Blog Post

31
Jan

Parshat Bo: We Are All Survivors

There is a verse in next week’s Torah reading that hearkens back to the plague of Darkness, one of the final three plagues mentioned in this week’s Torah portion. It says that when the Israelites left Egypt, they left חמושים which simply translated means that they left “armed”. However a well-known Midrash (part of the Oral Tradition of the Sages) cited by Rashi makes a play on the Hebrew word’s relation to the number five – חמש – and states that only a fifth of the Jewish people actually left Egypt. The other four fifths died during the three-day Plague of Darkness that we are reading about this week.

There is a big problem with this Midrash and that is the math and the fantastic numbers that are literally off the charts. Elsewhere in the Torah it states that 600,000 Jewish males left Egypt, not including children. Now if you assume that there were just as many women as men then we have 1.2 million adults. Add in another, let’s say, 800,000 kids and we are now up to 2 million people. So if this number represents just a fifth who actually departed Egypt, and four fifths died according to the Midrash, then that means that 8 million of the 10 million Israelites perished during the plague of Darkness.

Needless to say there are a lot of problems with those numbers. How exactly do you bury 8 million people who died in a three day span? Not only that, but 8 million dead would really be the biggest part of the story if you think about it. We call that a Holocaust. If the whole point of the Exodus and all its amazing miracles is to get across how great God was when He redeemed His people, well needless to say, that message is lost if the majority of His people perish in the process.

Indeed, we see this time and again in the Torah when Moshe makes this very argument to God when God is angry at the Israelites. That if He wipes out His people it is actually a desecration of His name and destroys the whole meaning and special relationship between God and His Chosen People. So how could God seemingly wipe out four fifths of the nation and still expect the glorious story of the Exodus to be celebrated?

The only conclusion is that one cannot take this Midrash literally but rather figuratively. We are going to have to dig a bit to uncover a deeper message and indeed the word, Midrash means exactly that.

There are different levels of studying Torah. The most basic one is P’shat which means just the literal or simple translation and understanding of the words and verses. But Midrash, from the word, Drash means the layered and hence symbolic meaning that is found below the surface and simple meaning. P’shat and (Mi)Drash are distinct and different ways of approaching Torah study and people often get confused when they apply the rules of one to the other. (Maimonides and others in fact says that anyone who takes all Midrash and its cousin, Aggada, literally is a fool and they in fact debase the Torah with their ignorance.)  

Taking this into account, I would suggest that the Midrash’s message is not that a huge number of Jews died during that brief plague. Instead it is foretelling that in the long, dark Galut/Exile of the Jewish people, the vast majority will not make it out. And in fact, when we look at the lengthy history of our people and all the dark plague-filled days that we endured for the greater part of the past 2,000 years, the simple fact is that much of the Jewish nation has been lost. Pogroms, forced conversions, expulsions, antisemitism, holocausts and willful assimilation have all taken their toll on our numbers over the years. 

We have been around as long as the Chinese and there are over a billion of them, yet there are just under 16 million Jews worldwide. The Plague of Darkness, with its high percentage of Jews who died in it, has become an accurate symbol of the loss of the vast majority of our people over the ages – many of those periods dark indeed.

Sound depressing? Maybe. On the other hand we cannot ignore the amazing triumphs and influence we have had on Mankind despite all these challenges and our relatively tiny numbers. But more importantly, maybe we ought to use these numbers to teach that we need to love, cherish and respect each and every Jew. That we need to realize that anyone today who identifies as a Jew has been through so many filters, difficulties and obstacles throughout their family history that could have lead to their demise and end. That anyone today who calls themselves a Jew is part of a long line of triumphs against all odds that could have just as easily – and actually most likely – would have made it that they wouldn’t be here today. As such, any Jew who has made it this far is a treasure that we need to love, nurture, help and respect.

When we consider the vast number of times throughout our long history where anyone’s particular lineage could have been cut short and gone forever, then we have to appreciate that each Jew we meet is one that has beaten huge odds. Put another way, every Jew today is like a lottery winner – a one in a million ticket holder. We know this to be true especially this week when we commemorated the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and as we await the freedom of more hostages, an ongoing event that reminds us how our enemies still wish to annihilate us. 

So the next time you get irritated by your fellow Jew because he or she is too religious, or not religious enough, or because he or she is of a different type, ilk or persuasion, keep in mind that he or she is a Survivor. Just like we have a special regard for a Holocaust survivor, every Jew today, from a historical perspective, is the same – A Survivor. 

Once we get that awareness in our bones and treat each other accordingly, then the Plague of Darkness that has afflicted us for thousands of years will cease, and only light and joy will radiate onto our people. The Plague of Darkness will be gone forever. 

Go on now, go. 
Walk out the door
Just turn around now ’cause you’re not welcome anymore…
Did you think I’d crumble?
Did you think I’d lay down and die?

Oh, no, not I
I will survive
I will survive, hey, hey
-Gloria Gaynor

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