Parshah Commentary
In this week’s parshah, Vaera, Pharaoh is repeatedly described as “not listening” to the words of God and Moses. After Moses and Aaron’s first appeal to free the Israelites at the end of last week’s reading, Pharaoh declared, “Who is this Adonai that I should listen to Their voice?” Now, God warns Moses that this recalcitrance will be a pattern: “Pharaoh will not listen to the two of you.” Sure enough, God’s prediction bears out. Over and over again, as Moses and Aaron petition Pharaoh for the Israelites’ freedom—first through verbal appeal, then through a series of escalating plagues—we are told: “And he did not listen to them.”
Each time, Pharaoh’s refusal to hear their demands is preceded by the statement that his heart had been hardened—in some cases, by God. For many commentators, this understandably poses a theological dilemma: If God hardened Pharaoh’s heart and made it difficult, perhaps even impossible, for him to free the Israelites, why does he deserve divine punishment? Some interpretations resolve the dilemma by arguing that Pharaoh had already sinned to such a degree that repair was no longer possible, and God’s intervention simply ensures that he is punished rather than attempting insincere repentance. Others, however, point to the fact that Pharaoh is first described as hardening his own heart, and argue that every mention of this stubborn refusal, even those the text ascribes to God, is in fact at Pharaoh’s own initiative. Watching his empire collapse around him as escalating devastation reaches even his own home and family, Pharaoh nonetheless evinces an obstinate refusal to change policy.
Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch, a 19th-century commentator, is among the scholars of the second camp, who argue that Pharaoh’s refusal was his own choice. Exploring the psychological and emotional processes that produce Pharaoh’s refusal, Hirsch points to the fact that three different roots are used to describe Pharaoh’s heart hardening: “kasheh,” “kaved,” and “chazak.” Each of these, he argues, highlights a distinct way in which people fail to reckon with the world’s difficulties. “Kasheh” (“hard”) is used to describe those who are inured to disturbances from the outside world, for whom everyday horror leaves no impression. “Kaved” (“heavy”) is used for those who can register some amount of what’s happening in the world around them, but aren’t swayed to feel or act differently. And “chazak” (“strong”) is used for people who purposefully and stubbornly refuse to be impacted by the devastation that they witness, who see the world crumbling around them but refuse to relinquish their immediate access to power and profit, even knowing that this spells eventual doom. This final description of Pharaoh and his stubborn refusal to listen feels particularly, horribly resonant today; whether it be billionaires, politicians, and corporations willing to set the world on fire, even as the flames creep ever closer to their own strongholds, so long as they can wrest every last bit of profit from the earth before it’s consumed, or the leaders and supporters of a genocidal Israeli state laying the groundwork for its own demise just to extend their system of supremacy, however briefly—our world has no shortage of Pharaohs, of those who see the collapse they’ve engineered and stubbornly insist that they’ll somehow emerge untouched and victorious.
But Pharaoh is not the only one who refuses to listen to God and Moses in our parshah. Indeed, at the beginning of the portion, we learn that the Israelites actually precede Pharaoh in their refusal. They initially heeded Moses’s promise of liberation, only to be met with a redoubling of their oppression; so when Moses reiterates God’s promise to free the people from bondage, we are told that “they would not listen to Moses, for their spirits were crushed by cruel bondage.” Looking at the seemingly implacable circumstances of their suffering, the Israelites’ frank assessment of the world around them makes it impossible for them to hear and internalize a vision of freedom.
Remarkably, God tasks the Israelites with precisely the same posture that Rabbi Hirsch condemns in Pharaoh: adhering stubbornly to a vision of the world that defies the evidence before their eyes. So why does our tradition condemn only Pharaoh’s belief in the impossible? The difference lies in their distinct positionalities: For Pharaoh and the corrupt power-brokers who inherit his legacy, their own actions bring the destruction from which they believe they, impossibly, will be spared. The Israelites, on the other hand, exist in a painful world not of their own creation, which God wants them to believe they can escape. Wielded by the oppressor, faith without evidence is foolhardy commitment to an unjust world; in the hands of the oppressed, it is a tool for unmaking an unjust world.
While the text acknowledges that the Israelites’ failure to heed Moses stems from their crushed spirits and cruel bondage, Moses and God still want the people to believe in their imminent liberation and set the conditions for its possibility, preparing for their exodus. But this does not mean that they are expected to take a rosy view of their present circumstances. Rather, they are charged with the Gramscian notion of “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will”—the idea that we must soberly confront the dire straits in which we find ourselves, and yet refuse their inevitability. Today, too, we must assess the ruin around us with clear eyes, acknowledging the full scope of the wreckage; and we must also stubbornly insist that the world could be otherwise.
Rabbi Lexie Botzum is a Torah learner, teacher, and organizer based in Washington Heights.