Parshas Va'eira - Let There Be Hope

Parshas Va'eira

Let There Be Hope

By: Daniel Listhaus

וַיְדַבֵּר משֶׁה לִפְנֵי ה' לֵאמֹר הֵן בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לֹא שָׁמְעוּ אֵלַי וְאֵיךְ יִשְׁמָעֵנִי פַרְעֹה וַאֲנִי עֲרַל שְׂפָתָיִם

“Moshe spoke before Hashem saying, 'Behold, the B'nei Yisroel have not listened to me, so how will Pharaoh listen to me? And I have blocked lips!”

-Va'eria 6:12

This week's parsha continues to express the unbelievable conversations that Moshe and Hashem shared. We know that Moshe was the greatest navi (prophet) to ever live,¹ yet it is still incredibly difficult to comprehend the relationship between Moshe – a person, and Hashem. Hashem had commanded Moshe to say to the B'nei Yisroel, “I will bring you to the land about which I have raised My hand to give it to Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov; and I shall give it to you as a heritage – I am Hashem.”² However, when Moshe relayed this message to the B'nei Yisroel, the passuk (verse) testifies that they refused to listen because of shortness of breath and hard work.³

In the next passuk, Hashem commands Moshe, “Come speak to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, that he send the B'nei Yisroel from his land.”⁴ Moshe responds that, “Behold, the B'nei Yisroel have not listened to me, so how will Pharaoh listen to me? And I have blocked lips.”⁵ Rashi⁶ comments that this argument that Moshe made to Hashem, is one of ten kal v'chomeirs⁷ found throughout Tanach. The Mizrachi⁸ explains that Moshe said to Hashem as follows, “If the B'nei Yisroel won't listen to me, and what I am saying is beneficial for them [that they will be able to leave], then certainly Pharaoh will refuse to listen because the news I am relaying is bad for him.”

This kal v'chomeir is hard to understand because there is a pircha (flaw in its logic). After all, Moshe seems to have conveniently omitted an important piece of information. As mentioned earlier, when the Torah says that the B'nei Yisroel did not listen to Moshe, it describes that the reason they did not listen was because they were stressed out from their strenuous labor. If so, Moshe did not have a valid reasoning because perhaps the B'nei Yisroel only didn't listen for that reason, but for Pharaoh, to whom the excuse of working hard surely did not apply, on what basis could Moshe be so sure that Pharaoh would not listen?

The Mizrachi discusses this issue as well and answers that Moshe himself did not know the reason why the B'nei Yisroel refused to listen to him; and that when the Torah was telling us that it was indeed because of being stressful from their work, it was telling us from an omniscient point of view.⁹

Let us take a step back, though, for a minute and examine the situation. The B'nei Yisroel were slaves in Mitzrayim. They had gone through so much at this point – babies thrown into the Nile, hard work, being beaten up, Mitzrayim at that time was no vacation spot for a Jew. Yet, for some reason, when Moshe came to them with a message from Hashem that they were going to be rescued from their horrible living arrangements and be brought into their own land, the B'nei Yisroel seem to have just turned the other way. One would think that if one were a slave and someone would tell him that he would be released to freedom, that he would be jumping for joy. So, why is it that the B'nei Yisroel seemed to be indifferent about staying in Mitzrayim? Did they enjoy doing work all of the sudden?¹⁰ Why did they not listen to Moshe? The passuk says that they did not listen because they were short of breath and tired of hard work. Wouldn't that be exactly the reason why the B'nei Yisroel should listen to Moshe?

In 1965, a scientist names Martin E. P. Seligman performed an interesting experiment.¹¹ At that time, everyone knew of Ivan Pavlov's famous experiment with his dogs which demonstrated that if you ring a bell every time you bring a dog its food, then you will observe that at a later time you could ring the bell, and even without having any food present, the dog will begin to salivate. This proved the concept of conditioning. The object of Seligman's experiment was to prove a similar concept by shocking dogs. Seligman had a bunch of dogs which he harmlessly shocked while they were restrained. Then, later, he put the dog in a shuttle-box which had two sides with a low fence dividing the two compartments. They went to the side the dog was in and shocked it, expecting it to utilize its freedom and jump to the other side. However, the dog just stayed put. Seligman showed from here that there is a concept of “learned helplessness”. The restrained dogs had learned to just give up hope without exploring other options. Therefore, even when the opportunity existed for the dogs to escape pain and suffering, they refused to make any such effort.

Unfortunately, dogs are not the only ones who could be conditioned to feel helpless. People too sometimes experience times of defeat and then give up completely and do not care when a solution is offered in the future. Feeling depressed without hope for a long period of time could dangerously effect the mind to start believing that there is indeed no hope – even when the answer appears later in front of one's face.

Perhaps this was the reason that the B'nei Yisroel refused to listen to Moshe. After being in Mitzrayim for a long time going through so many hardships, evil decrees, and manual labor, the Jews felt hopeless and were unable to accept the message of freedom when it was offered to them.

Hashem, though, proceeded to bring the ten plagues on the Egyptians and clearly differentiated between them and the Jews. It was a time of Hashem showing his pure love for us. A Jew must never give up and always have hope because we understand that Hashem cares about us and watches over each of us individually. If we could condition ourselves to constantly be aware that Hashem is always here for us, and does not allow for things to happen that will effect the life and circumstances we are supposed to find ourselves in, then we could live an enhanced life with hope even in the darkest of times. If we do not condition ourselves to think along these lines, then we never truly left Mitzrayim and would still be slaves to our own psychology that when things look grim, we just accept the position we are in and remain depressed over the fact that bad situations do not change.

May Hashem help us condition ourselves to truly believe that everything is in His hands. With this mentality, there is no room for giving up hope.

1The seventh of the “Ani Maamins” which could generally be found in the siddur immediately following shacharis davening.

2Shemos 6:8

3Shemos 6:9

4Shemos 6:11

5Shemos 6:12

6Ibid

7Kal V'chomeir is a fortiori argument based on logic which essentially states that if something applies in a more “kal” situation (where there is less of a reason for it to apply), then certainly it should apply by the “chomeir” – where there is more reason for it to apply.

8Ibid

9The Mizrachi continues to ask: Still, why don't we just throw that pircha into the kal v'chomeir as well (as we do often throughout the Gemara – for example see the beginning of Gemara Kiddushin), and construct the following argument that Moshe was saying: “If B'nei Yisroel won't listen to me and it is beneficial to them, even though they are stressed from the hard work; so certainly Pharaoh won't listen to me because the news is detrimental to him, despite the fact that he is not stressed from being in slavery.” The Mizrachi then gives and answer to this question as well.

10The passuk in Shemos 3:7 says that Hashem heard the crying of B'nei Yisroel, so certainly they were unhappy in Egypt.

11Learned Helplessness, by Martin Seligman