By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO—Just as the ABC network hoped many people would do, I got myself ready for  Passover seders by watching the "Ten Commandments" mini-series, starring Dougray Scott as Moses.  However, in that I watched the four hours of television programming by playing it back on my videotape, fast-forwarding through the commercials, I may have disappointed the network. By viewing the entire program on  Wednesday morning, instead of in Monday and Tuesday night installments, I perhaps saved myself an hour

People already are comparing and contrasting the series' special effects to those of the famous 50-year-old movie of the same name starring Charleton Heston in the title role. I found myself focusing less on miracle and battle scenes and more on the discussions that writer Ron Hutchinson imagined between Moses and Menerith (Naveen Andrews), a made-up character who supposedly was the son of the Egyptian princess (Padma Lakshmi) who drew Moses out of the water as a baby.  In this midrash of Hutchinson's, the two boys grew up together but were parted after Moses fled Egypt for killing a taskmaster who beat a slave.

The step-brothers meet up again in a new Pharaoh's court—Menerith as an officer of the Pharaoh's army, and Moses as God's spokesman, demanding freedom for the slaves.  Pharaoh (Paul Rhys)  instructs Menerith  to make certain that the upstart Moses learns the meaning of hard work, but Menerith recognizes him as his long-lost brother.  They embrace out of the sight of the Pharaoh.  When Moses starts to introduce the Egyptian to his Hebrew slave brother Aaron (Linus Roache) as another brother, Aaron will have none of it.  "I see only one of my masters," Aaron snaps.

For Moses, who once lived in the Egyptian palace, it is not so easy to divide the world into "us" and "them."  Menerith and Moses feel real brotherly affection towards each other—more, in fact, than Moses feels for Aaron whom he did not get to know well until after he returned from the desert.  Equally caught between family and group loyalty, Menerith tries to mediate the dispute between Pharaoh and Moses but, with his heart hardened by God, Pharaoh stubbornly resists Moses' demands. Although the plagues sent by God cause suffering for him and his people, the Pharaoh continues to resist right through the Tenth Plague, which is the climactic killing of the first born.

The Angel of Death kills not only  the beloved son of Pharaoh, but also the son of Menerith, a boy whom Moses thinks of as his own nephew.  Moses tells Menerith that  the plague was God's work, not his, and that he grieves for the boy. Menerith suggests that Moses has a cruel God. Moses responds that long ago the previous Pharaoh had sent soldiers to the homes of the Hebrew slaves to kill their newborn sons. But Menerith refuses to acknowledge any justice in this divine retribution, protesting that neither he nor his son were involved in, much less responsible for, that attack on the Hebrew slaves.  Menerith asks Moses if God were to tell Moses to kill him, would Moses comply?  Moses does not answer.

Not God but the Pharaoh demands fratricide. He orders Menerith to chase down Moses and the fleeing Hebrews. Complying, Menerith catches up with his step-brother at the Reed Sea, and after God parts the waters to allow the Hebrews to pass through, Menerith is among the Egyptians who are drowned when the waters close back up again.  Moses, after finding his step-brother's drowned body, cannot join the dancing and singing led by his sister Miriam (Susan Lynch) on the eastern side of the sea. As we watch him mourn his step-brother, we are reminded of the seder when we diminish our cups of wine in acknowledgment that the Egyptians, too, were God's children, and that we should mourn their loss.

But that's the Haggadah, a fairly flexible body of work that seems to change with the social norms of the times.  The television mini-series makes the point  that compassion, divine or human, was in short supply in the biblical story of the journey of the Hebrews from slavery to the Promised Land. At one point, Pharaoh demands an explanation  if the contest of wills were between him and God, why so many innocent Egyptians should suffer—kind of a chutzpadik question given all the suffering Pharaoh's  reign inflicts upon others.

This question concerning the justice of mass punishment is raised again and again in the mini-series, at least by implication.  After defeating the Amalekites, who had been attacking Hebrew stragglers, Moses orders that their city to be set afire.  He subsequently questions God whether this will be the fate of the Hebrew, to be forced "to keep fighting and winning to prove that we are working for You?"  God makes no reply.

Later, Moses orders that those who worshiped the Golden Calf, while he was on Mount Sinai to receive the Law, be put to death. No provision is made to spare children who blindly may have followed their parents without  understanding  what was at stake.  Where is the justice in that?

Providing contrast between the quality of  justice meted out to the masses and that which should be accorded to individuals, the scriptwriter of the series has Moses intervening to prevent one man falsely accused of murder from being stoned to death in the absence of any eye witnesses.  Later when the real culprit is found—and the motive of covering up a case of adultery discovered—Moses agonizes over having the murderer and his adulterous partner stoned to death. 

Had he not once killed an Egyptian in a fit of anger—to protect this very same man, who now stood before him as a murderer himself?  Was this man's act of passion any worse than his own?  And if he were to show favoritism to the man, who had been his loyal follow, rather than carrying out the sentence, wouldn't he lose the trust of the Hebrew masses?

In first imagining and then dramatizing  these kinds of moral issues, Hutchinson "has helped to refine the story of the Exodus.  Therefore I welcome it as an interesting addition to the television liturgy—whether or not the scenes of the parting of the sea were better or worse than those in the previous version.