Tuesday, January 24, 2012

QuestionRabbi, can you please post the sefirot diagram from last night's fascinating class. I never knew that Kabalah could be explained in a manner that I can  totally understand

Answer: Here you go!

Sunday, January 22, 2012

The Staff or the Serpent: Which was the Miracle?


Question:

G-d’s instruction to Moshe was:

Shemos 7:9 –  When Pharaoh speaks to you, saying, 'Provide a sign for yourselves,' you shall say to Aaron, 'Take your staff, [and] cast [it] before Pharaoh; it will become a serpent.'

The class[1] sought to establish that the purpose of the episode of the staff turning first into a serpent, then into a staff and then swallowing up the Egyptians staffs, was to demonstrate G-d’s supreme authority over Egypt.

In fact, the miracle of Aharon’s staff turning into a snake was merely an introduction to the major miracle – and Aaron's staff swallowed their staffs (7:12).

Why, then, would this detail be absent from G-d’s original communication with Moshe? Why didn’t G-d tell him about the fact that his staff would swallow all the others?

Answer:

G-d essentially did in fact tell this to Moshe.

Clearly, the ‘miracle’ of having Aharon’s staff transform into a serpent wasn’t much of a miracle altogether, as demonstrated by the Egyptians magician’s success in doing the same thing. So what was the message of G-d to Moshe – to perform an amateur miracle that could immediately be imitated by the Egyptians? – Clearly this is not what G-d communicated to Moshe.

Rather, this is how it should be explained: 

G-d began His message: “When Pharaoh speaks to you saying, ‘Provide a sign for yourselves…” – meaning, as Rashi explains – Pharaoh is going to want you to demonstrate thatyour G-d is the ultimate boss. You will begin the process of proving it to him when you cast your staff before him and it will turn into a serpent. [Although the Egyptians can do the same thing] the end result will be that you will have shown them “the sign” – the empirical proof that G-d is the supreme ruler.

In essence, Rashi intends to avoid the question to begin with by informing us early on of the real purpose of Moshe’s encounter with Pharaoh: you are going there to show him who is boss; you’ll start with turning the staff into a snake, and it’ll only get better from there!



[1] Based on Likutei Sichot vol. 26, p. 54.