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Exodus 10:1-13:16
Jeremiah 46:13-28
The rabbis encouraged us: “Turn to the Torah again and again, for all is within it.” (Avot 5:22) As many times as I return to the so-familiar Exodus story, I always find something new and renewing. This year I found a stunning new teaching on the 10th plague, the smiting of the firstborn.
As we all remember, Moses instructed each Israelite household to slaughter a lamb as a Pesach offering, then to place blood from the slaughtered animal on the doorpost of the house. Then comes a most interesting instruction: “None of you shall go outside the door of your house until morning. For when God goes through to smite the Egyptians, God will see the blood on the lintel and the two doorposts, and God will pass over the door and not let the Destroyer enter and smite your home. “(Exodus 12:22-3)
I’m not sure I had ever stopped to ask myself, or the guests at my seder, why we were instructed not to leave our homes during the night, while the plague was being visited on the Egyptians. It seems all but explicit in the text that this instruction was given to protect us from physical harm. With advance warning of the terrible plague from God, we could protect ourselves and our children by staying indoors, lest the Angel of Death not be able to distinguish between Egyptians and Israelites amid the attack.
Rabbi Aharon Sh’muel Tamrat of Lithuania (1869-1931) teaches that this instruction was not intended to protect our bodies at all, but to protect our souls. He says that the reason we were instructed not to leave our homes on the night of the 10th plague was to keep us from rejoicing over the suffering of our enemies. (“If your enemy falls, do not celebrate. If he trips, let not your heart rejoice.” Proverbs 24:17) “They must not see the fall of their enemies with their own eyes, in order that the quality of vengeance, and the feeling of cruelty, not become rooted in their hearts.” (Itturei Torah, vol. 3, p. 98)
As this teaching is described in one contemporary Haggadah, “Your abstention from any participation in the vengeance upon Egypt will prevent the plague of vengeance from stirring the power of the destroyer which is in you yourselves [emphasis mine].” (“A Different Night,” by Noam Zion and David Dishon, p. 93)
For Tamrat, it was essential that we not come too close to witnessing the mortal punishment inflicted on the Egyptians, lest these images of violence shape who we would become as a people. What God wanted us to learn from our experience of enslavement was “to know the soul of the stranger,” to empathize with the downtrodden. We could not learn this lesson by rejoicing at the defeat of our enemies.
On the night of the 10th plague, we could best learn it by huddling inside our homes trembling, knowing what it is to live in fear of attack. Waiting inside our homes, praying that we and our children would be spared, we would learn to empathize with the all-too-familiar human experience of victimization, so that we could never accede to others being subjected to such treatment.
This line of thinking is at the root of the much-beloved practice of removing a drop of wine from our seder wineglasses at the recitation of each plague visited on the Egyptians. But Tamrat’s teaching suggests that the sacred duty to abstain from actions that might deepen our capacities for hate and vengefulness rather than for compassion and empathy is an obligation on which we must act regularly, not just at the seder table.
If we are enjoined not to expose ourselves directly to experiences and images that might make us more vengeful people, I wonder: Perhaps we should abstain from watching television news reports of government officials celebrating victories, while minimizing “collateral damage.” Perhaps it is even a mitzvah of sorts to interrupt conversations whose content is more likely to harden hearts than to cultivate compassion. For what we see, what we read, what we experience, can nurture our holy essence, or predispose us to future words or acts of hate.
This week, as we read of plagues and destruction, may we renew our intention to oppose the plague of violence in our lives and in our world.
Rabbi Amy Eilberg, a Conservative rabbi, is a spiritual counselor in private practice.