Ramaz Likrat Shabbat - Vaera

‫לקראת שבת‬ PARSHAT Vaera — ‫וארא‬ January 12–13, 2024 Shevat 3, 5784 Candle Lighting 4:31 Havdalah 5:31 A Student Publication of the Ramaz Upper School

Editors–in-Chief Leo Eigen ’25 Avi Flatto-Katz ’25 Editor Ezra Gonen ’27

Faculty Advisor Rabbi Manu Hass

SUMMARY

Aliyah #1: Hashem tells Moshe he is the God of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov. He

then tells Moshe that he will take Bnei Yisrael out of Egypt and bring them to Eretz Canaan. Hashem then told Moshe and Aharon to command Bnei Yisrael and Pharaoh to bring out Bnei Yisrael from Egypt.

Aliyah #2: The families of Shevetim Reuven, Shimon and Levi are listed.

Aliyah #3: Hashem commands Moshe to tell Pharaoh everything he will tell him but Moshe said he gets tongue-tied and Pharaoh will not listen to him. Therefore, Hashem has Moshe’s brother Aharon act as an interpreter for Moshe. Lastly, Hashem says he will take Bnei Yisrael out of Egypt against Pharaoh's wishes and everyone in Egypt will know Hashem took Bnei Yisrael out of Egypt.

Aliyah #4: Moshe and Aharon come before Pharaoh and Aharon cast down his staff and it turned into a snake. Pharaoh had his magicians do the same, but Aharon’s staff consumed their staffs. Pharaoh did not let Bnei Yisrael leave Egypt so per Hashem’s commandment Moshe went to the banks of the Nile River in the morning and struck the Nile with his staff and the river turned to blood. After seven days of blood, Moshe went to Pharaoh to ask for Bnei Yisrael to leave or else frogs will invade Egypt. Next, frogs were unleashed on Egypt. Pharaoh was upset and told Moshe and Aharon if Hashem makes the frogs go away, Bnei Yisrael would be able to go serve Hashem.

Aliyah #5: The frogs in Egypt died but Pharaoh did not let Bnei Yisrael leave, so Hashem inflicted lice on the Egyptians. Moshe then asked Pharaoh again, but was denied.

Aliyah #6: Hashem unleashed insects on Egypt. Pharaoh says he will let Bnei Yisrael go into the wilderness for 3 days to sacrifice to Hashem as long as the insects leave. Hashem removed the insects and then Pharaoh changed his mind. Then Hashem struck Egypt’s animals with a plague and later caused boils to appear on every Egyptian and animal.

Aliyah #7: Pharaoh continued to not let Bnei Yisrael leave, so Hashem sent down hail from the sky that hit everything in Mitzrayim that was outside, including animals and humans. Pharaoh begs for the hail to stop and it does but again, Pharaoh changed his mind and does not let Bnei Yisrael leave Egypt.

Navigating Free Will

By Jacob Yashar ’26 Shabbat Shalom. I’m Jacob Yashar from the Class of 2026 and I’ll be discussing an idea from Parshat Vaera. In this week’s Parsha, we continue to witness the unfolding of Bnei Yisrael’s liberation from slavery in Egypt. Moshe and Aharon approach Pharaoh to demand the release of Bnei Yisrael, but Pharaoh refuses and continues to increase their workload. God sends a series of plagues, but Pharaoh still refuses.

Throughout the Parsha we see Moshe and Aharon approach Pharaoh several times to beg for Bnei Yisrael to be set free. Their first encounter with Pharaoh is when Aharon’s staff is turned into a snake. The rest of their encounters are to cast the plagues on the Egyptians. We see multiple similarities between the encounters that occur. The first similarity is that Moshe and Aharon go to beg for Bnei Yisrael to be set free, which is followed by a sign from Hashem. The next similarity is that Pharaoh always has a response to Hashem’s sign, whether it’s his sorcerers performing the same sign or his refusal. It says in the Parsha multiple times that Pharaoh's heart was hardened. When Hashem orders the first five plagues, it doesn’t specifically mention that Hashem hardens his heart; however, when talking about the sixth, seventh, and eighth plague, it specifically says that God is the one that hardened it. The Chibbah Yeteirah comments that since Pharaoh sometimes hardened his own heart and sometimes God hardened it, we can understand that Hashem only allowed Pharaoh to do as he pleased. In other words, Hashem took away his free will and controlled him. This begs the question: was it necessary for Hashem to interfere with Pharaoh's decision-making and take away his free will?

Rashi thinks that Hashem needed to harden Pharaoh's heart so his signs could be multiplied, and so people would recognize him as God. This means that Hashem thought it was necessary to harden Pharaoh’s heart so he could successfully carry out his plan of taking Bnei Yisrael out of Egypt and into Israel.

The Siftei Chachamim agrees with Rashi that it was necessary to harden Pharaoh's heart, arguing that if his heart wasn’t hardened he would try asking for forgiveness and repent.

However, it wouldn’t be a meaningful apology, and the only reason he would do it is to be forgiven: not because he is truly sorry. As a result of the meaningless apology, Hashem would’ve punished him with several plagues. This would’ve made Hashem look bad because he was punishing someone who was trying to be forgiven. Therefore, to prevent this, Hashem started by hardening his heart, and then punishing him.

This story of God hardening Pharaoh's heart raises profound questions about whether or not we have free will and about how much God interferes in our lives. Through all the opinions and commentaries, we can get a sense of the reciprocal relationship between us and God. We can learn from this how important decision-making is and how much of an effect it can have on us. Just as Hashem wanted a genuine acknowledgment of his power from Pharaoh, we, too, are challenged to approach our decisions and actions with sincerity and introspection. The narrative serves as a reminder that the decisions we make have an impact and that we must carefully consider our choices.

The “Moshe”s and the “Yehoshua”s

By Ms. Miriam Krupka It seems like Sefer Shemot, as many things recently do, takes on a whole new layer of meaning in light of our current reality. The essential questions of this story of freedom are freshly relevant: how does a nation recover from the worst atrocities perpetrated on its people? What does heroism look like and who should take the lead? When we stand up to fight, what should that look like morally and militarily? How do we think of a future when we are so weighed down by the reality of the present?

Ms. Miriam Krupka Associate Principal

At first glance, the answers to these questions, in ancient Egypt and in our modern setting, seem entirely different, don’t they?

After all, the ‘soldiers’ of the generation of the desert do not have a military, a battlefield, a country of their own, or the network, freedom, funds or community motivation that we have in our modern reality.

They are working within a framework of absolute subjugation to authority, complete lack of freedom, agency or autonomy, and little access to vision of a better future, save a nearly forgotten, hazy promise given generations ago to their ancestors. Their situation certainly seems more hopeless and dire than the crises Israel faces in 2023.

It’s interesting to think about ‫ ספר שמות‬in light of ‫ ספר יהושע‬in this context. Forty years after they leave Mitzrayim, the Jews have a military, a plan, an actual home they are fighting for, and have shed the feelings of hopelessness and inevitability that they faced as slaves.

Moshe, the leader who took them out of slavery, and Yehoshua, the leader who took them home, actually have very similar names.

While Moshe was named “‫ ”כי מן המים משיתיהו‬- because he was “drawn out” of the water, the term “Moshe” or “Moshia” can also mean “to save,” as does the name Yehoshua, which means “God will save.”

Salvation, heroism and leadership, manifest in different forms.

Sometimes it’s the heroic battlefield, the Yehoshua, the communal, political and national fight for our land and our lives. And sometimes it’s Moshe, a hazier and more complicated search for freedom, where our identity, and our future, feel unknown, there is no political or national entity yet to rely on, and we’re not fully sure or confident that we understand what future we are fighting for. Indeed, the Netziv (R’ Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin, Ha’amek Davar, 1816-1893) on ‫י‬:‫שמות ב‬, in which Moshe is named, points out that Bat Pharoah names him “from the water” to indicate that he emerged from the water, with no identity, no parentage, no sense of who he was - just subsumed by water. (He indicates that she does this in order to assert her own parental authority over him.) But Moshe, like the Jews he will come to lead home, does not have a strong sense yet of who he is or what the future will be. That will develop over their journey forward. By the time they enter the land, after they’ve experienced Matan Torah, the building of a ‫משכן‬, and the establishment of a political system, they are better prepared to fight confidently as a people. ‫ עם ישראל‬has certainly experienced both of these salvations over the past century. I am grateful to the Moshes who came out of the trauma and carnage of the Holocaust with an uncertain future, and pushed forward toward something they couldn’t fully visualize or understand. I am grateful that now, we fight as Yehoshuas, with a land and national identity that can propel us forward as we protect the land we have already entered, with confidence and pride.

Wishing everyone in our community a Shabbat Shalom!