I'm With You! - Bo 5785

I have been spending a lot of time over the last couple of weeks working on the completion of our Bikur Cholim House, the house we are building behind ours to house visitors who come here for critical medical care. It is very exciting to see it all coming together. I will be happy to give you a personal tour. Please contact me if you would like to come by. You can also see more about it here.

What would you tell someone you are sending on an errand for you?  “Go to the store and buy this.” “Go to the neighbor and give them this message.”  So when Hashem is sending Moshe to Pharaoh to bring him a message, you would think He would say “go to Pharaoh and tell him…)  That is not what Hashem said.  He said “come to Pharaoh.  In fact, that is the name of the entire Parsha that we read this week that includes the Exodus – “Bo” – “come.”

One way to understand this, and the message it is teaching us, is by recognizing the mystical forces at play here.  Everything in this world has a spiritual source, since it is Hashem’s word that created the entire universe.  Sometimes this Divine “spark” is manifest in holiness, sometimes It is possible for a person to use his or her spiritual energy for really bad things. 

Chassidus and Kabbalah tell us that the lower something on this earth is, the higher, paradoxically, its spiritual source. 

This is compared to a signet ring.  The ring has a design on it, and the parts that are the highest on the ring, when pressed into hot wax, make the deepest impression. Or think of a stone wall that falls. The stones at the top of the wall fall the farthest away.

In other words, lofty spiritual energy, in the wrong hands, so to speak, can create powerful negative spiritual forces. This was the case with Pharaoh. He had tremendous spiritual power, and therefore, when he used it for evil, he created a very powerful and cruel regime, and he used his spiritual power to enslave the Jews and directly challenge Hashem.

This powerful negative energy is what Moshe was afraid of.  How would he be able to break through the intensity of this evil and free the Jews? Hashem therefore said “come to Pharaoh.” My Presence will be there and you will come along with me. Hashem made the possibility for this evil in order to give people free choice, and of course Hashem can destroy it.

Nevertheless, Hashem did not just get rid of Pharaoh. He wanted Pharaoh himself to accept His dominion, since the Exodus was the first step toward the receiving of the Torah. The purpose of Torah is to transform the physical world and make it a home for Hashem, and this transformation has to come from the people in the world, not to be forced on it from the top down. Therefore the preparation for that was for Pharaoh himself to accept defeat and to support Torah. In fact that finally happened. Pharaoh himself chased the Jews out of Egypt, and even sent along animals for them to offer to Hashem, as Moshe had predicted.  

The message to us is encouraging. We see a lot of evil in the world, and our mission is to transform the darkness to light. It seems like a daunting task, and as I often hear from people, seemingly impossible. Our Parsha “Bo” – “come” tells each of us that if we commit to bring light to the darkness of “Egypt,” Hashem will go ahead of us and guide us. Hashem wants us to do the work that is our part so that the change is coming from the world itself. But His presence is here with us and we are assured of success.

Just as ir happened then in the literal Egypt, when Moshe was able to overcome the most powerful evil spiritual forces, so today we have the ability to bring light and redemption to the world. The inspiration for and strength for this comes from Moshe, and when we follow the Torah that he taught us, nothing is impossible.