavens’ false, divine status was stripped that much further. Just as his subjects will view a king who spends time with common-ers in a less regal light, so too the heavens now lost their reputation by participating in Earthly matters. Moses could have collect-ed the ashes himself, but by working with Aaron, together, they underlined this point.

One question remains: Why are the two animal-related plagues placed in the middle of the series of the Ten Plagues? Perhaps, as these plagues specifically intended to distinguish Egypt from Israel, the evildoers from the victims, this theme of “justice” is placed smack in the middle of the set of 10 Plagues. Thereby, justice emerges as a highlighted message of all the plagues. A story or a dinner does not commence with the primary plot or the guest of honor…in both they are placed at the midway point. Here too, perhaps God placed His plagues of justice in the midway point of all the plagues, to underline the theme that all the plagues were in fact an expression of justice, not viciousness. ■

man, and so it does. The Egyptians were all the more confused when they saw that Israel was not affected, even though they did not serve animals. In Exod. 9:7, Pharaoh himself sends messengers to see if Israel was harmed. This plague of the animal’s death concerned him greatly.

God displayed His control of the complete universe: the first three plagues showed His control of the Earth, the last three over the heavens, and the middle three displayed His control over man, meaning an expres-sion of justice: only Egypt’s population was attacked by animals, only their herds were killed, and their astrologers were exposed as charlatans when they cold not remove boils from their own bodies.

Perhaps the staff is not employed in these three plagues, since these were more clearly God’s measures of justice, distinguishing Egypt from Israel as the verses state. As such, human participation through direct-ing these plagues (the staff) would suggest God does not exact justice alone. Therefore, God did not instruct Moses or Aaron to employ the staff in these three plagues. God must be viewed as the only one who determines man’s justice.

An additional reason suggests itself why these two animal plagues were bereft of the staff. Perhaps the staff carried with it some element of cause and effect; man would hit something, and only then would the plague commence. Perhaps, God wished to teach that He is in no way bound by the physical. A plague may occur with no prior cause.

LETTERS

WWW.MESORA.ORG/JEWISHTIMES APR. 4, 2015 | 5

Torah (Exod. 9:16) with regards to these plagues, “...in order that they tell of My name in the whole world.”

Interestingly, the three plagues designed in the heavens were hail, locusts and darkness. Why these three? Perhaps to address three errors of the Egyptians. Egypt assumed meteorological phenomena to be divine, so God responded with a hail/fire plague to display His exclusive control in this area. Wind was also a heavenly phenomena, but now they experienced an unnatural wind blowing the entire day, the entire night, until the next morning when it delivered the terror of locusts destroying all vegetation remaining of the hail’s previous destruction (Exod 10:13). Finally, with the plague of darkness, God displayed control over the primary focus in heaven - the sun. Weather, the atmosphere and outer space were all shown as false deities and under the exclusive control of Israel’s God. Additionally, the plague of “darkness” had one other facet - it was palpable, perhaps to show that it was not a simple solar eclipse.

Ibn Ezra also made specific note of two plagues where no staff was used. These two also included the lesson of national distinc-tion: Exod. 8:18, “And I will distinguish on that day the land of Goshen that My people stand on it, to prevent from being there the wild beasts...” Exod. 9:4, “And God will d i s t i n g u i s h between the cattle of Israel and the cattle of Egypt, and nothing will die of the Israelites.” Why were both of these plagues designed to distinguish Egypt from Israel? I believe the answer is that by designing not just one plague - which could be viewed as a freak incident, but two plagues which d i f f e r e n t i a t e d “Egyptians” and “Jews” - the goal was to teach that God works differently than Egypt’s view of the ‘divine’. The Egyptians thought that to please their gods was man’s correct obligation, and precisely how gods

operated - a natural outgrowth of a child/par-ent relationship. How would such an infantile idea be corrected in order to teach God’s true system? By Egypt witnessing punitive measures only on their ‘side of the river’, they were awakened to a new idea: objective morality. They were held accountable. They also realized something even more essential: their relationship to their gods was one where their gods benefited from man’s actions. Egypt felt that their gods need man to serve their needs, which were projections of man’s own needs. But Judaism teaches that relating to God is not for God, but truly only for man. God does not need man. Man cannot affect God, as if God does not previously know our actions. Man must do that which is proper for himself, and if he does not, he will not only be punished, but he will lose the true good for himself. The Egyptian’s exclusive receipt of these two plagues - a system of “reward and punishment” - awoke them to a realization that service of God means not catering to a god’s needs, but rather, an alignment with proper ideals and morality. This is a drastic difference from Egypt’s primitive notion of worship and pleasing their gods.

Simultaneously, these two plagues attacked the very core of Egyptian gods; animals.

Their own animals died, and then, wild animals attacked them. It was a devastating blow to their esteemed deities. Their deification of animal gods was d e s t r o y e d . Pharaoh’s response (Exod. 8:21), “sacri-fice to your God” confirms his lowered estimation of animals, to the point that he encourages Moses to slaughter them, and to do so to his God. In other cases, Pharaoh does gesture to free the Jews, but only here in connection with the animal plagues does Pharaoh say

“sacrifice to your God.” I believe the Torah includes these words of Pharaoh to inform us that the plague had the desired effect on Pharaoh. God understands what will affect

idolatrous practice of prostrating to wooden idols. He wished to teach that the heavens do not hold any greater powers than wooden sculptures. Man’s idolatrous emotions project the same imagined authority onto both, the heaven and the trees. But the underlying message is that man does in fact ascribe greater veneration to the skies, as Maimonides taught above. It appears that based on man’s first error that God occupies space and lives in the skies, man erred again, ascribing greatness to the spheres and stars that are assumed to be “in close proximity” to God.

The primitive view of the heavens determining man’s fate, was not alien to the Egyptians. God corrected this error with one aspect of His plagues. Commanding Aaron to perform the plagues limited to the earthly realm, and Moses to perform those of the “higher”, heavenly realm, God discounted the dangerous esteem man held towards the heavens. God showed that the only difference between the heavens and Earth is the level of understanding required to comprehend their natures, as the wiser man - Moses - addressed the heavenly plagues, and Aaron addressed the earthly plagues. Laws control both realms, and both could be understood. Understanding a phenomenon removes one’s false, mystical estimations. Realizing they are ‘guided’ means they are subordinate to something greater. These realms did not “control”, but were “controlled”, teaching the Egyptians that their views were false.

The Egyptians erred by assuming that the heavens were a governing and mystical realm. God corrected this disproportionately high, heavenly grandeur. God did so in two ways: 1) by showing the heavens’ subordina-tion to a Higher will, God demoted heaven’s status from the divine to the mundane, and, 2) by aligning the plagues with Moses’ and Aaron’s participation, Egypt would under-stand that not only are the heaven’s not divine, but they are in equal realms (created and subordinate entities), just as Moses and Aaron are equally human. Additionally, Moses and Aaron each performed three miracles independently to equate heaven and earth, dispelling a false supremacy of heaven and meteorological phenomena. Hopefully, the Egyptians would comprehend that both heaven and Earth are equally under God’s control, as Jeremiah intimated, and that neither one is significantly greater. Egypt would then realize that Something higher was responsible for all creation. God wanted the good for the Egyptians. The ‘good’ means knowledge of what is true. As it says in the

I bn Ezra directs our attention to the performers of the Ten Plagues (Exod. 8:12): “Know, that by the hand of Aaron were the first

three plagues and these signs were in the lower matter as I explained earlier, because two (of them) were in water, and the third was in the dust of the earth. And the plagues performed by Moses with the staff were in the higher elements, just as his (Moses) status was higher than Aaron’s status. For example, the plague of hail and locusts were brought by the wind, and (so too) the darkness, it was in the air; also the plague of boils was through him (Moses). Only three (plagues) were without the staff; the wild animals, the disease of the animals, and the death of the firstborns. And one (plague) with no staff was through Moses, with a little connection with Aaron, and it was the plague of boils.”

Ibn Ezra grabs our attention by his first word, “Know”, which urges the reader to think into this specific commentary. He intimates that there is more here than meets the eye. What is he driving at? He does not simply list each plague with its performer, or describe the involvement of the staff. We are not interested in dry statistics when studying God’s wisdom. Here, Ibn Ezra is teaching important princi-ples. Beginning with the word “Know”, Ibn Ezra is teaching an important lesson.

Each of the Ten Plagues was used as a tool to teach Egypt and the world the following: 1) Aaron and Moses were each assigned specific plagues, in the lower and higher realms respectively, and they performed a similar number of plagues independently, 2) The staff was present in only certain miracles, 3) Moses joined with Aaron in a single plague of boils, 4) God distin-guished between Egypt and the Jews through two plagues, in which no staff was used, and which was placed in the center of the series of plagues.

In his Laws of Idolatry, 1:1, Maimonides teaches that early man already began projecting greatness onto the heavenly bodies. Man thought, since the planets, stars and spheres “minister before God”, they too are worthy of man’s honor. Eventually, man’s corrupt thinking and sin increased as he replaced simple honor of stars with his worship of them as deities, until God was no longer recognized. Star worship reveals man’s false estima-tion that the heavens deserve to be worshipped. Man feared not only the spheres, but also the heavens. Jeremiah 10:2-3 reads, “So says God, ‘To the ways of the nations do not learn, and from the signs of the heavens do not fear, because from them the nations fear. Because the statutes of the peoples are false, because a tree from the forest they cut, fashioned by an artisan with an adze.” Jeremiah teaches that man did in fact fear the heavens. But their fear stemmed from a false projection - not based in reality. Jeremiah’s lesson is insightful: he equates the fear of heavens with the

events by reading selected texts, we also act out various aspects of the saga by eating symbolic foods, drinking wine, and reclining as a demonstration of freedom.

The key element in fulfilling the mitzvah of telling the story of the Exodus is questioning. The seder is geared toward children, whose curiosity should be aroused so they are motivated to ask questions. Judaism is a religion based on ideas, whose most exalted form of divine service is intensive learning.

The seder is a celebration of the holiness of questioning, offering opinions, and broaden-ing one’s understanding. That is why the seder is a social experience that should encourage all the participants, especially the youth, to express themselves.

One may ask, Why is all this sophisticated educational technique necessary? Why would it not be enough to give a brief, concise review of the basic story of the Jews’ history in Egypt and then proceed to a festive meal?

I believe the answer is that the purpose of the seder is not merely to refresh our memory of an ancient historical event. There is a very pertinent statement in the Hagga-dah (text of the seder): “In every generation, a person is obliged to view it as though he himself had experienced the slavery of Egypt

and was liberated”!The uniqueness of the Passover drama is

embodied in the first of the 10 command-ments, which proclaims, “I am the L-rd your G-d, who took you out of the land of Egypt from the house of slaves.” This is not merely a statement about history, but a command to recognize the Creator of the universe, who performed all the miracles that broke Pharaoh’s spirit and liberated us from his enslavement.

The experience of yetziat mitzrayim (exodus from Egypt) is the foundation of our obligation to accept the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven, that is, to be Jews who serve Hashem by keeping His Torah. Thus, it is not enough to merely review the Exodus as a historical event. Every one of us is obligated to view it “as though he himself was a slave in Egypt and was redeemed.”

Each Jew received his personal freedom on the night of the redemption. That redemp-tion means accepting Hashem as our G-d and committing ourselves to His Torah. On that transformative evening, we ceased being slaves to Pharaoh and became servants of Hashem. And that is the meaning of true freedom.

Shabbat shalom and chag kasher v’sameach! ■

From Slavery to True Freedom THE MESSAGE Rabbi Reuven Mann

P assover has emerged as the most popular and observed event on the Jewish religious calendar. Its significance is not restricted to Jews. Many Gentiles will conduct their own version of a seder (Passover meal) or seek to be included in a Jewish one. What is so special about this holiday and its rituals that makes it so widely celebrated?

Freedom is the basic theme of Passover. Contemporary society is obsessed with the idea that people should have the right to live as they please, without external restraints. Thus, nothing is more abhorrent than the enslavement of man. It is unfortunate that basic human freedoms are denied in numer-ous parts of the world. Many nations are governed by corrupt dictators, especially those who adhere to a harsh religious agenda. However, the internet has brought the Western idea of human dignity to all corners of the earth. It is only a matter of time until the citadels of oppression are torn down.

The basic mitzvah (commandment) of the seder is to recount what happened to our ancestors in Egypt a few thousand years ago. The narration incorporates the enslavement, oppression, and subsequent liberation of the Jews. We tell the story using “multimedia.” In addition to verbally recounting the major

PASSOVER

Removing the staff might effectively teach this lesson, as nothing was smitten to bring on these plagues.

I heard another explanation for the use of the staff: Although God did not need it (He needs nothing) for Moses and Aaron to initiate the plagues, it’s presence was to remove any divinity projected by Egypt onto Moses and Aaron, lest onlookers falsely believe these two mortals possessed some powers. The staff might have been employed as a redirecting agent, a pointer. By seeing the staff incorporated into the miracles, Moses’ and Aaron’s significance was diluted in Egypt’s eyes. But wouldn’t people then believe the staff to have those powers? I believe for fear of this erroneous notion, God created a miracle where the staff itself turned into a snake. This was to show that it too was under the control of God. Had there been no use of a staff, focus would have remained on the announcers of the plagues (Moses and Aaron) thereby deifying man, not God. But I feel the first possibility is most correct, i.e., that God must be viewed as the sole cause of human justice.

Why did the plague of boils require Moses and Aaron to work together? My friend Jessie Fischbein made a sharp observation. She said that just as Moses and Aaron addressed the higher and lower forms of matter in their respective plagues, the plague of boils executed by both Moses and Aaron included the higher and lower matter: ashes from Earth, and they were command-ed to be thrown towards the heavens (Exod.

9:8). Her parallel revealed another facet of the boils, as God’s plagues contain many strata of insights. I believe the boils’ combi-nation of realms was to teach that heaven and Earth do not operate in two separate, encapsulated systems. The very act of throwing ashes towards the heavens teach-es that both Earth and heaven work togeth-er. This was a necessary lesson in the reduc-tion of the heaven’s exaggerated status. By showing this further idea that the heavens participate in earthly phenomena, the heavens’ false, divine status was stripped that much further. Just as his subjects will view a king who spends time with common-ers in a less regal light, so too the heavens now lost their reputation by participating in Earthly matters. Moses could have collect-ed the ashes himself, but by working with Aaron, together, they underlined this point.

One question remains: Why are the two animal-related plagues placed in the middle of the series of the Ten Plagues? Perhaps, as these plagues specifically intended to distinguish Egypt from Israel, the evildoers from the victims, this theme of “justice” is placed smack in the middle of the set of 10 Plagues. Thereby, justice emerges as a highlighted message of all the plagues. A story or a dinner does not commence with the primary plot or the guest of honor…in both they are placed at the midway point. Here too, perhaps God placed His plagues of justice in the midway point of all the plagues, to underline the theme that all the plagues were in fact an expression of justice, not viciousness. ■

man, and so it does. The Egyptians were all the more confused when they saw that Israel was not affected, even though they did not serve animals. In Exod. 9:7, Pharaoh himself sends messengers to see if Israel was harmed. This plague of the animal’s death concerned him greatly.

God displayed His control of the complete universe: the first three plagues showed His control of the Earth, the last three over the heavens, and the middle three displayed His control over man, meaning an expres-sion of justice: only Egypt’s population was attacked by animals, only their herds were killed, and their astrologers were exposed as charlatans when they cold not remove boils from their own bodies.

Perhaps the staff is not employed in these three plagues, since these were more clearly God’s measures of justice, distinguishing Egypt from Israel as the verses state. As such, human participation through direct-ing these plagues (the staff) would suggest God does not exact justice alone. Therefore, God did not instruct Moses or Aaron to employ the staff in these three plagues. God must be viewed as the only one who determines man’s justice.

An additional reason suggests itself why these two animal plagues were bereft of the staff. Perhaps the staff carried with it some element of cause and effect; man would hit something, and only then would the plague commence. Perhaps, God wished to teach that He is in no way bound by the physical. A plague may occur with no prior cause.

Torah (Exod. 9:16) with regards to these plagues, “...in order that they tell of My name in the whole world.”

Interestingly, the three plagues designed in the heavens were hail, locusts and darkness. Why these three? Perhaps to address three errors of the Egyptians. Egypt assumed meteorological phenomena to be divine, so God responded with a hail/fire plague to display His exclusive control in this area. Wind was also a heavenly phenomena, but now they experienced an unnatural wind blowing the entire day, the entire night, until the next morning when it delivered the terror of locusts destroying all vegetation remaining of the hail’s previous destruction (Exod 10:13). Finally, with the plague of darkness, God displayed control over the primary focus in heaven - the sun. Weather, the atmosphere and outer space were all shown as false deities and under the exclusive control of Israel’s God. Additionally, the plague of “darkness” had one other facet - it was palpable, perhaps to show that it was not a simple solar eclipse.

Ibn Ezra also made specific note of two plagues where no staff was used. These two also included the lesson of national distinc-tion: Exod. 8:18, “And I will distinguish on that day the land of Goshen that My people stand on it, to prevent from being there the wild beasts...” Exod. 9:4, “And God will d i s t i n g u i s h between the cattle of Israel and the cattle of Egypt, and nothing will die of the Israelites.” Why were both of these plagues designed to distinguish Egypt from Israel? I believe the answer is that by designing not just one plague - which could be viewed as a freak incident, but two plagues which d i f f e r e n t i a t e d “Egyptians” and “Jews” - the goal was to teach that God works differently than Egypt’s view of the ‘divine’. The Egyptians thought that to please their gods was man’s correct obligation, and precisely how gods

operated - a natural outgrowth of a child/par-ent relationship. How would such an infantile idea be corrected in order to teach God’s true system? By Egypt witnessing punitive measures only on their ‘side of the river’, they were awakened to a new idea: objective morality. They were held accountable. They also realized something even more essential: their relationship to their gods was one where their gods benefited from man’s actions. Egypt felt that their gods need man to serve their needs, which were projections of man’s own needs. But Judaism teaches that relating to God is not for God, but truly only for man. God does not need man. Man cannot affect God, as if God does not previously know our actions. Man must do that which is proper for himself, and if he does not, he will not only be punished, but he will lose the true good for himself. The Egyptian’s exclusive receipt of these two plagues - a system of “reward and punishment” - awoke them to a realization that service of God means not catering to a god’s needs, but rather, an alignment with proper ideals and morality. This is a drastic difference from Egypt’s primitive notion of worship and pleasing their gods.

Simultaneously, these two plagues attacked the very core of Egyptian gods; animals.

Their own animals died, and then, wild animals attacked them. It was a devastating blow to their esteemed deities. Their deification of animal gods was d e s t r o y e d . Pharaoh’s response (Exod. 8:21), “sacri-fice to your God” confirms his lowered estimation of animals, to the point that he encourages Moses to slaughter them, and to do so to his God. In other cases, Pharaoh does gesture to free the Jews, but only here in connection with the animal plagues does Pharaoh say

“sacrifice to your God.” I believe the Torah includes these words of Pharaoh to inform us that the plague had the desired effect on Pharaoh. God understands what will affect

idolatrous practice of prostrating to wooden idols. He wished to teach that the heavens do not hold any greater powers than wooden sculptures. Man’s idolatrous emotions project the same imagined authority onto both, the heaven and the trees. But the underlying message is that man does in fact ascribe greater veneration to the skies, as Maimonides taught above. It appears that based on man’s first error that God occupies space and lives in the skies, man erred again, ascribing greatness to the spheres and stars that are assumed to be “in close proximity” to God.

The primitive view of the heavens determining man’s fate, was not alien to the Egyptians. God corrected this error with one aspect of His plagues. Commanding Aaron to perform the plagues limited to the earthly realm, and Moses to perform those of the “higher”, heavenly realm, God discounted the dangerous esteem man held towards the heavens. God showed that the only difference between the heavens and Earth is the level of understanding required to comprehend their natures, as the wiser man - Moses - addressed the heavenly plagues, and Aaron addressed the earthly plagues. Laws control both realms, and both could be understood. Understanding a phenomenon removes one’s false, mystical estimations. Realizing they are ‘guided’ means they are subordinate to something greater. These realms did not “control”, but were “controlled”, teaching the Egyptians that their views were false.

The Egyptians erred by assuming that the heavens were a governing and mystical realm. God corrected this disproportionately high, heavenly grandeur. God did so in two ways: 1) by showing the heavens’ subordina-tion to a Higher will, God demoted heaven’s status from the divine to the mundane, and, 2) by aligning the plagues with Moses’ and Aaron’s participation, Egypt would under-stand that not only are the heaven’s not divine, but they are in equal realms (created and subordinate entities), just as Moses and Aaron are equally human. Additionally, Moses and Aaron each performed three miracles independently to equate heaven and earth, dispelling a false supremacy of heaven and meteorological phenomena. Hopefully, the Egyptians would comprehend that both heaven and Earth are equally under God’s control, as Jeremiah intimated, and that neither one is significantly greater. Egypt would then realize that Something higher was responsible for all creation. God wanted the good for the Egyptians. The ‘good’ means knowledge of what is true. As it says in the

6 | WWW.MESORA.ORG/JEWISHTIMES APR. 4, 2015

I bn Ezra directs our attention to the performers of the Ten Plagues (Exod. 8:12): “Know, that by the hand of Aaron were the first

three plagues and these signs were in the lower matter as I explained earlier, because two (of them) were in water, and the third was in the dust of the earth. And the plagues performed by Moses with the staff were in the higher elements, just as his (Moses) status was higher than Aaron’s status. For example, the plague of hail and locusts were brought by the wind, and (so too) the darkness, it was in the air; also the plague of boils was through him (Moses). Only three (plagues) were without the staff; the wild animals, the disease of the animals, and the death of the firstborns. And one (plague) with no staff was through Moses, with a little connection with Aaron, and it was the plague of boils.”

Ibn Ezra grabs our attention by his first word, “Know”, which urges the reader to think into this specific commentary. He intimates that there is more here than meets the eye. What is he driving at? He does not simply list each plague with its performer, or describe the involvement of the staff. We are not interested in dry statistics when studying God’s wisdom. Here, Ibn Ezra is teaching important princi-ples. Beginning with the word “Know”, Ibn Ezra is teaching an important lesson.

Each of the Ten Plagues was used as a tool to teach Egypt and the world the following: 1) Aaron and Moses were each assigned specific plagues, in the lower and higher realms respectively, and they performed a similar number of plagues independently, 2) The staff was present in only certain miracles, 3) Moses joined with Aaron in a single plague of boils, 4) God distin-guished between Egypt and the Jews through two plagues, in which no staff was used, and which was placed in the center of the series of plagues.

In his Laws of Idolatry, 1:1, Maimonides teaches that early man already began projecting greatness onto the heavenly bodies. Man thought, since the planets, stars and spheres “minister before God”, they too are worthy of man’s honor. Eventually, man’s corrupt thinking and sin increased as he replaced simple honor of stars with his worship of them as deities, until God was no longer recognized. Star worship reveals man’s false estima-tion that the heavens deserve to be worshipped. Man feared not only the spheres, but also the heavens. Jeremiah 10:2-3 reads, “So says God, ‘To the ways of the nations do not learn, and from the signs of the heavens do not fear, because from them the nations fear. Because the statutes of the peoples are false, because a tree from the forest they cut, fashioned by an artisan with an adze.” Jeremiah teaches that man did in fact fear the heavens. But their fear stemmed from a false projection - not based in reality. Jeremiah’s lesson is insightful: he equates the fear of heavens with the

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Removing the staff might effectively teach this lesson, as nothing was smitten to bring on these plagues.

I heard another explanation for the use of the staff: Although God did not need it (He needs nothing) for Moses and Aaron to initiate the plagues, it’s presence was to remove any divinity projected by Egypt onto Moses and Aaron, lest onlookers falsely believe these two mortals possessed some powers. The staff might have been employed as a redirecting agent, a pointer. By seeing the staff incorporated into the miracles, Moses’ and Aaron’s significance was diluted in Egypt’s eyes. But wouldn’t people then believe the staff to have those powers? I believe for fear of this erroneous notion, God created a miracle where the staff itself turned into a snake. This was to show that it too was under the control of God. Had there been no use of a staff, focus would have remained on the announcers of the plagues (Moses and Aaron) thereby deifying man, not God. But I feel the first possibility is most correct, i.e., that God must be viewed as the sole cause of human justice.

Why did the plague of boils require Moses and Aaron to work together? My friend Jessie Fischbein made a sharp observation. She said that just as Moses and Aaron addressed the higher and lower forms of matter in their respective plagues, the plague of boils executed by both Moses and Aaron included the higher and lower matter: ashes from Earth, and they were command-ed to be thrown towards the heavens (Exod.

9:8). Her parallel revealed another facet of the boils, as God’s plagues contain many strata of insights. I believe the boils’ combi-nation of realms was to teach that heaven and Earth do not operate in two separate, encapsulated systems. The very act of throwing ashes towards the heavens teach-es that both Earth and heaven work togeth-er. This was a necessary lesson in the reduc-tion of the heaven’s exaggerated status. By showing this further idea that the heavens participate in earthly phenomena, the heavens’ false, divine status was stripped that much further. Just as his subjects will view a king who spends time with common-ers in a less regal light, so too the heavens now lost their reputation by participating in Earthly matters. Moses could have collect-ed the ashes himself, but by working with Aaron, together, they underlined this point.

One question remains: Why are the two animal-related plagues placed in the middle of the series of the Ten Plagues? Perhaps, as these plagues specifically intended to distinguish Egypt from Israel, the evildoers from the victims, this theme of “justice” is placed smack in the middle of the set of 10 Plagues. Thereby, justice emerges as a highlighted message of all the plagues. A story or a dinner does not commence with the primary plot or the guest of honor…in both they are placed at the midway point. Here too, perhaps God placed His plagues of justice in the midway point of all the plagues, to underline the theme that all the plagues were in fact an expression of justice, not viciousness. ■

man, and so it does. The Egyptians were all the more confused when they saw that Israel was not affected, even though they did not serve animals. In Exod. 9:7, Pharaoh himself sends messengers to see if Israel was harmed. This plague of the animal’s death concerned him greatly.

God displayed His control of the complete universe: the first three plagues showed His control of the Earth, the last three over the heavens, and the middle three displayed His control over man, meaning an expres-sion of justice: only Egypt’s population was attacked by animals, only their herds were killed, and their astrologers were exposed as charlatans when they cold not remove boils from their own bodies.

Perhaps the staff is not employed in these three plagues, since these were more clearly God’s measures of justice, distinguishing Egypt from Israel as the verses state. As such, human participation through direct-ing these plagues (the staff) would suggest God does not exact justice alone. Therefore, God did not instruct Moses or Aaron to employ the staff in these three plagues. God must be viewed as the only one who determines man’s justice.

An additional reason suggests itself why these two animal plagues were bereft of the staff. Perhaps the staff carried with it some element of cause and effect; man would hit something, and only then would the plague commence. Perhaps, God wished to teach that He is in no way bound by the physical. A plague may occur with no prior cause.

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Torah (Exod. 9:16) with regards to these plagues, “...in order that they tell of My name in the whole world.”

Interestingly, the three plagues designed in the heavens were hail, locusts and darkness. Why these three? Perhaps to address three errors of the Egyptians. Egypt assumed meteorological phenomena to be divine, so God responded with a hail/fire plague to display His exclusive control in this area. Wind was also a heavenly phenomena, but now they experienced an unnatural wind blowing the entire day, the entire night, until the next morning when it delivered the terror of locusts destroying all vegetation remaining of the hail’s previous destruction (Exod 10:13). Finally, with the plague of darkness, God displayed control over the primary focus in heaven - the sun. Weather, the atmosphere and outer space were all shown as false deities and under the exclusive control of Israel’s God. Additionally, the plague of “darkness” had one other facet - it was palpable, perhaps to show that it was not a simple solar eclipse.

Ibn Ezra also made specific note of two plagues where no staff was used. These two also included the lesson of national distinc-tion: Exod. 8:18, “And I will distinguish on that day the land of Goshen that My people stand on it, to prevent from being there the wild beasts...” Exod. 9:4, “And God will d i s t i n g u i s h between the cattle of Israel and the cattle of Egypt, and nothing will die of the Israelites.” Why were both of these plagues designed to distinguish Egypt from Israel? I believe the answer is that by designing not just one plague - which could be viewed as a freak incident, but two plagues which d i f f e r e n t i a t e d “Egyptians” and “Jews” - the goal was to teach that God works differently than Egypt’s view of the ‘divine’. The Egyptians thought that to please their gods was man’s correct obligation, and precisely how gods

operated - a natural outgrowth of a child/par-ent relationship. How would such an infantile idea be corrected in order to teach God’s true system? By Egypt witnessing punitive measures only on their ‘side of the river’, they were awakened to a new idea: objective morality. They were held accountable. They also realized something even more essential: their relationship to their gods was one where their gods benefited from man’s actions. Egypt felt that their gods need man to serve their needs, which were projections of man’s own needs. But Judaism teaches that relating to God is not for God, but truly only for man. God does not need man. Man cannot affect God, as if God does not previously know our actions. Man must do that which is proper for himself, and if he does not, he will not only be punished, but he will lose the true good for himself. The Egyptian’s exclusive receipt of these two plagues - a system of “reward and punishment” - awoke them to a realization that service of God means not catering to a god’s needs, but rather, an alignment with proper ideals and morality. This is a drastic difference from Egypt’s primitive notion of worship and pleasing their gods.

Simultaneously, these two plagues attacked the very core of Egyptian gods; animals.

Their own animals died, and then, wild animals attacked them. It was a devastating blow to their esteemed deities. Their deification of animal gods was d e s t r o y e d . Pharaoh’s response (Exod. 8:21), “sacri-fice to your God” confirms his lowered estimation of animals, to the point that he encourages Moses to slaughter them, and to do so to his God. In other cases, Pharaoh does gesture to free the Jews, but only here in connection with the animal plagues does Pharaoh say

“sacrifice to your God.” I believe the Torah includes these words of Pharaoh to inform us that the plague had the desired effect on Pharaoh. God understands what will affect

idolatrous practice of prostrating to wooden idols. He wished to teach that the heavens do not hold any greater powers than wooden sculptures. Man’s idolatrous emotions project the same imagined authority onto both, the heaven and the trees. But the underlying message is that man does in fact ascribe greater veneration to the skies, as Maimonides taught above. It appears that based on man’s first error that God occupies space and lives in the skies, man erred again, ascribing greatness to the spheres and stars that are assumed to be “in close proximity” to God.

The primitive view of the heavens determining man’s fate, was not alien to the Egyptians. God corrected this error with one aspect of His plagues. Commanding Aaron to perform the plagues limited to the earthly realm, and Moses to perform those of the “higher”, heavenly realm, God discounted the dangerous esteem man held towards the heavens. God showed that the only difference between the heavens and Earth is the level of understanding required to comprehend their natures, as the wiser man - Moses - addressed the heavenly plagues, and Aaron addressed the earthly plagues. Laws control both realms, and both could be understood. Understanding a phenomenon removes one’s false, mystical estimations. Realizing they are ‘guided’ means they are subordinate to something greater. These realms did not “control”, but were “controlled”, teaching the Egyptians that their views were false.

The Egyptians erred by assuming that the heavens were a governing and mystical realm. God corrected this disproportionately high, heavenly grandeur. God did so in two ways: 1) by showing the heavens’ subordina-tion to a Higher will, God demoted heaven’s status from the divine to the mundane, and, 2) by aligning the plagues with Moses’ and Aaron’s participation, Egypt would under-stand that not only are the heaven’s not divine, but they are in equal realms (created and subordinate entities), just as Moses and Aaron are equally human. Additionally, Moses and Aaron each performed three miracles independently to equate heaven and earth, dispelling a false supremacy of heaven and meteorological phenomena. Hopefully, the Egyptians would comprehend that both heaven and Earth are equally under God’s control, as Jeremiah intimated, and that neither one is significantly greater. Egypt would then realize that Something higher was responsible for all creation. God wanted the good for the Egyptians. The ‘good’ means knowledge of what is true. As it says in the

I bn Ezra directs our attention to the performers of the Ten Plagues (Exod. 8:12): “Know, that by the hand of Aaron were the first

three plagues and these signs were in the lower matter as I explained earlier, because two (of them) were in water, and the third was in the dust of the earth. And the plagues performed by Moses with the staff were in the higher elements, just as his (Moses) status was higher than Aaron’s status. For example, the plague of hail and locusts were brought by the wind, and (so too) the darkness, it was in the air; also the plague of boils was through him (Moses). Only three (plagues) were without the staff; the wild animals, the disease of the animals, and the death of the firstborns. And one (plague) with no staff was through Moses, with a little connection with Aaron, and it was the plague of boils.”

Ibn Ezra grabs our attention by his first word, “Know”, which urges the reader to think into this specific commentary. He intimates that there is more here than meets the eye. What is he driving at? He does not simply list each plague with its performer, or describe the involvement of the staff. We are not interested in dry statistics when studying God’s wisdom. Here, Ibn Ezra is teaching important princi-ples. Beginning with the word “Know”, Ibn Ezra is teaching an important lesson.

Each of the Ten Plagues was used as a tool to teach Egypt and the world the following: 1) Aaron and Moses were each assigned specific plagues, in the lower and higher realms respectively, and they performed a similar number of plagues independently, 2) The staff was present in only certain miracles, 3) Moses joined with Aaron in a single plague of boils, 4) God distin-guished between Egypt and the Jews through two plagues, in which no staff was used, and which was placed in the center of the series of plagues.

In his Laws of Idolatry, 1:1, Maimonides teaches that early man already began projecting greatness onto the heavenly bodies. Man thought, since the planets, stars and spheres “minister before God”, they too are worthy of man’s honor. Eventually, man’s corrupt thinking and sin increased as he replaced simple honor of stars with his worship of them as deities, until God was no longer recognized. Star worship reveals man’s false estima-tion that the heavens deserve to be worshipped. Man feared not only the spheres, but also the heavens. Jeremiah 10:2-3 reads, “So says God, ‘To the ways of the nations do not learn, and from the signs of the heavens do not fear, because from them the nations fear. Because the statutes of the peoples are false, because a tree from the forest they cut, fashioned by an artisan with an adze.” Jeremiah teaches that man did in fact fear the heavens. But their fear stemmed from a false projection - not based in reality. Jeremiah’s lesson is insightful: he equates the fear of heavens with the

(CONT. ON PAGE 9)

Ibn Ezra: Distinctionsin the 10 Plagues REVEALING DESIGNS Rabbi Moshe Ben-Chaim

PASSOVER

Removing the staff might effectively teach this lesson, as nothing was smitten to bring on these plagues.

I heard another explanation for the use of the staff: Although God did not need it (He needs nothing) for Moses and Aaron to initiate the plagues, it’s presence was to remove any divinity projected by Egypt onto Moses and Aaron, lest onlookers falsely believe these two mortals possessed some powers. The staff might have been employed as a redirecting agent, a pointer. By seeing the staff incorporated into the miracles, Moses’ and Aaron’s significance was diluted in Egypt’s eyes. But wouldn’t people then believe the staff to have those powers? I believe for fear of this erroneous notion, God created a miracle where the staff itself turned into a snake. This was to show that it too was under the control of God. Had there been no use of a staff, focus would have remained on the announcers of the plagues (Moses and Aaron) thereby deifying man, not God. But I feel the first possibility is most correct, i.e., that God must be viewed as the sole cause of human justice.

Why did the plague of boils require Moses and Aaron to work together? My friend Jessie Fischbein made a sharp observation. She said that just as Moses and Aaron addressed the higher and lower forms of matter in their respective plagues, the plague of boils executed by both Moses and Aaron included the higher and lower matter: ashes from Earth, and they were command-ed to be thrown towards the heavens (Exod.

9:8). Her parallel revealed another facet of the boils, as God’s plagues contain many strata of insights. I believe the boils’ combi-nation of realms was to teach that heaven and Earth do not operate in two separate, encapsulated systems. The very act of throwing ashes towards the heavens teach-es that both Earth and heaven work togeth-er. This was a necessary lesson in the reduc-tion of the heaven’s exaggerated status. By showing this further idea that the heavens participate in earthly phenomena, the heavens’ false, divine status was stripped that much further. Just as his subjects will view a king who spends time with common-ers in a less regal light, so too the heavens now lost their reputation by participating in Earthly matters. Moses could have collect-ed the ashes himself, but by working with Aaron, together, they underlined this point.

One question remains: Why are the two animal-related plagues placed in the middle of the series of the Ten Plagues? Perhaps, as these plagues specifically intended to distinguish Egypt from Israel, the evildoers from the victims, this theme of “justice” is placed smack in the middle of the set of 10 Plagues. Thereby, justice emerges as a highlighted message of all the plagues. A story or a dinner does not commence with the primary plot or the guest of honor…in both they are placed at the midway point. Here