שלא היה רוצה הקב”ה שיהיה פרעה בעינוי וצער לפניו
the Holy Blessed One did not want Pharaoh to suffer – Gur Aryeh Ex.10.3
Our parashat hashavua brings us to the midst of plagues and confrontations. The suffering of the Egyptian people is increasing, and for whatever reason (conspiracy theories? miracles? scientific cause and effect? the effort of the human brain to make sense of reality is perennial) the blows against the economy, agriculture and society are now being blamed on Pharaoh’s unwillingness to let go of his slaves.
For many of us, the suffering of the Egyptians, who seem to be innocent of their Pharaoh’s choices, is the most difficult thing to understand in our Torah. Seen through the lens of that ancient mindset, the fortunes of we regular people are doomed to be no more important than necessary collateral damage when kings – or gods – fight. Throughout the Levant this belief was a way of understanding why bad things could happen to good people – you just happened to be in the way. Not much has changed in human history.
It would be easy to surrender to the idea that suffering because of one’s context, not one’s own agency, is inevitable and should simply be accepted as one of the certainties of life. Certainly the Jewish mystics who see our entire universe as trapped in a cycle of gevurah, where justice too often slides into cruelty, would agree. But Rabbi Judah Loew (the Maharal of Prague, who did not create the golem of Prague even though the legend attributes it to him) sees something different, and he sees it in the opening lines of our parashah:
וַיָּבֹ֨א מֹשֶׁ֣ה וְאַהֲרֹן֮ אֶל־פַּרְעֹה֒ וַיֹּאמְר֣וּ אֵלָ֗יו כֹּֽה־אָמַ֤ר ה֙’ אֱלֹהֵ֣י הָֽעִבְרִ֔ים עַד־מָתַ֣י מֵאַ֔נְתָּ לֵעָנֹ֖ת מִפָּנָ֑י שַׁלַּ֥ח עַמִּ֖י וְיַֽעַבְדֻֽנִי
Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said to him, “Thus says ‘ה the God of the Hebrews, ‘How long will you refuse to humble yourself before Me? Let My people go that they may worship Me (Exodus 10.3)
Rabbi Loew could have interpreted this statement as Pharaonic arrogance or stupidity, or spent some time blaming HaShem for hardening Pharaoh’s heart, so that it’s not really even his fault. But for whatever reason, the Maharal (the term stands for Morenu HaRav Loew, “our teacher Rabbi Loew”) goes in an entirely different direction.
Pharaoh, for all his cruelty, is not the ultimate evil; he is not a monster, nor the dupe of a cabinet of monsters. He is a human being, misled and misinformed and mistaken in his choices, and the Maharal sees Moshe as conveying HaShem’s concern: you don’t have to suffer like this.
For the same reason, we spill wine from the cup of our joy at Pesakh, for our joy cannot be complete while Egyptians are suffering; for the same reason, we do not recite the complete Hallel, since when the angels wanted to begin singing after the Israelites were freed, HaShem stopped them with “my creations, the reflection of my Being, is dying in the Sea, and you want to sing?”
HaShem does not want us to take joy in the suffering of those who hurt us. It is pure childishness, and as the bumper sticker says, will leave the whole world blind and toothless, if we insist that others hurt because they have hurt us. This is not an easy concept for us, when we are righteously angry and full of vengeance, but hating those who hate you does not cancel out the hate. It only adds fuel to its strength.
If we are not to be changed forever by the evil expressed in our world today, we must remember that not only we, but all human beings, are created in the Divine Image. Our task is not to destroy other humans who do evil, but to destroy the evil.
The opposite of gevurah in the mystical understanding is hesed. We are out of balance in the direction of judgement; more hesed, more mercy and kindness and compassion, is all that will help to heal what’s wrong with the Pharaohs of the world, and within ourselves.
Torah for the 21st Century by Rabbi Ariel Stone 