Parshas
Va'eira
Think
Outside the Box
By:
Daniel Listhaus
וַיֹּאמֶר
ה'
אֶל
משֶׁה רְאֵה נְתַתִּיךָ אֱלֹהים
לְפַרְעֹה וְאַהֲרֹן אָחִיךָ יִהְיֶה
נְבִיאֶךָ:
אַתָּה
תְדַבֵּר אֵת כָּל אֲשֶׁר אֲצַוֶּךָּ
וְאַהֲרֹן אָחִיךָ יְדַבֵּר אֶל פַּרְעֹה
וְשִׁלַּח אֶת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל
מֵאַרְצוֹ:
וַאֲנִי
אַקְשֶׁה אֶת לֵב פַּרְעֹה וְהִרְבֵּיתִי
אֶת אֹתֹתַי וְאֶת מוֹפְתַי בְּאֶרֶץ
מִצְרָיִם:
וְלֹא
יִשְׁמַע אֲלֵכֶם פַּרְעֹה וְנָתַתִּי
אֶת יָדִי בְּמִצְרָיִם וְהוֹצֵאתִי אֶת
צִבְאֹתַי אֶת עַמִּי בְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל
מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם בִּשְׁפָטִים גְּדֹלִים:
וְיָדְעוּ
מִצְרַיִם כִּי אֲנִי ה'
בִּנְטֹתִי
אֶת יָדִי עַל מִצְרָיִם וְהוֹצֵאתִי
אֶת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל מִתּוֹכָם
“Hashem
said to Moshe, 'See, I have made you a master over Pharoah and Aharon
your brother shall
be your speaker. You shall speak everything that I shall command you,
and Aharon your brother shall speak to Pharoah, that he should send
the B'nei
Yisroel
from his land. And I shall harden Pharoah's heart and I shall
multiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt. Pharoah will
not heed you, and I shall take out My legions – My people the B'nei
Yisroel – from
the land of Egypt, with great judgments, And Egypt shall know that I
am Hashem, when I stretch out My hand over Egypt; and I shall take
the B'nei
Yisroel
out from among them.'”
-Va'eira
7:1-5
After
Pharoah not only refused to let the B'nei
Yisroel out
of Mitzrayim,
but even made them work harder than before, Hashem reconvened with
Moshe to inform him how things would progress. Hashem told Moshe that
He would harden Pharoah's heart and bring many signs and wonders into
the world for all to see. Indeed, time after time, no matter what
Moshe and Aharon did to try to convince Pharoah to send out the B'nei
Yisroel,
he stubbornly refused to listen. First, Moshe and Aharon approached
Pharoah, and Aharon threw down his staff and it became a serpent. The
Medrash1
describes that Pharoah was completely unmoved by this performance. He
mocked them and called over four and five year old children to copy
the same trick and throw staffs down and turn them into snakes. He
then called over his wife who was able to do the same. Then he called
in his master magicians to finish his presentation, demonstrating
that Moshe's “convincing miracle” was merely a very simple level
of magic, of which everyone in Mitzrayim
was
capable. However, Aharon's snake then went on to do something
extraordinary. It turned back into a staff and then swallowed up all
the other staffs. Such a feat, which is impossible to even imagine,
certainly should have had the Egyptians in complete shock. Instead,
as the passuk
(verse)2
testifies, Pharoah hardened his heart and attributed the trick to
perhaps a slightly different magic, but magic nonetheless.
The
Torah3
continues and states that Hashem then commanded Moshe to go to
Pharoah and demand that he send out the B'nei
Yisroel,
or else all the water in Mitzrayim
would be turned to blood. Aharon hit the Nile River in front of
Pharoah and all his servants, and they all watched as the waters of
Mitzrayim
instantaneously
turned to blood. Yet, once again, Pharoah laughed this off and had
his sorcerers conjure the same trick. Rashi4
brings
an excerpt from the gemara5
which
relates that Pharoah's chief magicians – Yochani and Mamrei –
essentially told Moshe to stop making a fool of himself. They argued
that Moshe was coming with a ridiculous demand to free all the
slaves, while the only negotiation tools he seemed to have were
simple magic tricks that were done at children's birthday parties.
They told Moshe that just like it is pointless to import straw to the
city of Ofrayim, which is a city with an abundance of straw, so too
it is pointless to try to scare the Egyptian government with magic
when Egypt was full of master sorcerers.
The
B'eir
Ba'sadeh6
points out that here too, despite the fact that the magicians were
able to almost fully mimic what Aharon had done, there was something
unique about what Aharon did because he was able to instantaneously
change all the water into blood. This was something which really even
the proficient magicians were stumped by. Yet, they once again
attributed it to some sort of advanced or obscure magic and gave it
no second thought or significance. The gemara
continues
that Moshe responded to Yochani and Mamrei that in fact the exact
opposite of what they were saying was true, as he explained: if one
wants to sell a product he should
bring
it to the place where it is known they have an abundance of it,
because after all, that is where people from all over the world turn
to buy.
Let
us focus for a moment on the conversation between Moshe and the chief
magicians of Mitzrayim.
Moshe's
response is certainly true and is something that is easy for us to
relate to. After all, if one wants to sell something, for example,
online, one could indeed create a personal website. However, unless
there is good marketing there will be no traffic to a random site.
This is why often a much better approach would be to post the product
up for sale on E-bay or Amazon. This method will generally experience
a much higher probability of generating sales, or at least more
people viewing your product, despite the fact that these large sites
consist of many sellers who will be selling plenty of other products
which directly compete with yours.
However,
as good of advice as this may be, it is hard to understand that Moshe
would be taking his time to explain such business principles to
Pharoah's advisers. Furthermore, although Moshe's facts may be true,
how was it a good response to the challenge of the sorcerers? They
were trying to communicate to Moshe that no one will give any
significance to his “magic” in Mitzrayim
because
magic is a normal occurrence there. How did Moshe's response address
this?
The
Maharsha7
explains
that the conversation between Moshe and the sorcerers was actually
one on a slightly deeper level. The magicians challenged Moshe that
just like it was known that the magic of these sorcerers was based on
kishuf
(magic)
and pure sheker
(falseness),
so too no one would take Moshe's magic seriously because it was no
secret in Mitzrayim
that
magic was based on such sheker.
However, Moshe responded that just like in the marketplace not every
fruit or vegetable is the same; there are good tomatoes and bad
tomatoes, good bananas and bad bananas. So too, Moshe argued, if the
Egyptians' “produce” were full of kishuf
(magic)
and
sheker,
as they themselves admitted, then Moshe's “produce” was the good
produce in the proverbial market and represented something
significant – a real miracle from Hashem. The meforshim
(commentaries)
on
the medrash
explain slightly more, that Moshe told them that he specifically
wanted to perform the miracles of Hashem in the middle of Egypt
because Egypt was the world center of magic and they would be able to
tell better than anyone else that the miracles Hashem had given Moshe
and Aharon to perform were indeed a lot more than even the most
sophisticated kishuf.
This
Maharsha
definitely
answers the basic difficulties with the aforementioned gemara.
Moshe was telling the magicians the same mantra that Sy Syms, founder
of Syms Corporation,8
used to declare: “An educated consumer is our best customer”. The
Egyptians more than any other nation should have been able to
immediately realize the realness of the miracles Moshe and Aharon
performed and that they must have come from a super-natural power.
However, if so, why was it that the magicians were so stubborn? Were
they or were they not able to recognize that Moshe and Aharon's
“trick” was something much more?
A
certain public speaker and humorist once gave a presentation on what
the difference is between normal and weird. If we were to stop and
think of this for ourselves we may find this difficult to do. After
all, sometimes the lines between weird and normal get so blurred that
it becomes confusing what is actually weird and what is normal. For
example, this presenter quoted a certain famous psychologist who
said, “If there is a bag in your car and a gallon of milk in the
bag, it would be normal to say that there is a gallon of milk in your
car. But if there is a person in your car and a gallon of blood in a
person, it would be strange to conclude that there is a gallon of
blood in your car.” There is no logical reason why one should
strike us as completely normal and the other as weird other than the
fact that one we are used to and one we are not. However, as we
perhaps have experienced, it does not take much to take normal things
and make them look or sound weird. Have you ever tried to pick out a
word and say it over and over again until the word starts to look
weird and begins to sound sound sound sound sound sound sound sound
sound sound sound sound sound sound sound sound sound like gibberish?
Or have you ever tried to take a random object and start describing
it only to realize how weird it really is?
However,
it takes a bit more talent to do the reverse and turn something weird
into something normal. The reason for this is that when we experience
weird things, our brains try to come up with any justification or
explanation it could to normalize the weirdness. For example, no
matter where we are in the world we always feel like we are standing
straight on top of the world, and when we lay down we feel like we
are facing up, but imagine for a moment that when you are standing
you are glued to the side of planet Earth facing down into space and
when you are laying down you are plastered with your back against
planet Earth facing straight outwards. It is almost unimaginable and
so weird to think about it despite the fact that it is the reality!
The idea is that we as humans feel comfortable when things are locked
in “boxes” with titles where we could refer to them vaguely as
topics such as “gravity”, “magnetic forces”, or “global
warming”. These are general topics which contain both the
explainable and the unexplainable. When weird things happen in space
it is easy to say, “whatever, it's gravity”; and when weird
things happen on earth – whether it be sunny in winter, or record
cold temperatures, hurricanes, tornadoes, or tsunamis, the response
could easily be, “whatever, it's global warming”. However, our
challenge in life is to see Hashem as the borei
(Creator)
and manhig
(Director)
of
the world Who is in complete control of everything and Who created it
with an intelligent design. When weird things happen it may be
tempting to lock all the unexplainable things in a box and term it
something, however our task is to stop and ask ourselves what message
is Hashem trying to communicate?
Rashi9
writes that it is indeed the way of Hashem to bring punishments upon
sinful nations so that B'nei
Yisroel should
pay attention and fear Hashem and ultimately do teshuva
(repent).
As we look around the world today, not a day goes by where there is
not something absolutely ridiculous going on. Whether it be baseless
hatred in the world with the knockout game, or extreme changes in
weather, or senseless national and international policies, we must
keep in mind that the system of the world is such that everything
that happens is meant for B'nei
Yisroel to
learn from. Our job is to stop putting things in our various boxes,
and instead think outside the box about what it is Hashem is trying
to communicate to His people and to the world. This was precisely the
crux of the debate between Moshe and Aharon and the sorcerers of
Mitzrayim.
Moshe was telling them that because Mitzrayim
was
the center of magic, that is exactly where he wanted to be in order
to demonstrate to the professionals who should have been able to tell
right away that what they were seeing was real. Yet, Pharoah and his
stubborn team of sorcerers could not come to terms with there being a
super-natural G-d, and instead attributed the miracles as some sort
of obscure magic even though they were the masters and had never
heard or seen such things.
May
Hashem help us understand the messages He sends constantly to the
world so that we could better fear Him and prepare properly to greet
mashiach
soon.
1Shemos
Rabbah 9:5-6
2Shemos
7:12 and see Rashi
there.
3Shemos
7:14-18
4Shemos
7:22
5Menachos
85a
6Shemos
7:22
7Gemara
Menachos 85a
8A
chain of retail clothing stores, which is not out of business.
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