In this Parasha Vaera, God commands Moses to demand the release of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt. However, Pharaoh arrogantly responds, “Who is God that I should listen to His voice and let Israel go?” In response to his refusal, God sends the first seven plagues to demonstrate His power and break Pharaoh’s stubbornness.
Interestingly, in the first three plagues—blood, frogs, and lice—it was not Moses who initiated the punishment, but his brother Aaron. God commanded Aaron to strike the Nile River to turn its waters into blood and unleash the plague of frogs. He also instructed him to strike the dust of the earth so that lice would emerge from it.
Why Aaron and not Moses? The sages explain that Moses owed a debt of gratitude to the Nile and to the land of Egypt. When he was a baby, his mother placed him in a basket over the waters of the river, and that is how he was saved from Pharaoh’s order to kill Hebrew male children. Years later, when he killed an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew slave, Moses buried the body in the sand to hide it.
Striking the river or the earth to start a plague would have been a lack of recognition towards those elements that, although inanimate, were instrumental in his salvation. God wanted to teach us a fundamental lesson: If even water and earth deserve gratitude, how much more should we be grateful to the people who help us in life.
Just as Moses told Pharaoh, “Let my people go,” today we raise our voices to demand the freedom of all captives. And just as God warned Egypt that it would be destroyed if it did not let His people go, so too in this war of civilization against barbarism, the time will come when darkness and evil will disappear from the earth.
We are witnessing difficult times but also signs of redemption. Israel’s struggle is not only for its security, but for the values of justice and truth for all human beings in the world. History teaches us that oppression and tyranny cannot prevail, and that in the end, redemption comes to those who hold fast to faith, values, and justice.
With feelings of gratitude of the initiation of the hostage’s release, we pray for the complete liberation of all the hostages, the elimination of all terrorists, and the arrival of times of peace and light for the entire world. In the same way that God brought the people of Israel out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, may we also see miracles and wonders in our days with the final redemption.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Refael Cohen