Parashat Bo - Imagine That

רפואה מן התור
Healing from the Torah

Parashat Va'eira
Exodus 10:1-13:16

By Rabbi Adam Ruditsky

     In the very beginning of Torah Rashi interacts with Rabbi Isaac, who said: “The Torah which is the Law book of Israel should have commenced with the verse (Exodus 12:2), ‘“This month shall be unto you the first of the months,”’ Rashi teaching that the reason why is because this is the “first commandment given to Israel.”  So here in Parashat Bo we find what Rabbi Yitz Greenberg says is the first Law “given to the entire Jewish people as a unit” right till today, a commandment the Jewish world will fulfill this year with our initial Seders on March 27, 2021.  We read here in this parsha not only about the conclusion of the plagues but also the deliverance of those Jews who experienced the cruelty and slavery of Egypt. This past Shabbat my Rabbi and teacher, Rabbi Ed Feinstein of Valley Beth Shalom here in Los Angeles, was reflecting on Exodus 6:6 that says, אֲנִי יְהוָה, וְהוֹצֵאתִי אֶתְכֶם מִתַּחַת סִבְלֹת מִצְרַיִם, “I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians,” raising the question; how can we enter into something that the vast majority of us have never experienced?
     In setting the scene, last week we began to read about the back and forth battle between Pharaoh’s perceived deified powers and the God of the universe, the final plague this week is called the מַכַּת בְּכוֹרוֹת (makat b’chorot), “death of the firstborn,” just before Israel leave’s their servitude to Pharaoh in Egypt.  But it is also during this final plague that we find Passover ritual elements in the matzot and the maror (bitter herb) being spoken of.  We read in Talmud from Pesachim 116b that the maror is part of our Passover ritual because of what happened in Egypt when “they made their lives bitter.”  In talking about identifying with this type of bitterness as Jews, who for the most part are far removed from the horrors of our ancestors, Rabbi Feinstein talks about identification in the form of being as in “a play,” you know like on Broadway.  A play for Rabbi Feinstein allows a person to identify with a character that they are not in real life.  He went on to say that when we taste the maror (bitter herb) during Passover, we are getting a little taste of bitterness, so unless you are a holocaust survivor or have had a horrible experience, a person cannot imagine what that type of bitterness is like and is asked to create their own.  When we sit down for our Seders we are commanded to think of ourselves as coming out of the slavery of Egypt, so being in character as in a play, but a real life play, is a great way to do so.
     What a beautiful picture of interaction Rabbi Feinstein asks us to consider in order to get a little taste of something we can’t truly imagine.  But what Rabbi Feinstein calls a “play” I want to extend to the idea of “imagination.”  The word for imagination in Hebrew is דִּמְיוֹן (dim’yot) that comes from the root word דָמָה (dah’mah), which can mean both “likeness” and “imagine.”  At first, these seem like two different words, but they are really similar.  Ezekiel 31 refers to Pharaoh in the “likeness” to the great tress of Eden, Pharaoh as part of the creation as opposed to being above it,  Pharaoh simply being “compared with you (meaning the tress).”  Yet in Isaiah 14:14 the Babylonian King, who also exhalated his existence says, I will be like the Most High,” seeing himself as God.  The Pharaoh is דָמִיתָ (dahmee’ta) “compared with you,” his likeness is in juxtaposition with the rest of rest of creation whereas the king of Babylon is אֶדַּמֶּה (ehd’dameh) “I will be like,” imagining himself to me like God.
Not to go off on a rabbit trail, so to speak, but this helps us to see how imagination can be understood 
     Back to the maror let’s ask the questions; what is bitterness, what is it like, or can it be imagined?  Norman Fischer says that imagination “creates its own self-validating truth strong enough to effect inner and outer transformation.”  Fischer makes that statement in the context of a story that he shared and while he believes it he also cannot completely validate its content, connecting with it ultimately “because it expresses something that is essential about who we are as human beings.”   So when we smell and taste the maror what truth do we comprehend, what can it tell the vast majority of us who have never experienced such human cruelty as did the slaves in Egypt, what is its humanity we embrace?  Consider the following between Rashi and the Or HaChaim. Rashi recalling the words of the Talmud verse we quoted above, which said “And they made their lives bitter,” teaches that this clearly reminds us of the bitterness of Egypt, while the Or HaChaim saw the maror as an culinary enhancer to make the lamb-meat more enjoyable.  How do we account for this?  Rabbi Manis Friedman makes a distinction between “fact” and “truth,” each beholding what is and what it can be.  The fact is the maror is bitter, its likeness reminds us of the bitterness of slavery we did not know, yet the truth is “self-validating … to effect inner and outer transformation” can create its own positive message where the opposite of the bitterness of maror is the sweetness of some kind of deliverance.  Rashi and the Or HaChaim each approached something they had never experienced through their own human encounters that brought meaning to them just as we must also do the same.
     This takes imagination, seeking that “self-validating truth” that we connect to on a human level even if we cannot validate the story either.  In this case once again Norman Fischer writes that “all imaginative productions rise up from the unconscious to expand the soul.”  Likewise, Fischer makes another worthy statement when he says, “imagination is not about escaping reality … but deepens and enriches reality,” something that then allows us to add “texture, depth, dimension, feeling and possibility.”  That is what we bring to the maror, which is how we identify with our ancestors even though our bitterness was not like theirs and our story is our own.
     I will assume that yesterday most of us watched the inauguration of now President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, with many people imaging what our country will look like now even though we cannot be sure as it has not yet been written.  But to me the best part of the morning was that young lady, Amanda Gorman, who I think wowed the world and moved the country when she read a poem with poise and passion that looked toward a better tomorrow.  The very last stanza said, “When day comes we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid, The new dawn blooms as we free It, For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it, If only we’re brave enough to be it.”  We are left to our imagination to understand and interpret those words.  Per our parsha, the maror has a meaning, the bitterness of slavery has a meaning, that is a fact, but our imagination makes it human and makes in true, and we must imagine that.

Shabbat Shalom!