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HAGGADAH Variations on Maggid

An Aramean attempted to destroy my father and he went down to Egypt - How is Jacobs descent into Egypt a direct consequence of Labans evil actions? Had it not been for Labans duplicity, Jacob would have first married Rachel, and Joseph would have been the first born son of his first wife, and his favoured status would not have caused any friction. However, because Laban switched Leah for Rachel, Joseph was relegated to a secondary status, and his favouritism caused the dangerous strife with his brothers, leading to their selling him into slavery. It is Gods principle of a measure for a measure that led to their eventual parallel punishment of themselves being sent down to Egypt and their descendents made into slaves All because of Labans switch!!! And he dwelled there - How do we know that Jacob only intended his stay in Egypt to be temporary as the haggadah suggests? A good explanation offered is in the verse cited by the haggadah. It establishes that from the beginning, Jacobs sons made their stay in Egypt contingent upon a specific temporary circumstance. They needed to stay in Egypt because there was a famine in Canaan, and they had no pasture for their flocks. It was implied that when the famine ended, they would no longer need to live in Egypt, and would move back to Canaan. Few in Number - The traditional Haggadah exegesis of this line uses a later Torah source to talk about the people of Israel increasing from seventy people when they first descended to Egypt to the multitudes that left during the exodus (as numerous as the stars of heaven). Why doesnt the haggadah use the original source in exodus which just describes the move to Egypt with seventy people? One answer lies in the power of relativism; 70 people at first glance does not seem like a few in number for say, a family trip to the

HAGGADAH Variations on Maggid

cottage. However when compared to the hundreds of thousands of Jews that left Egypt, the 70 becomes few indeed. A second answer lies in the theme of unity. The Torah source for the haggadah describes seventy soul (not souls) going to Egypt. Yet when the torah describes Jacobs Brother Esaus family, for just six people it uses the term souls. Hence, when the Jewish nation began to take shape, it was called nefesh, as if it were a single person. The six members of Esaus family, however, are called nephashot, - in the plural- because they did not possess this unity. there he became a nation - The haggadah states that we understand from this line that the Jewish People became distinct in Egypt. How does it deduce this? There are two key words that the haggadah is looking at. The first word to focus on is there. Since it was just mentioned above, why repeat it? It is to stress how much more remarkable it was for the nation to develop there, within the environment of another much more powerful culture, where the temptation for assimilation would have been strong. The second word is goy or nation. This term, as opposed to Am or people carries with it a sense of sovereignty or strength. It highlights that although the Jews were slaves, they nevertheless maintained a certain positive and perceivably independent status. Great and mighty - Given that the next line talks about the Jews being numerous, what is this verse stressing? A classical explanation of these two words looks at how the Jews development was unique in a positive sense. Typically, if a people are having a high reproductive rate, the strength of each offspring is weaker. There seems to be some sort of traditional mathematical computation, that for the population expansion of the Jews, they would have needed to have sextuplets! Instead of each child being weak, however, they

HAGGADAH Variations on Maggid

were surprisingly strong and able to withstand the hardship of slavery. Thus the Torah adds the word mighty in the verse. And numerous - The haggadah explains these words with Ezekiels verse talking about plants in the field and children developing into puberty while naked and bare. Why this verse? It is a metaphor for the nature of the development of the nation of Israel during slavery. A plant, unlike an animal, actually flourishes with the trauma of being pruned back. In a similar manner, the trauma of slavery amazingly increased the strength and size of the Jews. The reference to growing up naked alludes to the harsh realities of life that the nation miraculously flourished in. Children were forced to grow up on their own, naked, without the help of their parents who were forced to work in the field. And the Egyptians did evil unto us and they made us suffer. They set upon us hard work. And the Egyptians did evil unto us evil. The proper

grammatical reading of the Hebrew is and [the Egyptians] made us On one level, Egypt made the Jewish People turn to evil The attractiveness of through the passive force of assimilation.

Egyptian society made the Jews turn away from monotheism. In a second and more sinisterly active manner, the supporting Haggadic text describes a classic method of demonizing a group: Let us deal with them wisely lest they multiply and, if we happen to be at war, they may join our enemies and fight against us. The concern of Jews rebelling is all supposition as they havent even been enslaved yet. Nevertheless, without any action on the part of the Jews, a carefully crafted logical argument turns them into an enemy of the state.

HAGGADAH Variations on Maggid

And they made us suffer - The haggadah, after describing the suffering of having taskmasters and burdens, seems to add unnecessarily the specifics of building Pithom and Raamses. One explanation offered is that the sites for these cities were specifically chosen in areas of frequent destructive earthquakes. The suffering came about from the Jews watching the futility of their work as they were forced to rebuild these cities time and time again (think of the City of Bam). Rabbi Pam explained the motives of Pharaoh with the following story in a Siberian prison camp. A prisoner sentenced to twenty five years at hard labour was chained to a heavy stone wheel which he was forced to turn day after day. Once he asked a guard what the wheel was attached to. The guard told him that is was connected to a flour mill. The prisoner was gratified - at least his back-breaking labour was productive. Thanks to him, flour was produced which would feed his hungry fellow prisoners. Upon being released at the end of his sentence, he asked to see the mill which he had operated for all of those years. The prison official looked at him incredulously. What mill? he asked. Your wheel was attached to nothing. Hearing this the prisoner was horrified. For twenty-five years, he had suffered inhumanly - to no purpose! He fell into a state from which he never recovered. And they set upon us hard work - The haggadah feels that this line is separate from the preceding line dealing with affliction. The affliction related to the malicious intent of the Egyptians while making the Jews work. This line deals with the physical degree of difficulty that the work entailed. Some commentators mention how the endlessness of the work is what made it so hard. Others speak of how the work was chosen to be particularly unsuited to each individual; the strong and uncoordinated were placed in highly

HAGGADAH Variations on Maggid

complicated work, while the nimbler but weaker people where made to carry the heaviest burdens. So we cried unto the Eternal, the God of our fathers, and the Eternal heard our voice, and He saw our affliction, and our burden, and our oppression. So we cried unto the Eternal, the God of our fathers The haggadic explanation speaks of how after a long time, first the Pharaoh died, and only then the children of Israel cried out to God bemoaning their servitude. One explanation is that until the first Pharaoh died, the Jews could cling to the hope that their suffering depended on the unlucky personality of this individual. When the next Pharaoh arose and nothing changed, it was then that they abandoned all hope and cried to God. A much more disturbing When the Pharaoh Midrash explains that the term died is used in other areas of the Torah to refer to the contracting of leprosy. developed leprosy (died), the treatment that his advisers advocated was to bathe in the blood of the Jewish children. The initial practice of throwing the first born Jews into the river, which simply cast them away, was not enough. Now the Pharaoh needed to be constantly and completely associated with their murder. By daily and endless slavery and toil, he could bathe himself in their blood and cure himself of his affliction. And the Eternal heard our voice - Like a parent for a child, God suffers when he sees his children - the Jewish people - suffering. So, the Jews had two reasons to cry out: first, they could endure their painful affliction no longer, and second, because they recognized that God was suffering because they were suffering. Their recognition of Gods own suffering was what moved them to cry out, more so than the afflictions of the Egyptians.

HAGGADAH Variations on Maggid

And He saw our affliction - This affliction was the voluntary abstinence which was practiced by the Jews. Life for Jewish children in Egypt was horrific - a life of slavery for girls, and death by drowning for the boys; out of desperation, the Jews chose to stop having children altogether. When God saw that this had happened, God inspired a change of attitude on the part of the Jews, by which they abandoned their pessimistic outlook and resumed having children. And our burden - Refers to the boys who were thrown into the Nile. Burden in this context refers to the voluntary burden that a parent assumes in raising a child. God recognized the particular anguish suffered by parents, having invested themselves with the burden of raising their sons, only to have those sons taken from them by the Egyptians. And our oppression - The Egyptians did not enslave the Jews only out a desire for cheap labour. The Egyptians also enslaved the Jews out of their hatred for the Jews as a people. They oppressed the Jews for the very purpose of intentionally making the lives of the Jewish people as miserable as possible. And the Eternal brought us forth from Egypt with a strong hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with great terror, and with signs and wonders. And the Eternal brought us forth from Egypt - not by a ministering angel, not by a fiery angel, not through a messenger, but the Holy One, Blessed is He, in His glory, Himself. This refers to the tenth plague; with the other nine However, the plagues, the Torah always mentions the role that Moses or Aaron played in the onset of that particular punishment.

HAGGADAH Variations on Maggid

Torah says that the tenth plague was caused by the destroyer, so in what sense did God act personally on the night of the tenth plague? On any other night, both Jews and Egyptians would have been expected to die from natural causes. On the night of the tenth plague, God prevented the destroyer - the angel of death - from visiting any Jews; not one Jew died, even from natural causes. In this way, the Egyptians would be forced to acknowledge that God had singled out only the Egyptian first born. With a strong hand - this is the fifth plague, the pestilence. In the time of the bible, a nation could suffer one of three calamities: a disastrous war, a famine, or a pestilence. However, the first two are not felt equally by all, as wealthy people are always the least affected in times of famine, and the king is always the most protected person in times of war. Pestilence was the only one of the three that would affect all segments of the population with relentless, absolute, equality. It is this inescapability from the ravages of disease that makes it the strong hand of God. And with an outstretched arm - this is the sword. The firstborn among the Egyptians learned in advance what the tenth plague was to be, so they demanded of Pharaoh and his advisers that the Jews be released immediately. When Pharaoh refused their request, they began a revolt, and during this uprising they killed many of their countrymen. It is this sword which God stretched over Egypt, pitting the Egyptians against each other. And with great terror - refers to the suspension of the laws of nature during the ten plagues. Such a display of miracles was necessary in order to wean the Jews away from the state of impurity and idolatry to which they had gradually descended as a result of their prolonged contact with the Egyptians. This is the main reason why

HAGGADAH Variations on Maggid

God saw fit to draw out the ordeal of the Egyptians for several months, with one unnatural plague after another. Even if one sudden, horrible blow had been enough to induce the Egyptians into freeing the Jews physically, it would not have been enough to free the Jews morally of the Egyptian culture which they had so thoroughly absorbed over the years. And with signs - this is the rod of Moses. In the Torah, a prophecy about a future event is often accompanied by a physical act, which brings the predicted occurrence from the realm of the theoretical into the world of the actual. This was the role of the rod of Moses; rather than the plagues appearing out of nowhere, the rod was the catalyst that actualized the disaster which had been predicted. And wonders - this is the blood. Most of the plagues were natural events; what made these plagues unnatural was that Moses rod was able to bring them about at the specified time, at the specified locations, and in the specified intensity. miraculous physical change. In contrast, the plague of blood was in it of itself unnatural; the waters of Egypt underwent a