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Exodus 10:1-13:16
Jeremiah 46:13-28
Black and white with no shades of gray. That’s the way this week’s portion describes the plague of darkness.
“There was a thick darkness throughout the land of Egypt … but for all the children of Israel there was light in their dwellings” (Exodus 10:22-23).
The Jewish people, all settled in the land of Goshen, had light; but in Egypt proper where there were no Israelites, the darkness was complete.
There were no areas in which rays of sun shined on one house but not on those of the neighbors, because Jews and Egyptians lived in completely separate places. Segregation was complete.
This gives us insight into one of the most troubling questions about the persecution of the Israelites by Pharaoh. How did Pharaoh get his people to go along with his evil decrees?
Maybe they enslaved the Jews out of self-interest. All the Egyptians benefited from the free labor.
But what about drowning every Jewish baby boy in the Nile River? How could Pharaoh have gotten his people to go along with that?
This mass murder would only be possible if the Egyptians had stopped viewing Jews as people. I suspect that any Egyptian who had personal friendships with Jewish mothers and fathers wouldn’t be willing to support the systematic murder of their kids.
But Egyptians who didn’t know any Jews by name might be susceptible to propaganda put out by Pharaoh that demonized them and portrayed the Israelites as inferior, not worthy of life.
Segregation and isolation were the breeding grounds that enabled these prejudices to develop.
Why did Jacob’s family originally seek to live in the land of Goshen, separate from the rest of the Egyptians? Back in Genesis 46:28-34, we find two reasons.
Jacob sent his son Judah ahead to Goshen, according to medieval French commentator Rashi, in order to establish a place for teaching Torah. Jacob was concerned about assimilation, worried that in Egypt his family would take on Egyptian values and lose its unique spiritual identity.
Joseph had a second concern. His family’s livelihood as shepherds would cause friction with the Egyptians who abhorred it on religious grounds.
Both of these are noble motives. Assimilation has always been a concern for the Jewish community, and many facets of Jewish tradition aim specifically to prevent it. And of course it is important that groups avoid publicly offending each other when their cultures clash.
But an unfortunate side effect of this isolation was to allow stereotypes to develop that eventually the evil Pharaoh exploited.
This issue is of course still with us today. While it is wonderful for our Jewish community to devote its energies inward, when our contact with other ethnic groups is limited we are prone to allowing others to develop hurtful stereotypes about us; and, in turn, we are also liable to develop prejudices about others.
There is perhaps no area in which this is more important than the Arab-Israeli conflict. The less interaction between Jews and Arabs, the more susceptible each side will be to demonizing and dehumanizing the other.
In Israel proper, due to security concerns, it can be difficult for Arabs and Israelis to interact. But in the United States, thank goodness, it is more feasible. We cross paths at work, at school, and in other secular settings.
If we summon the courage and take the initiative to reach out, we won’t be changing the world. But we will at least be taking a small step to breaking down stereotypes and making the world a place more amenable to peace.
Rabbi Shlomo Levin is spiritual leader of Lake Park Synagogue.
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