Parshas Beshalach
Pharaoh's Folly
People are hard to change. It is much easier to invent great
technological innovations than to change people's minds, habits and
attitudes. And since human behavior sets the tone of world society much
more than does technological progress, very little has really changed in
the story of human civilization over the past few thousand years. War,
violence, unreasoning hatreds, moral failings, both great and small, are
all the stuff of our daily newspapers and media reporting. It seems that
little has changed in the human condition since the world of our father,
Avraham. All of the problems that he had to struggle against are
apparently still present with us in our modern era. And this truth is
brought home to us in the Torah reading of Beshalach.
One would think that after the blows and plagues that Pharaoh and the
Egyptian people sustained in the campaign of Moshe and Aharon to free the
Jewish people from Egyptian bondage, Pharaoh and the Egyptians would have
learned their lesson. They should have been happy and relieved to be rid of
the Jews and the blows and plagues associated with them. Then why do
Pharaoh and the Egyptian army pursue them into the desert and attempt to
return them to Egypt? What logic justifies such a suicidal policy? The
answer is that it is habit, stubbornness, hubris and the refusal to allow
facts and changing situations to affect one's decisions and attitudes.
Pharaoh was determined to crush the Jewish people by slavery and pain. The
Lord intervened in a clear and impressive fashion to block the plans of
Pharaoh and the Egyptians. Pharaoh and the Egyptians knew that the Lord
prevented the actualization of their plans. Nevertheless, in spite of this
clear situation, neither Pharaoh nor his people change their behavior,
alter their goal, and admit their fatal error. Because people are stubborn
and are not easily moved from their previously held opinions and plans, the
facts of the matter rarely suffice to cause a change in behavior. Hence,
Pharaoh's pursuit of Israel into the desert and his otherwise inexplicable
headlong rush towards his own destruction.
This same rule of human nature applies toward the Jewish people as well.
The Jewish people were and are notorious for being "stiff-necked." Ideas
adopted by Jews, even when disproved by the facts of history and society
are still not easily discarded in the Jewish world. God can split the Red
Sea, rain down manna from heaven every day, preserve millions of people in
a trackless desert, and there will always still be Jews who say "Let us
turn our heads around and return to Egypt." Their minds are made up and
they don't want to be discomfited by the facts of the situation. How else
to explain that there are Jews in the world still committed to the Marxist
dream, or who believe that Jewish continuity can be achieved by lowering
all standards and requirements for Jewish marriage or conversion? The ideas
of the Enlightenment, most of which have bankrupted in our time, the
bloodiest of all human centuries, are still treasured by a large section of
Jewry whose ancestors fell victim to its siren song over the last two
centuries. It is as though much of the Jewish world has learned nothing
from the events and crises that have befallen the Jewish world in this
century.
All of the prattle of Secular Humanism, of the new and better world of
discarded ritual and unnecessary tradition, of easy faith and feel-good
religions, of immediately obsolescent relevance, of hootenanny, guitar-
playing prayer services, is still promoted as effective Judaism even though
it has all contributed to a mighty destruction of the people of Israel,
both quantitatively and qualitatively. A large portion of the Jewish world
yet insists, "Let us turn our heads around and return to Egypt."
Stubbornness can be a positive trait. It is the very fact that the Jewish
people are stiff-necked that has preserved us through the long night of our
exile and difficulties. Jews did not convert nor give up their faith
because their powers of tenacity and stubbornness stood them in good stead.
But stubbornness for the sake of stubbornness is wrong and usually
purposeless. The lessons of past failures, of fallen gods and glittering
but false ideologies, should serve to instruct us and allow us to leave the
bondage of Egypt and its culture, and all of the other Egypts and their
cultures, permanently. The miracles and hand of God in history should not
be ignored because of misplaced stubbornness.
Shabat Shalom.
Rabbi Berel Wein
Text Copyright © 2004 Rabbi Berel Wein and
Torah.org.
