The "Come-to-Pharaoh" Moment - Bo 5785
Re-reading 19th-century Zionist writers shows that there is nothing new under the sun
I learned recently that a local anti-Zionist Jewish group is holding an “Anti-Zionist Kabbalat Shabbat” in a few weeks. According to the promotional graphic published on Facebook, they will also be celebrating Tu Bishvat, seemingly with the intent of liberating the trees from the colonialism to which they have been most cruelly subjected.
In all honesty, I am happy that they are celebrating Shabbat, as Jews should. I’m not so sure about the anti-Zionist bit, however, or how that fits in with either Shabbat or Tu Bishvat.
In my lunch and learn class, we have been reading foundational texts of Zionism. The earliest such texts, written decades before the modern Jewish movement for self-determination in our own land was even called by that name, are from the 1840s, although of course the classical roots of Zionism are truly ancient. I’ll come back to the 19th century in a moment, but first a brief look at Parashat Bo, from which we read today.
As the parashah opens, our hero Moshe Rabbeinu is returning to Pharaoh, arguably the very first anti-Zionist, after seven plagues to request freedom once again for the Israelites. (Shemot/Exodus 10:1)
וַיֹּ֤אמֶר ה֙ אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֔ה בֹּ֖א אֶל־פַּרְעֹ֑ה כִּֽי־אֲנִ֞י הִכְבַּ֤דְתִּי אֶת־לִבּוֹ֙ וְאֶת־לֵ֣ב עֲבָדָ֔יו
Then God said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh. For I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his courtiers…
Something curious about that verse is the imperative verb, “bo,” which is also the title of the parashah. That word, which most translations (including the one in the Etz Hayim ḥumash) is usually translated as “Go.” But that is not what the word means. Rather, it means “Come to Pharaoh.”* The difference between coming and going, of course, depends on the aspect of the speaker; here it suggests that God is already there, beckoning to Moshe from behind Pharaoh’s throne. When Moshe demands once again the release of the Israelites, this time threatening arbeh, locusts, Pharaoh almost relents, and then casually asks (10:8), ?מִ֥י וָמִ֖י הַהֹלְכִֽים “So, uh, which of you is going to leave, exactly?” (That’s my loose translation.) You can almost hear Pharaoh kind of scratching his head in disinterested confusion. He does not seem to get that Moshe is asking for ALL the Israelites to be set free.
Pharaoh does not want them to go, of course. He’s getting a whole lot of inexpensive labor out of Am Yisrael. In fact, his whole economy might collapse if Moshe gets his way. So, no thanks. Not interested.
Remember also that this is the same Pharaoh who, according to the beginning of the book of Shemot a few weeks ago, לא ידע את יוסף - who “did not know Yosef” - that is, he no longer saw the Israelites living among his people as friends and allies, but now as a threat (Shemot 1:8). He has enslaved the Israelites after they have been living well among the Egyptians for a few generations. And so the “Come-to-Pharaoh” moment has arrived: now it’s really time to go.
And thus begins a pattern which we have seen throughout history. The Jews arrive somewhere new, they are model immigrants who thrive in their new environment, and some time later it ends badly. It is a pattern which has been repeated across continents and millennia. Consider the Jewish Golden Age in Spain, in the 11th-13th centuries, in which Jewish arts and letters and business success flourished in a tolerant, multi-ethnic society, followed by the Inquisition and Expulsion in 1492. Consider the Kingdom of Poland, which welcomed the Jews in the 12th century, and was an exceedingly welcoming environment, until the Chmielnitzky massacres of the 17th century. And in particular, consider the emancipation of the Jews in the German lands in the beginning of the 19th century, when Jews were granted citizenship and were allowed to enter universities and join the professional class. And of course we all know how that ended. Those are the biggest examples; there are many more such places and exiles.
The earliest Zionist writers were keenly aware that, although Jews were now citizens, at least in Central Europe, they were hardly accepted by their non-Jewish neighbors as beloved equals. On the contrary, emancipation had raised the hopes of the Jews, only to have them destroyed by reality.
Writing in 1862, the proto-Zionist Moses Hess decries the failed project of Jewish emancipation in vivid terms:
Because of the hatred which surrounds him on all sides, the German Jew is determined to cast off all signs of his Jewishness and deny his race. No reform of religion, however extreme, is radical enough for the educated German Jews. But even an act of conversion cannot relieve the Jew of the enormous pressure of German antisemitism. The Germans hate the religion of the Jews less than they hate their race–they hate the peculiar faith of the Jews less than they hate their peculiar noses. Reform, conversion, education and emancipation–none of these open the gates of society to the German Jew…
He goes on to skewer the Reform movement of the time, because they were trying to deny Jewish nationhood in favor of their German identity:
The “radical” Reform movement, an appellation which characterizes it very well, because it puts an ax to the root of Judaism, to the national and historical character of its religion–has little chance of success, and the tendency of some Jews to deny their racial descent is equally foredoomed to failure. Jewish noses cannot be reformed, and the black, wavy hair of the Jews will not be changed into blond by conversion, or straightened out by constant combing.
More than two decades later in 1894, a young, secular writer from a well-to-do Budapest Jewish family witnesses the outright antisemitism surrounding the Dreyfus affair in France, and is struck with Zionist fervor. Theodor Herzl did not create the idea of Zionism, but he convened the early Zionist Congresses, he shuttled back and forth to European capitals and “came” to the Turkish Sultan to gather money and political support for the creation of a Jewish State. Emancipation brought not only a resurgence of antisemitism in Europe, but it also created a sense of urgency. The awakening of the Jews to the idea that they were a nation in need of a national home soon became the greatest contemporary movement in Judaism, and much of that was due to Herzl’s tireless work.
In reading these early Zionist writers, what has continually come back to me is, “Plus ça change, plus ça reste la même chose.” The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or, as Ecclesiastes (1:9) reminds us, “אֵ֥ין כׇּל־חָדָ֖שׁ תַּ֥חַת הַשָּֽׁמֶשׁ.” There is nothing new under the sun.
It is an incontrovertible fact that antisemitism is rising in America and around the world, and of course that was true even prior to October 7, 2023. We thought that this country was different for many decades, that we had finally beaten antisemitism. But as faculty senates vote to divest from Israel and BDS operatives collect signatures on the streets of Pittsburgh, as students at Pitt are subjected to literature courses where the denunciation of Israel as genocidal and an apartheid state is de rigueur, we have to wonder: Are we in a “Come-to-Pharaoh” moment? Is this home for the Jews, which has been so good for us, also coming to an inevitable end?
“But wait,” you might say, “aren’t those things about Israel, and not about Jews?”
Sure, you might say that. But I am not hearing about students interrupting classes about Russian history to chant slogans about Ukraine. The Assad regime killed half a million Syrians and displaced millions over the past decade - where were the protesters? The Houthis in Yemen have directly or indirectly caused the death of 259,000 people, and the UN estimates that 70% are children under 5. Where are the anti-Houthi resolutions being put before City Council? The Egyptian government, to which the US government supplies $1.3 billion annually, has carried out widespread extrajudicial killings, mass arrests and torture of political dissidents. Where is the outrage?
Nope. Only Israel is the target. Only Israeli former soldiers are subject to arrest as tourists in Brazil. Only Israeli politicians are cautioned not to travel to states who are parties to the International Criminal Court lest they be apprehended for war crimes. Jewish buildings were targeted here in Pittsburgh with graffiti, and one of the alleged perpetrators has claimed to be a Hamas operative; he and his cell had also acquired explosives and had already set off a trial detonation. (BTW, a second alleged perpetrator is Jewish.)
That is not merely anti-Zionism or anti-Israelism. It is antisemitism.
I have a general principle not to conclude a sermon or devar Torah on a down note, but rather to leave with words of hope for the future. And I have hardly given you any good news this morning.
So let us consider the following: 15 hostages have been released from the clutches of Hamas over the past two weeks; there should be three more today. Thank God. Ceasefires are holding in the north and the south of Israel.
And let’s face it: antisemitism has been with us for a long time, and no matter how much we may decry its current revival, it’s here to stay.
But let’s consider the words of Israeli troubadour Meir Ariel ז”ל, from one of his best-known songs, a hit from 1990: עברנו את פרעה, נעבור גם את זה. Avarnu et Par’oh, na’avor gam et zeh. We survived Pharaoh, and we’ll also survive this.
Antisemitism and its cousin anti-Zionism are not going away. And, as we have done throughout history, we need to keep our eyes on that space behind Pharaoh, to see God beckoning to us. The state of the Jewish nation is still strong; and no matter what courts or professors or ill-informed social-justice warriors might throw at us, we know that נעבור גם את זה - we shall also overcome this.