The Great Cry in Egypt – Parashat Bo with Rabbi Eliezer Berland Shlit”a

CHIDUSHIM ON PARASHAT BO BY MOREINU HARAV ELIEZER BERLAND SHLIT”A:

THE OLD LADY IN EGYPT SAID: “I DON’T HAVE A SON.  WHO WILL THE DECREE APPLY TO?”

The Midrash Hagadol brings an incident that a certain old lady said to Moshe, “It [the plague of the firstborn] won’t harm me.”  She said [to Moshe], “I don’t have a son.”  It is written: The great one of the house [the great one of the family will die], but if there’s no one else, he is one [alone at home], so he is not the great one of the house.  If he’s the great one of the house, there’s needs to be someone else.

So this old lady told him, “You said that there is no house where they won’t be a dead person.  But I don’t have sons, and for years, I’m without a husband.”  One person needs to die, but on a single person, there was no decree.  The decree was not on a person alone at home, who lives alone in a room.  Only when there are two, [does] “the great one of the house, the great one of the family” [apply].  So it is written here in Parashat Bo, “Pharaoh’s servants said to him”; there was a great cry in Egypt.  Here [in the Midrash HaGadol, page] 167, paragraph 6, on verse 6, chapter 11: “There was a great cry in all the land of Egypt” “There will be a great cry in all the land of Egypt.”  There will be no house where they will not scream.  There will be no house where there is not a dead person.  So the great one of the house, the great one of the family, the firstborns of other lands, even firstborns who came from another land.

There was one old lady.  Moshe came from Pharaoh’s palace or crossed the street.  There was an old lady [who approached him] and began to scream at him, to scream at him.  And there were no attendants to give her two slaps.  He went without attendants.  He didn’t fear, and this old lady attacked him: “Why do you bring upon us the plague of the firstborn.  What do you want?  For us to put you on trial?  What do you think about yourself?”  She said: “You are a false prophet.  You said that there would be no house without a dead person – the great one in the house, in the family.  I am a lone old lady, already a hundred years old.  I have no father, no mother, no brothers, sisters.  I have no children.  I am a hundred year old lady.”  She has no father.  “You say that there will be no house where there will not be a dead person.  Who will die?  I’ll die?  The decree didn’t apply to me.”

 THE OLD LADY AND THE STATUE – A DANCE OF SUFFERING

She made a statue out of her son [who had died previously], and she would dance.  Every day, she would dance before the statue, which was in his image.  She made it out of dough that she kneaded into his image.  Every single day, she would dance in front of the statue -- every day, an hour of Hitbodedut, an hour of dancing.  She made a dance in front of the statue.  It’s written that every night, she wouldn’t sleep.  It’s written in the Midrash that that night she was the first before everyone.  The dogs came and attacked the statue.  They began to tear apart the statue and she immediately started making such screams, already before everyone else.  She woke up everyone to scream, and there was a great scream in all the land of Egypt [as Moshe Rabbeinu had prophesized].

So every plague was made up of several blows.  So it is written in Likutey Shimoni that the [plague of] the frogs was 14 varieties.  It is written that the boils were 24 varieties – there were 24 varieties of boils.

THE GOAL OF THE PLAGUES: RECTIFICATION, NOT REVENGE

The Kedushat Levi in Parashat Tetzaveh says that the Holy One Blessed is He said to Moshe, “Go and I will send you to Pharaoh.”  The Kedushat Levi says that Hashem doesn’t want any gentile to be harmed, even Egypt.  His goal was to cause Egypt to return in repentance – this was the intention.  And if we didn’t merit to this, we don’t say Hallel – only on the first day, [and the other days] only because it’s the custom.  Therefore, I said, “Go and I will send you to Pharaoh,” because the Blessed One doesn’t want to do evil to any Jew, to any gentile, or to any person in the world, even to the Egyptians who tortured the Jews with every torture in the world.  Hashem did not want to put them to death.  Hashem wanted for them to return in repentance.  So after this, little-by-little, over the course of generations, this would be rectified.  They will go through everything and it will be rectified, but their drowning at the sea was not a rectification.  It was only revenge on the gentiles, but it was not a rectification.

So the Blessed One is good and beneficent, and doesn’t join His name to evil.  No evil leaves His mouth, only good, even for the nations of the world.  Even though they tortured the Jewish people and it is necessary to punish them, the Kedushat Levi says that this is evil in the eyes of the Blessed One.  This thing is very difficult for Him, and even the evil that He brings onto the nations of the world is difficult for Him, because Hashem wants to bring them back in repentance, that the Jewish people will be a light unto the nations, [as it is written,] “Nations will walk by your light and kings by the brilliance of your shine,” that there will be such light, that the world will be illuminated by such light, that people learn Torah, and His light will shine from one end of the world to the other, that the entire world will return in repentance.  Moshe Rabbeinu wept over all the exiles.  Every night during the time that he was in Pharaoh’s palace, he would rise and cry to Hashem over the afflictions of the Jewish people.

TEN TYPES OF MELODY: THE MELODY BEHIND THE PLAGUES

For every single plague, Hashem would teach Moshe Rabbeinu a melody through which Moshe would bring about the plague.

These are ten types of melodies, and in the plague of the locusts, Hashem did not tell him what plague to bring about, even according to the opinion of Rabbi Yehuda, who said that it was written on the staff [the initials of the plagues,] “DaTzaCh ADaSh BAChaV.”  Still, it’s not certain that the Alef [of BAChaV] would be “arbeh – locusts,” because it could have been a plague of lions [ariyot].  Here, the lice also came with the arov [swarms of wild beasts], because we learn this from what is written in Tehilim (105:31), [which places] the arov before the lice.  So why did Moshe choose the locusts?  Because Pharaoh told him that the Jewish people were locusts.  So Hashem would show him what locusts are, that it’s the most organized of creatures, as it is written in Yoel.  But the frogs jump onto one another into the fire, until the fire was extinguished.

ONLY TO PARDON AND FORGIVE

Until the Messiah arrives, every person must go through endless disparagement for every movement, for every word, and for every act of his.  He must go through endless and endless [disparagement], and he must – for his part – just pardon and forgive.  Because if he has any resentment, even a hairsbreadth, then he already cannot reach where he needs to reach.  He needs to understand the opposite – that Hashem orchestrates things from all types of directions.  Hashem orchestrates things like with Chana and Penina, that “My heart exults in Hashem” [that she rejoiced and thanked Hashem that a son was born to her].  So Reish Lakish said that she was either a hundred years old or ninety years old, [and some say] that she was already 130 years old.

ABBA UMANA – HOLINESS IN EVERYDAY LIFE

So 130 years of bloodletting – this is the matter of Abba Umana, who would receive greetings every day from the Heavenly Academy.  So Abaye sent [students to check] what Abba Umana does.  So they said that he is modest and covers each woman who comes to him with a sheet, and the needle which draws blood is attached to this sheet.  And he does not take money from people.  [Rather,] there is a box outside, and each person puts money there, and he doesn’t check how much each one puts.  But still this isn’t enough to receive greetings from the Heavenly Academy; a person needs something else entirely.

[So Abaye] sent Torah scholars to steal things from his home, and they provoked him, and provoked him, and provoked him and found him in the street.

[They asked him about the items that they stole from him:] “What is this?  How much is this worth?”

With a smile on his face, [he said to them,] “This is worth such-and-such.”

They asked, “How do you know?”

He said, “This was mine.”

“And you don’t care?”

He said, “No.”

“So what did you think [when you revealed that we stole from you]?

“I thought that the sages had an opportunity for redeeming captives.”

They told him, “Take this.”

He said, “I’m already not going to take it back.”

So then Abaye understood why Abba Umana receives greetings every day from the Heavenly Academy.  Abaye would receive [greetings] once a week on Erev Shabbat, and Rava only received on Erev Yom Kippur.  All of this is written in Taanit 21b.  (Taanit 21b: A man whose name is Abba Umana, and he is called this because his work is bloodletting, and one who does this work is called “Umana.”  Every day, greetings from the Heavenly Academy would come to him.  That bat kol (Heavenly voice) would come every Erev Shabbat, that is, once a week, on Friday.  However, for Rava, this bat kol would only come Erev Yom Kippur, that is, once a year, Erev Yom Kippur.  Abaye became disheartened.  Which is to say, he became distressed because of the level of Abba Umana.  Because Abba Umana was apparently a simple person, but in any case, his level was so great that greetings came to him from the Heavenly Academy every day.  However, Abaye, who in his soul knew that he was a Torah scholar and Tzaddik, only merited to this once a week.

They said to him: You don’t need to be so distressed about this, because you are not able to perform deeds such as the deeds of Abba Umana.  You cannot perform such good deeds as Abba Umana.  And what were the deeds of Abba Umana?  When he would perform his work – bloodletting – he would sit the men separately and the women separately, because of modesty.  And he had a type of garment which had a small hole, and in this hole, a cupping horn -- through which the blood was let -- was stuck.  When a woman would come to let blood, Abba Umana would ask her to wear this garment so that he wouldn’t have to look at her flesh at all.  If it wasn’t for this garment, the woman would have to reveal her flesh so that he could stick the cupping horn and let blood.  But now that the woman wore this garment, she didn’t need to reveal her flesh at all, because the garment was already pierced and ready.  He would only need to stick the horn into her body and let blood.

The Gemara also relates about the good deeds of Abba Umana, that he had a private place that wasn’t in the open where the people who came to let blood would put their coins which they needed to pay for his fee.  And why did Abba Umana conduct himself in this way?  So that each person would place the fee himself, and in a private place, so that those who didn’t have with what to pay wouldn’t be embarrassed.  Whoever had with what to pay would place the money there, and whoever didn’t have and couldn’t pay wouldn’t be embarrassed because of it.  Being that the box was in a private place, and each person himself placed the money, no one would know who paid and who didn’t.  When a Torah scholar would come to let blood, he wouldn’t take payment from him.

Not only this, but when the Torah scholar would rise from letting blood, Abba Umana would give him his own money and say to him, “Go and buy yourself food and restore your health.”

One day, Abaye sent two Torah scholars to check on the deeds of Abba Uman in order to check the great deeds of this person who received greetings from Heaven more than he did.  Abba Umana sat them down in his home, fed them, gave them to drink, and laid out nice woolen beddings to sleep on at night.  In the morning, the Torah scholars rolled up the wool beddings and took them.  They went out with them to the marketplace to sell them and found Abba Umana there.

“Evaluate for us how much these beddings are worth and buy them for yourself!”  The sages wanted to check if he would suspect them of being robbers, or perhaps he would evaluate the beddings for less than their worth, so that he wouldn’t lose a lot by buying them from them, despite their being his.  He told them the amount.

They said to him, “Perhaps they are worth more than this?”

He said to them, “For this amount, I myself bought them.”

They said to him, “These beddings are yours, and we took them from you.  Please tell us, when you saw that we were trying to sell your beddings without your permission, what do you suspect us of?”

He said to them, “I said to myself that perhaps an urgent case of redeeming captives came before you, and you were embarrassed to tell me that you needed money.  Therefore, in the beginning, you came to lodge in my home so that you could obtain the money in some way.”

They said to him, “Now that it has been clarified for you that we intended only to test you, take your beddings!”

He said to them, “From the moment that I thought that you took the beddings for the purpose of redeeming captives, I put them out of my mind and intended for them to be used for charity.)

GRATUITOUS LOVE: THE KEY TO REDEMPTION

So the Rebbe says [in Lesson 34] that every Jew has a point, a totally different point.  One could be Abba Umana.  One could be a Jew who lets blood, but he has a point, and he receives with it every day greetings from the Heavenly Academy.  This is only dependent on the holiness of a person, the modesty of a person, the charity of a person.  And the main thing is really that he has gratuitous love for every single Jew, and in the merit of this, may we merit to a complete redemption speedily in our days, Amen.