spirituality >> Torah portion

For Services Rendered

Parshat Bo: Exodus 10:1-13:16;
Jeremiah 46:13-46:28.

"The Children of Israel ... requested
from the Egyptians silver vessels, gold
vessels and garments ... and they
granted their request — so they emptied
Egypt." (Exodus 12:35-36)

T

alk about chutzpah! After
10 plagues and the destruc-
tion of Egypt, not only do the
Jewish people triumphantly march out
of the county, but they actually ask the
Egyptians to hand over their wealth on
the way out.
Much debate surrounds the exact
nature of this request for wealth. In
Hebrew, the word for "request" and
the word for "borrow" are the same.
The Seforno commentary
understands the term to
mean "borrow:' (Exodus
3:22) Others understand it
as a request that the wealth
be given to the Jews with no
expectation of return.
Based on the Talmud, the
Egyptians clearly heard the
word "borrow:' More than
a thousand years later, the
Egyptians even brought their
"case" to none other than
Alexander the Great in an
attempt to recoup their wealth. At the
time, the Jews answered, first pay for the
430 years of unpaid manual labor per-
formed by 600,000 Jewish men — then
we can talk about transferring wealth
back to Egypt! (Tractate Sanhedrin 91a).
Incidentally, a group of Egyptian legal
scholars attempted to bring the same law-
suit in Switzerland in 2003! The Jewish
response was the same.
In another somewhat ambiguous
request, Moses repeatedly asked Pharaoh
only to allow the Jews a three-day respite
in the desert to serve God, even though
he had no intention of returning. What
was the purpose of this apparent subter-
fuge? Why did God choose to orchestrate
events via trickery, when He could have
instructed Moses and the Jewish people
to simply demand what they wanted?
They surely would have gotten it,

due to the Egyptian eagerness to get
the Jews and their plagues out of their
land. So why should they ask for "three-
day respites" or "borrow" the Egyptian
wealth?
Rabbi Eliyahu Kramer, also known as
the Vilna Gaon (1720-1797, Lithuania)
answers this question in a way that also
illuminates the workings of Divine jus-
tice. In Judaism, "punishment" is not an
arbitrary act of revenge. Rather, it is the
natural outcome of a person's actions.
The Heavenly Court interacts with the
world "measure for measure:' (midda
k'negged midda). Spiritually, each action
elicits a reaction, which is perfectly in
synch with the original action. This is the
case even if it is not apparent at
the time it is happening.
The Egyptians tricked
the Jews into slavery. The
Medrash describes how
Pharaoh deceived the Jews by
announcing the availability of
"well-paid, public-works jobs:'
He even joined in the manual
labor to demonstrate his com-
mitment to the project. Under
this pretext, the Jews felt obli-
gated to participate along with
everyone else. Soon, however,
the Egyptians slipped away and forced
the Jews to remain, while simultaneously
depriving them of their wages.
The Heavenly reaction to this deceit
was, essentially, to give Pharaoh and the
Egyptians a taste of their own medicine.
Measure for measure, God called on
Moses and the Jewish people to "deceive"
the Egyptians into setting them free and
giving them their wealth.
The lesson we learn from this is that
"what goes around comes around:' This
means that it is clearly in our best inter-
est to always err on the side of kindness,
love, tolerance and respect because that is
what we all want to get when we're on the
receiving end. ❑

Leiby Burnham is director of outreach
for Weiss Family Partners in Torah at the
Southfield-based Yeshiva Beth Yehudah.

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Conversations

• Have you ever seen a "measure for measure" reaction happen to some-
thing you did, either positive or negative?
• Where can we give someone the benefit of the doubt in the hope that
others will do the same for us?
• If we wanted to mimic God's system of justice in the world, we, too,
should use the "measure for measure" system.
• Who should we be reaching out to, to return a favor in kind?

January 22 • 2015

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