Rabbi Borger
Based on the Nesivos Shalom
By the plague of darkness Moshe was told ‘turn your hand over the heavens and there will be darkness over the land of Egypt’ (Shemos 10:21). The Medrash (Shemos Rabba 14:2) questions where the darkness came from. Rabbi Yehuda says it came from the heavens and he quotes Tehillim 18 that says ‘(Hashem) placed his hidden darkness that surrounds Him in his canopy’. The question is really based on the concept that this ‘darkness’ was not simply an absence of light but rather an entity within itself. So the answer is that this darkness either had to be created or drawn in from another dimension. That dimension says Rabbi Yehuda is from above the heavens.
Rabbi Yehuda’s answer is difficult to understand though because we would think that in the heavens there is only light and if we would want to understand it as being a sort of holy darkness, how did the Egyptians merit to this holy entity being brought down into their world? Another question is why Moshe was told ‘turn (or manipulate) your hand over the heavens’ when it would make more sense for him to lift his hand up towards the heavens as he has done with the other plagues?
The Toldos Yaakov Yosef of Pollone extrapolates that this is really a message for us in terms of serving Hashem. Moshe was told by Hashem to grow to such a high level that he would be able to draw down spiritual energies whose place is really above the heavens. Those energies would be the greatest darkness for Egypt because when you take something holy and you place it in an impure place it is the greatest pain and suffering for the evildoers that perceive it, since they are not used to seeing spiritual light and they are drawn after physical pleasures. That’s what is means when Hashem commanded Moshe to pull the upper light down which would appear as darkness to the evil Egyptians.
This is similar to what Hitler yimach shemo said in Mein kampf that the problem with the Jews is that they invented the (world’s) conscience. This he proposed interferes with people just being able to pursue their own desires and instead makes them accountable for their behavior. In Judaism we believe that a person should be aware of the struggle between the body and the soul and the good and evil inclination and fight to allow the light to overcome darkness and good to triumph over our evil inclination.
The concept of the Toldos Yaakov Yosef is that when a person looks at the sun for a while it literally blinds them. This is what happens when people are presented with a lot of a light and they are not prepared for it, they cannot see anything. We have to gradually expose ourselves to the light and then we get used to it. If we detach ourselves from the light then it is like going into a dark room and coming out again into the light and it often doesn’t feel comfortable.
When the Jewish people left Egypt we are told, ‘they went into the desert for three days and they didn’t find water’ (Shemos 15). Water here is a metaphor for the Torah (Baba Kamma 82a). They were separated for three days from the Torah. The outcome of the separation was ‘they came to mara and they couldn’t drink the water because it was bitter’. Being detached from Torah even for just a few days gave them feel a bitter taste in their Torah learning. For a person who has never being exposed to Torah or Mitzvos it is even more difficult to relate to. Over time it (can) become the sweetest thing in the world. King David said it as follows. “Taste and your will see that Hashem is good. Happy is the person who takes refuge in him” (Tehillim 34:9).
For the Egyptians who were sunk in their desires it was palpable darkness for them to be exposed to this holy light that Moshe brought down from the heavens but for the Jewish people who were thirsty for redemption and sick of being in the impure atmosphere of Egypt it was ‘light in all of their dwelling places’. This was really true by all the plagues. They were each a plague to Egypt and a healing for the Jewish people.
Working in Jewish outreach we see this idea of exposure to spiritual light all the time. In fact Rabbi Aharon Feldman shlit’a pointed out that vegetarians are generally more open to discovering their Judaism because they are not so steeped in their physical ‘carnivore’ desires and have learned a certain level of self-control which makes them more open to spirituality. The guys who unrestraindedly continue pursuing their desires find it much harder to enjoy spirituality and to connect whereas those who fight to make their breakthroughs begin to connect more and more to their learning and observance of Mitzvos.
We are really all in a constant battle between the body and the soul. It is hard for us to connect sometimes because we are so attacked by the body’s push to dominate whether it is for money, desires, honour or prestige. We have to take a step back and think about the bigger picture.
When my brother Leonard (Yehuda Leib ben Shmuel z’l) was in his final weeks of his battle against cancer rachmana litzlan he was already seeing the ‘light’ and beauty within every mitzvah. He would sit back in absolute delight at the light he saw coming out of all the words of Shema in the siddur and he could see sparks of light fluttering all around him. He found every word of the Shabbos Zemiros ‘absolutely beautiful’. He saw things with a clarity that we can’t in that state. What we should take away from his experience is that there is a tremendous amount of spiritual light all around us that we can’t necessarily see but we should know it is there and allow ourselves to be enveloped in its embrace. We should expose ourselves gradually to it by doing more mitzvos; take our opportunities to connect to it because there’s a lot of warmth and closeness to be gained. Let’s open ourselves up just a little more to it and see the goodness that it brings.
Wishing you an illuminated Shabbos!
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