By Rabbi Alexis Roberts, Congregation  Dor Hadash, San Diego

We continue this week with the story of the Exodus, the story told at the Passover table: "That with a mighty hand, the Lord freed you from Egypt." (Exodus 13:9)

Here we read the narrative of the last plagues and the beginning steps toward freedom. The action is interrupted as the rituals for remembering all this are described in detail: the special Passover sacrifice to remind us how we escaped the final plague and the eating of matzoh to remind us of the hurried departure.

The biggest moral challenge for me in this story is how to understand the suffering of the Egyptians. It is not only the stubborn Pharaoh who suffers, and even he suffers much more than he might have, had God not purposely hardened his heart. We are told several times that the plagues are set up to demonstrate God's power before all the world.

Not only do many apparently innocent Egyptians suffer, but they suffer even when they are disposed (by God) to be kind and generous toward the Israelites.

Reconstructionists try to see the text as it is, situated in the time and place it comes from, without glossing over what seems wrong or troublesome to us from our contemporary point of view. We take the initiative to salvage what seems right and true in Torah, without feeling we must take it all as equally good and noble.

What seems right and true is that God has the power to save wondrously, even when all hope is lost. What seems wrong is that innocents had to suffer and die, and that this causes the people to rejoice on the far bank of the Red Sea.

Even the ancient rabbis were uncomfortable with the rejoicing at the downfall of the Egyptians. They created the midrash that God berated the angels for rejoicing at the drowning of the enemy in the Red Sea. This midrash is incorporated into the seder as the reason we dip out those drops
of wine as we recite the plagues.

The plagues always bring to mind my dear aunt who joined our seder every year as I was growing up. When it came time to dip out the wine in remembrance of the plagues, she refused. She just wasn¹t sorry for the Egyptians. Everyone treated this as a daffy eccentricity. I know it was based in a bitterness about certain things she couldn't forgive. When one has been brutalized, or when a whole people has suffered at the hands of another, forgiveness and compassion are difficult to achieve.

But there is also another kind of truth in the suffering. It seems to be a fact of human society that tyrannical leaders who cause their own people to suffer do fall, but often only after many innocents have died. The struggle for freedom and justice is long and arduous, and often accompanied by tragic losses.

The freedom God wants for us is not anarchy, but rather freedom to act in resonance with the Divine. This freedom is rarely the jolly road to personal security. Becoming free enough of all of our inner Pharaohs, all of our fear and ego, to really act with integrity in all circumstances is a life-long task.

Why does it have to be that way? Perhaps societies, like individuals, are terribly conflicted and fearful about upholding ideals when they require sacrifice and insecurity. If we think there isn¹t enough for everybody, we will fight to keep our own stuff, even if it's cruel. We will ignore
injustice, just so we keep getting fed. When we feel threatened, the one trying to take our stuff becomes just an enemy, just an obstacle, and we lose the sense of the equal sacredness of all life. When someone has attacked and harmed us, we feel authorized to attack them back.

It seems important to me that human beings do not take revenge in this story. God makes a judgment and brings a punishment, but the people do not "win" through a military uprising or other violence of their own invention. They win simply and only because God chooses to redeem them, in God's time, in God's way.

The whole point of the demonstration is to prove to everyone that only God can make anything happen, and to reinforce the imperative to dedicate ourselves to discovering and complying with what God requires. The rest of the Torah is mostly a comment about how difficult this is.

It is easy, and incorrect, to imagine that God prefers the Jews to other kinds of people. We read that a "mixed multitude" of Egyptians joined the people as they left Egypt. In the rules for the Passover sacrifice, we read that "strangers," non-Israelites, may partake of it too, if they are
circumcised. In other words, this is not a privilege exclusive to hereditary Jews, but available to anyone who wishes to demonstrate loyalty to God.

The most beautiful words in the portion, in my opinion, are "And you shall explain to your child on that day, it is because of what the Lord did for me when I went free from Egypt." (Exodus 13:8) Each of us must try to so identify with this story that we can tell it in the first person. It is a
story of a gift of inestimable worth, given by God, that requires a grateful and humble response.
The important thing to remember is that when we are truly free, God's Presence becomes obvious and central, as does the infinite worth of every soul.