Rabbi Richard Jacobi

I don’t like the God of the plagues! It’s lovely that God hears the cry of the Israelite slaves and remembers them, pledging to redeem them. Though the portion begins by harking back to how God appeared (va-eira – “and he appeared”) to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God that is manifested in this week’s portion and, even more so in next week’s is a darker, even nasty, entity.

The way that He (and I use this pronoun advisedly) brings about redemption through the plagues that unfold in the latter part of this week’s portion is increasingly nasty in the amount of collateral damage that Egypt will experience. The innocent population of Egypt – all those who are non-Israelites – suffer terribly as the water turns to blood, frogs invade, lice infest them, insects (rejecting the implausible mis-translation of ‘wild beasts’) swarm, livestock are killed, boils beset human and animal, hail stones them. Next week, we’ll read of locusts devouring any greenery, think darkness blinding them, and then, ultimately, the first-born of human and animals are killed.

The God we witness every time we read these stories, both as these parashiot come around each year and as we follow the Haggadah during our sedarim, is a very macho, toxically male role model of the worst kind. Please do NOT encourage anyone to imitate this image of God! And any comparison that you might feel can be made with the current war between Israel and Hamas is both relevant to and distracting from the points I wish to make.

Is the God of the Hebrew Bible irredeemably the type of god we see painted here? Aside from my and, I hope, your emphatic rejection of this suggestion, we are heirs to a theology that sits alongside a reading of Torah and wider biblical texts that is both critical and historical, and therefore distinct from those who see Torah as ‘the word of God written down by Moses’.

Those who told the story of the exodus around three thousand years ago lived in such a world that they needed a version of God to which they could relate. Eventually, these stories came to be written down in the period around two thousand five hundred years ago. Different versions of these stories were combined, sometimes more seamlessly than others, before being ‘canonised’ into what we call Torah. Our progressive attitude to Torah was summarised by Rabbi John Rayner in the Affirmations of Liberal Judaism, #28 – Bible Scholarship – by saying, “We affirm the spirit of free inquiry. Among other things, we accept modern Bible scholarship, which has shown that the biblical writers, however divinely inspired, were fallible human beings and children of the Ancient Near East in which they lived.”

This affirmation enables us to reject the portrayal of God in the scenes of the plagues without committing a heresy. It frees us to learn something more about what God is NOT, through reading these texts and affirming that we see God differently. Being Israelites whose ancestors – literal or metaphorical – began to learn about freedom and responsibility via these stories of slavery and redemption, we continue to engage, struggle or wrestle with the idea of God and what the Divine Source wants us to do with our lives.

I’m convinced that God does not want the sort of toxic masculinity of Va-eira and next week’s parashah, Bo. Personally, the quest for God is a search for the inspiration to more often be my best self. If I can achieve that, then I will not be imposing modern-day plagues (insert what you might see as such plagues here) on other people.

However, we cannot live positive lives if our focus is only on what we won’t do. The quest is about what I, and you, will say and do to bring about a kinder, more caring and supportive community at local and national levels. Here’s a starter list of ten:

· Instead of the plague of blood, we can focus on doing what we can to bring about cleaner waters here in the UK.

· Instead of the plague of frogs, we can encourage biodiversity in our gardens, local parks, etc.

· Instead of the plague of lice, we might support those who live in unsanitary rented homes and also fight for improved rights of tenants.

· Instead of the plague of swarming insects, we might help create “bug hotels” in our local parks and gardens.

· Instead of the plague of livestock disease, we might lobby for higher standards of animal care and also reduce our consumption of meat.

· Instead of the plague of boils, we might pay more attention to health equity in this country and even lobby for our town or borough to become a Marmot Town (see, for example, here).

· Instead of the plague of hail, we might become stronger advocates for addressing climate change by, for example, becoming an EcoSynagogue or working more steadfastly to reduce our environmental impact.

· Instead of the plague of locusts, which could strip large swathes of African land of all vegetation, thereby forcing migration, we could ensure that migrants and refugees have safe and legitimate ways to move to more habitable areas.

· Instead of the plague of darkness, in which no person (more literally ‘man’) could see their neighbour, we might work for the elimination of toxic masculinity. Or we might build bridges of light across religious or other divides,

· Instead of the plague of the death of the firstborn, we might take inspiration from “One Life’, the film about Nicholas Winton and his associates, to recognise that ordinary people like them and like us can save one life and, thereby, as our Judaism teaches us, save a whole world!

You and I can’t do it all, but we can all do some!

Rabbi Richard Jacobi

PS Your list of ten might be better than mine and mine might have egregious omissions!

Recent Commentaries