Come to Pharaoh

Dear friends,

When the prophet Haggai returned to Israel from the exile in Babylon, much like we seem to have returned home this week, he found the Jews depressed, “each person rushing to their own home,” with no eyes for others, or for the rebuilding of the temple for which they returned. He gathered the Jews in front of the ruins of the temple and said: “Today is the day the Temple was erected!” The prophet could sense the tremendous potential for rebirth in the air, which the people had no clue about. “The seed is still in the barn, not even planted. You see no grapes on the vine, no figs, pomegranates or olives on the trees, yet they are coming: the blessings start today.”

This week’s Parasha is called Bo, meaning “come!” Where should we come to, you might ask, “el Par’oh,” to Pharaoh. That’s right, come to Pharaoh, says God to Moses, as if that’s where God is. Or maybe it is?

We’ve heard this verb before. Noah was told: Bo el hateva, come to the ark, which the commentators understand as: enter the ark. So “come to Pharaoh” is an invitation to enter Pharaoh, where God sits waiting. What?!?! That doesn’t sound quite right, does it?

Well, it does to me, but that’s because I spent ten years immersing myself in Pharaoh, as I wrote and later performed a play that tells the exodus story from his perspective. God said “come to Pharaoh,” and I did. Guess what I discovered? Like the rabbis suggest, I found the worst of myself: the deepest denial, the darkest blindness, the most foundational lack of empathy, the stubbornest inability to learn.
Come, says the voice, come into that.

Not sure you want to go there? Well, I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?

Bad? Ok. The bad news is you’re already there… The Hebrew verb Bo, with its various grammatical formulations is a masterpiece of time travel. We are taught in the Talmud: מתוך שלא לשמה בא לשמה, Out of a good deed done for the wrong reasons, come good deeds done for the right ones. In other words, doing something good begrudgingly, or for selfish reasons will lead us to do them for the right reasons. The seed of the unselfish act of goodness often lies in the selfish one. Coming means “in formation.”

One more grammatical example: the world to come, olam haba. The Hebrew is more honest than the English. That world is not “to come,” at some theoretical later point in time. Rather, it is Ba, coming. In a sense it’s already here, as my middle age body reminds me most days. The sun has come in biblical Hebrew means it has set, which means it’s on its way back, basically already here.

In Hebrew everything that is coming is already there. You might as well come to Pharaoh, since you’re already there.

Ready for the good news?

We don’t always notice the good things going on. Our eyes have a way of seeing what they were taught to see.

When I came to Pharaoh I didn’t only find the worst of myself, but also the best: complete belief in human abilities, total excitement about divinity, the most honest form of generosity. I found love. I found brokenness. And I also found deep, painful flaws in Moses, his God, and the entire monotheistic enterprise, all of which give me important insights into who I am, who we are, and who we want to be. When the pandemic is over I plan to remount this play (it was scheduled to open in March 2020….), and then you’ll hopefully get a better grasp of what I am laying out rather tersely here. But one thing we can agree on already I hope, my friends, is that there is a lot coming our way, and much of it is good. Let us come to the places we see as light and find the darkness. Let us come to the places we see as dark and find the light. Let us know that the seeds of good things to come have been planted, many of them by us, whether we feel them or not.

I hope to see you this evening at 6pm for kabbalat shabbat, where we will continue thinking about seeds in preparation for Tu Bishvat.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha