What Was Is Not What Will Be | Rabbi Haggai Lundin | Beit Midrash

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Beit Midrash

קטגוריה משנית

The Torah portion of Va’era teaches us about the first seven plagues and the Torah portion of Bo about the last three. According to one view of our Sages, the plagues began on the first day of the month of Shvat (each plague lasted an entire week) until the 14th of Nisan. The plagues of Egypt are a fundamental change in nature – from top to bottom; from the liquid blood to the soul of the firstborn. The idea of the ten plagues is that the world before the Exodus and the world after the Exodus is not the same world. What was is not what will be. The order of nature, the conceptions, the complacency – all these are shattered during the ten plagues.

The exodus to freedom from physical borders was accompanied by the collapse of the living systems of the land of constraints and limitations (a play on the word mitzrayim, the Hebrew for Egypt). The plagues undermine the basic foundation of life ("blood"); the ability to jump and skip over life's problems ("frog"); the ground under our feet ("lice"); the buffer between the space for humans and animals ("wild beasts"); the property and sense of ownership ("pestilence"); and even the air ("boils") and the sky ("hail"). In Parashat Bo, agriculture ("locusts"); the cosmos ("darkness") and human primacy ("firstborns") are beaten.

There are times in the life of the individual and nation when a complete change is unescapable. What once was, will not be again. Inevitably, the collapse is accompanied by pain, but out of the pain the people of Israel are set free. This was the case in the past and so it is today. There is growth only after the seed rots in the ground. We will soon see the salvation that will emerge from the plagues we are currently experiencing. "Like the days of your exodus from the land of Egypt, I will show [my people] wonders" (Micha 7, 15).

Have a Shabbat Shalom and a good month!

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