
Each week a few good friends gather for a potluck supper and
a glimpse at the part of the scriptures that will be taught during services at
the synagogue on the following Shabbat.
A
couple of weeks ago our potluck was pretty luxurious:melt-in-your mouth brisket, kasha
varnishkes, savory roasted squash and brussels sprouts, a green salad and a delicate pastry
filled with apples and dark cherries
Well fortified with all these treats, we plunged into
“darkness” - - the ninth of the ten plagues that
were visited on Egypt.
Using a commentary by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, we pondered his
question: “What is this plague of darkness doing here (in the order of the
ten)? We discussed the symbolic
significance of the various earlier plagues and the notion that while they
increased in severity as the narrative progressed some of them were mostly a
nuisance. Darkness might fit into the
“nuisance” category. Apparently there
were frequent dust storms in the region where the narrative is set that often
created a temporary darkness - a nuisance - to which people became accustomed,
knowing it would blow itself out within a day or two. We explored with Rabbi
Sacks the difference between “signs and wonders” and drew closer to his
conclusion that the plague of a “darkness that can be felt” was less a wonder
and more a sign - a “coded communication” as Rabbi Sacks suggests.

The obliteration of the sun, causing a “darkness that can be
felt” might be interpreted as a sign that the God of Israel was more powerful
than Ra, the sun god of Egypt.
But
Rabbi Sacks argues that rather than an expression of Divine power over the sun,
the plague represents "...
the rejection by God of a civilization that
turned one man, Pharaoh, into an absolute ruler (son of the sun god)with the ability
to enslave other human beings - and of a culture that could tolerate the murder
of children because that is what Ra himself did."

While we try to stay close to the text, it is inevitable
that we would also try to see how it informs and addresses, and perhaps, even parallels life today.
With the irresponsible wielding of so much
power at the highest levels of government, with the lives of young children at
risk on our borders, with the callous disregard for the well being of
hundreds of thousands of federal employees
(not to mention the population of the entire country being adversely affected
in myriad ways yet to be calculated), it is hard not to see the warnings, the
signs, the coded communication in the sacred texts.

There was a total eclipse of the moon the other night.
The sky here was overcast so the eclipse was
not visible, but there was a quality of darkness that night that was almost
palpable - a darkness that could be felt.
Rabbi Sacks draws the connections.
Placed elsewhere in the lineup of the 10
plagues, the darkness might be absorbed as one more nuisance plague.
But placed where it is, leading up to the
tenth plague that results in Pharaoh’s final acquiescence to the
demand to let Israel go into freedom, the
darkness that can be felt does, indeed, become a coded communication for the
generations to follow:
"The ninth plague was a divine communication
that said: there is not only physical darkness, but also moral darkness. The best test of a civilization is to see how
it treats its children, its own and others’. In an age of broken families,
neglected and impoverished children, and worse - the use of children as
instruments of war - that is a lesson we still need to learn."
It is hard to escape the truth of the challenge - - we are a
people who sit in a moral darkness that can be felt. The sacred stories hold the coded
communication for our liberation. The
prophetic voice from a bit farther along in history champions hope - “the
people who sit in darkness have seen a great light...” We do not have the luxury of just sitting in
this moral darkness that can be felt.
Elsewhere in the sacred texts there is a call to us to be “light for the
world.”

Ever since our observations of MLK Day, an often repeated line keeps echoing in my brain: “The moral arc of the universe is long and it bends
toward justice.”
At the moment, that
arc seems shrouded in darkness - - waiting for us to be the light that will
illuminate it - the light that shines in the darkness and is not overcome.
Vicky Hanjian
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