Parshas Bo
The Rest Of The Story
By Rabbi Aron Tendler
Author's Note:
Dear Readers,
This week's Rabbi's Notebook is an imagined narrative of an Egyptian who
survived the first nine plagues. I have attempted to describe the reality
of the plagues from the perspective of the Egyptians, the victims of G-d's
wrath and awesome greatness. The description is somewhat graphic so please
read it before sharing it at the Shabbos table. It is a piece that reflects
the Medresh's statement, "My creations are drowning in the sea and you wish
to sing praise?" The uniqueness of being G-d's chosen nation is the ability
to accept and revel in the absolutes of good and evil and the inevitable
consequences that all evil must suffer, yet, at the very same time never
loose our humanity, our compassion and our ability to love.
May it be the will of G-d that we see the coming of redemption and the
demise of all evil, quickly and in our days! Good Shabbos!
Rav Aron
The darkness had lifted. Three days and nights of abject horror and fear
ended as quickly as it had begun. For a moment, a very brief moment, we
were awash with relief and gratitude. To be alive, to be able to move, to
be able to see, to embrace loved ones, to know that the worse had happened.
Somehow we had survived. I stupidly thought we were the lucky ones.
First the disgusting blood. The mighty Nile, the canals, irrigation
ditches, cisterns, and water barrels - all filled with blood. For seven
days and nights the putrid smell of blood filed the air. There was no
escape! Worse of all was the thirst. So many of the little ones and the
elderly died that week from thirst and dehydration. Only the healthy
survived that first plague.
Then came the frogs. Their ugly bloated bodies trailing pond scum and
excrement behind. Whatever they touched smelled for days. And that
incessant croaking drove us crazy! There was no escaping them or their
sound. Not in the home or out of the home. Not in the outhouses or in the
bathhouses. Nothing doing! They seemed fearless. They even jumped into
fiery furnaces, boiling water, and cooking fires. They were everywhere! And
the size of some of them! I saw some that were bigger than field rats or
house cats. What revolting little creatures! We couldn't sleep and no one
wanted to eat. Can you imagine Pharaoh's chief necromancer prophesizing
that some barbaric people called "The French" would one day cook their
slimy legs and call it a delicacy? What sort of people would eat such
disgusting creatures?
And don't forget the cleanup. It took even longer to collect their dead
carcasses and burn them than the week of the curse itself. There were so
many of them! Piles and piles of rotting bodies filled every street. I was
told that frogs overran even the small landlocked desert communities. Where
did they come from? How did they get there? The stench of decay and rot was
worse than the putrid blood! At least the smell from the desert side was a
relief from the bloody river. This time the stink of the frogs was from
everywhere!
Believe it or not, the lice were even worse! One or two in my hair and few
in the seams of my garment I can live with, but there were billions of
them! The ground seemed to be moving all the time. Not a silent carpet of
black sand. That would have been bad enough. It was worse because of the
persistent scraping sound. Did you even know that lice make noise? I don't
think I'll ever forget that sound. It was the sound of my worse nightmare!
My poor kids! They scraped their skin raw trying to get rid of them - and
to no avail! As soon as they fell down from sheer exhaustion their bodies
would again be covered. Their very scratches would fill up with those tiny
black monsters sucking and eating their blood.
Then came the real monsters, the fourth affliction! Tigers, bears, lions,
hyenas, scorpions, leopards and serpents! They were everywhere! Most of us
managed to stay indoors, but the animals and pets were sitting targets! It
was as if the jungle and desert had emptied into the streets of Pesome and
Ramsais. I'll never forget Achman, the fellow who lived down at the corner
in the big house. They had no more food and his family was starving but
Achman always prided himself on being such a great hunter. You know that he
was among the most decorated commanders of the Imperial Guard, and was
considered the finest archer in the entire army. I am told that he armed
himself with his finest weapons and stepped outside. No sooner did he open
the front door than an asp dropped onto the back of his neck and he was
dead before he hit the ground! They say that before his wife could pull him
out of the door to shut it she was dragged out by a massive leopard and
eaten right there in the street! If not for all the animals fighting each
other for a piece of that poor woman the children wouldn't have been able
to shut the door! They say that the youngest one still hasn't spoken a word
since the attack.
The fifth plague was a different kind of disaster. How many centuries of
careful research and experimentation went into breeding our famed cattle
and horses? Throughout the civilized and uncivilized world we are known to
produce the strongest, swiftest, most responsive, and yes, tastiest
livestock. Even those cursed Ivrim had a part in it. When their patriarch
Yakov arrived in Egypt he showed our top people techniques that allowed
them to even breed a desired color! Our leather is considered the best in
the world because its color and texture are natural rather than
manufactured!
Imagine, after suffering through the blood, frogs, lice, and wild animals
to awaken one morning and find whole herds of livestock dying from some yet
to be identified disease. Downtown Sukosah was in an uproar as prices
plummeted in every single market! Forget the tourist trade that has been
non-existent since the very first plague. I am now talking about the entire
economic structure of our mighty nation. It was a collapse! The domino
effect couldn't be stopped! Fortunes were lost in mere minutes with the
collapse of the cattle industry. I don't know if we will ever recover from
it!
For many it was the straw that broke the camels back, or as we now say, the
straw that first began to break Pharaoh's back! If only he had taken Moshe
up on his first offer. What would have been so bad? Three days is all he
asked for! A few days of vacation for those wretched slaves. Let them go
and worship their G-d! Was all this worth it just to keep them from
worshiping a G-d powerful enough to change nature itself! And to top it off
Pharaoh had to add insult to injury! He ignored Moshe's request to let them
pray in the desert and then also stopped supplying them with straw as well!
Boy did he blow it that time.
So many of my "rich friends" gave up. Watching their fortunes go up in
burning pyres of diseased flesh was too much. One idiot wouldn't let go of
his prized steed. The best in his stable. You know, the stallion that won
the triple crown four years running and was getting some outrageously
disgusting fee for breeding services? Well, there he was. The dead animal
stiff as a board being dragged toward the massive flames with that idiot
Lehabim hanging onto the dead animal's neck. As hard as the soldiers tried
they couldn't pull him off. His sons were begging him to let go, but he
wouldn't. Too bad, they picked up the dead horse and its owner and threw
them both into the flames! So many just gave up after they lost their
fortunes. Who knows, maybe they were the lucky ones after all.
Then came the boils. On some level, as bad as the economic collapse was, at
least the curse didn't attack us bodily. Also, there was still major wealth
in the agricultural markets that kept us going. Not well mind you. You try
running a farm without oxen and donkeys to pull the heavy equipment. We
were back in the Stone Age harnessing slaves to plows and wagons. But we
still had some hope. In time we would rebuild our herds and be back in the
saddle; however, the boils, blisters, and rashes were just too much. As bad
as the lice had been the boils were far worse. They covered us everywhere!
I myself couldn't even walk because there were open sores on the bottoms of
my feet! It's one thing trying to take care of a sick and hurting family
when you are at least nothing worse than exhausted. Try being a father and
husband when you are hurting as bad as or worse than everyone else! It was
unbearable! We tried river mud from Mesopotamia, Yang polis from Kush, and
a truly vile salve of crushed bone dust, centipede shell, and stripped-
howler-tiger monkey gland – but to no avail. Ceaseless pain, discomfort,
and physical and emotional exhaustion made us pray for death. Nothing else
mattered. Not money, not glory, not even those ill-begotten Jews. All we
wanted was for the hurting to cease.
But then the pain stopped. Seemingly miraculously, the skin began to heal
and the sun once again began to shine. We were able to return to some
semblance of normalcy. Pharaoh stood his ground and did not let the Jews go
on their three-day holiday. That proved to be another truly sad moment.
How foolish he was and how foolish we were.
Moshe called it this time. He told Pharaoh how and he told him when. He
forewarned him that it would truly be the beginning of the end. His G-d
seemed to have lost patience with us. The hail that descended defies
description. The size, the intensity, and the explosive nature of the ice.
It didn't just strike, it exploded! Fires were
burning everywhere. It was a scene from Hell. The howling winds, the
crashing ice smashing through weaker structures. The cries of help from
those unfortunate souls caught up in the conflagration of the hailstorm.
The cries of dying animals and people who had not heeded Moshe's warning
were horrible. Had we wanted to help we could have done nothing.
The fear inside our home was more than palatable. I built our home and I
built it well. The roof was reinforced with Lebanese cedar and stone
columns. Yet, I began to fear that the weight of the ice would force a
collapse. All we could do was cry out to god, any god, even the G-d of the
Jews. It seemed like it went on forever.
When it finally stopped, the silence was almost as bad. No one knew what we
would find outside our doors. As we emerged from our homes it was worse
than the ancient legend of Noah emerging from his ark. Noah at least
emerged into a clean and pure world wiped clean of the past. Our world was
still there but never to be the same. Blinking in the sunshine we looked
out upon a destroyed world. The famed gardens were no longer. Trees that
had been lovingly nurtured for hundreds of years were splintered beyond
recognition. Fires were burning everywhere and body parts were strewn
across open fields. The hail didn't just kill, it decimated! Fruit orchards
that were the acclaim of royalty everywhere our boats and caravans could
reach were no more than splinters of firewood. The economic blow was
complete. Only the soft crops remained. Yet, with hard work and time that
would have been enough to restart and rebuild. Why didn't we listen?
Two curses yet remained. I wish I could tell you that I had been smarter
than the rest. I wish I could tell you that I was gifted by the gods
because my house still stood, my spring wheat had just begun to grow, and
my family had miraculously escaped death and injury. Unfortunately, I was
not, and my turn was soon to come.
I did not believe that it could be any worse. Yet, Egypt, although badly
beaten and battered still stood. Our army was still the greatest the world
had ever seen and our culture of over 500 years had survived. Our king was
still strong and brave, and even if he could have made better past
decisions, now we needed his stubborn courage to face the future. More so
than ever before the Ivrim were necessary. As you know, he did not let the
Jews go.
The plague of the locust changed all that. In a moment the morning sky
turned dark. We all thought that a fluke late winter storm was headed our
way, until we heard the dreaded clicking of their wings. Locust were
coming, locust were coming! This was not the first time this had happened.
Us farmers knew of the dreaded locust and also knew how to fight it.
Because so many people had nothing else to do the battle against the locust
became a national effort. Everyone grabbed a torch and headed for the
fields. If we did not save the soft crops we were doomed financially. Not
only as a family but as a nation! Let me tell you. It may have been our
finest moment. All of us arrayed with our fire brands and determination. A
ragged and beaten army of millions ready to fight till the end. How valiant
we all felt, how ready we all were to die! Until the locust hit.
What can I say? To tell you that our readiness and determination was
noticed would be to suggest that the ocean cares if a dog licks from its
waters. It was as if we did not exist. The impossible quantity of locust
that descended, the absolutely deafening volume of their clicking wings,
the sheer weight of their numbers extinguished all the fires and swamped
our lines. No one could stand in their presence! So we fled! Some managed
to get inside shelter while others were literally buried alive. The locust
did not bite us or eat us. They simply buried us. Hundreds if not thousands
died that day.
Then they were gone. In a single moment, they lifted and took flight driven
as if by a wind toward the Sea of Reeds. What they left behind was nothing.
Not a blade of grass or a stalk of wheat. Anything that could have been
eaten was consumed in its entirety! I was ruined and Egypt was ruined. Yet,
that idiot Pharaoh still did not give in. I tell you he must have been
possessed by a demon. But what did I care. I had nothing left to live for
anyway. Let their G-d do what He wanted. I had
nothing left for Him to take. Or so I thought.
The nature of terror is that it cares little for possessions. Terror can
strike even the poorest of people with the same intensity that it attacks
the richest of the rich. The last three days were just that. Simple
unadulterated terror. The darkness was more than dark, it was palatable. I
could feel it on my skin. I could feel it entering my pores. I could hear
it taking possession of my children. Their cries and terror seemed only as
real as my own. I knew beyond certainty that we had all died and descended
into the deepest darkest recesses of Hades. Truly, I never thought I or we
would emerge form the clutches of that primal darkness. Demons wandered my
home opening my drawers and finding my hidden gold and silver. I could hear
them but could do nothing. Besides, why do anything, I was already dead and
what did I care if some demon tried on my finest linen robe or my wife's
gems and jewelry. First came the terror then the thirst then the hunger
then the terror. Always the terror. At first I prayed that my children
would continue to call out. At least I knew they were still with me. Then I
begged the gods that be to quiet their terrified voices and let me remain
in blessed silence.
When the darkness lifted and the terror was no longer, I knew we were
beaten. Just let them go. My wealth was gone; my two youngest had not
survived the days of darkness. My wife was nothing more than a shell of her
former self, and my beloved oldest had the haunted look of death itself.
What more could G-d take? We had nothing. Or so I thought….
Copyright © 2004 by Rabbi Aron Tendler
and Torah.org
The author is Rabbi of Shaarey Zedek Congregation, Valley Village, CA.
