• This Week's Torah Portion

Parashat Bo opens with God commanding Moses to “go to Pharoah” and continue to plead for the Israelites’ freedom. Pharoah’s refusal leads the Egyptians to suffer three more plagues: locusts, darkness, and the death of the firstborn. After learning that the Israelites will finally be able to leave following the tenth plague, Moses tells them to prepare. This includes borrowing/taking gold and silver from their Egyptian neighbors. Broken by God’s power after the loss of his own son and seeing the disaster that has come upon his people and land, Pharoah and the other Egyptians urge the Israelites to leave quickly, taking their dough before it rises as well as the gold and silver from their neighbors. At midnight, Moses leads the people out of Egypt, sharing new commandments detailing how this liberation experience is meant to be annually observed in ways that mimic the Israelites’ final hours in Egypt. We continue to observe these commandments, with later adaptations and elaborations, in our Passover celebrations, including the seder. Torah is often a guide for ritual practice and moral behavior. So, what should we make of this direction from God that the Israelites “borrow, each man from his neighbor and each woman from hers, objects of silver and gold?” Perhaps the Torah is giving us a Robin Hood moment, justifying robbing the rich to sustain the poor. We could be witnessing a Biblical form of reparations, restoring some material wealth to formerly enslaved people as compensation for their suffering. Or might something else be going on here? What wisdom might this passage offer to debates in our own time about healing societies after injustice? In last week’s portion, Rashi led us to understand that the Israelites were in despair and potentially not capable of envisioning a world different from what they knew, much less acting in service of that vision. Now we find them activated-offering sacrifices, painting their doorposts with blood, and preparing to depart. In such a moment, we could imagine them hearing God’s command about taking the Egyptians’ valuables and interpreting it as a license to loot and pillage, justified in seeking revenge for their suffering or rationalizing the desire to provision themselves for an uncertain journey. But according to the text and the preponderance of traditional commentators, the Israelites do not grab what they can from the Egyptians; rather, they ask them for gold and silver. It isn’t clear what tone they use for this question, but it is meaningful that in a moment of strength, when given the opportunity to dominate a vulnerable enemy, the Israelites hold back enough to ask for what they need and accept what is given. The Israelites are only one side of the gold-and-silver equation. What might the Egyptians have been thinking about this? Nachmanides, the 13^th century Sephardi commentator, suggests that the gold and silver represented the Egyptians’ “atonement” for the damage they had inflicted on the Israelites. In this reading, the Egyptians are seeking forgiveness through their gifts, effectively saying, “We are the wicked ones. There is violence in our hands, and you merit God’s mercy.” He sees their gifts in the framework of t’shuvah (repentance), an admission of guilt and a request for pardon. The 20^th century Rabbi Harvey Fields takes this idea one step further, turning back from the actions of the Egyptians to the choices of the Israelites. He teaches that:

In requesting and accepting Egyptian ‘gifts,’ the Israelites were also expressing their readiness to forgive their oppressors. They were liberating themselves from the suffering of the past. Reparations would help build a foundation for a strong future. Forgiving their enemies did not mean forgetting the past; it meant rising above it to create new opportunities. Instead of becoming fixed in anger and resentment against those who caused them so much pain and had reduced them to poverty and slavery, the Israelites accepted the Egyptian gifts and left Egypt to fashion their future as a proud and independent people.

In the early years of the State of Israel, its leaders argued intensely about whether to accept material reparations from the German government for the crimes of the Holocaust. Menachem Begin objected fiercely, regarding it as “the ultimate abomination” to the memories of those who had been murdered. David Ben Gurion took an ultra-pragmatic position. He argued that accepting these funds was appropriate to facilitate the absorption and rehabilitation of the new immigrants arriving as refugees of Nazi atrocities. They were both right, but Ben Gurion prevailed. His willingness to ask for “the gold and silver of the Egyptians” in this way was not universally popular, but it did make a material difference in the nascent Jewish state. Without forgetting or diminishing the atrocities of the Holocaust, accepting reparations laid the groundwork for later leaders to do the hard work of reproachment, atonement, and meaningful measures of national or collective forgiveness. I wonder if there is wisdom here for addressing the vicious tangle Israelis and Palestinians are caught in. Without stooping to conversation-ending analogies to Nazis or Pharoah (which are inaccurate and unhelpful), what “gifts” could be asked for now that would allow both peoples to build dignified futures? How might the granting of those gifts liberate everyone to move forward towards freedom? These questions feel a little naive, a little dangerous, and a little exciting. I can imagine my students wrestling with them, and I want to hear what they come up with. This kind of grappling with big ideas doesn’t only belong to college students; I hope that struggling with these questions is fruitful for you too. If this feels impossible right now, remember the arc of this portion: Egypt was awash in darkness and suffering, but the deepest darkness ended and the Israelites and the Egyptians made a series of choices that moved everyone into a new reality, fulfilling Pharoah’s plea that “you (the Israelites) bring a blessing on me also” (Exodus 12:32).