Bo—Need To Know

Moshe Rabbeinu makes an executive decision.

As explained in TB Brachos 4a, Moshe tells Pharaoh and his court that the Plague of the First Born will strike “kachatzos”—as “on or about midnight”, loosely translated—in slight contradistinction to G-d’s directive, that the plague would strike “bachatzos”, or “at midnight”, exactly.   The implication in the Talmudic text is that Moshe’s editing received a Divine imprimatur: if Pharaoh’s astrologers had miscalculated and it would have appeared that the plague had not occurred at midnight, they would have considered it an opening to discredit the Divine provenance of the plague.

In theory, one might question how likely that scenario was.  Consider that Egypt was already on edge; the country had all but been destroyed by the previous nine plagues, the nation seemed to be siding with the Jews against Pharaoh and the court [see 11:3], and the court itself had issues with the Pharaonic stance [10:7]: would a slight astronomic miscalculation truly have any appreciably significant effect on the Egyptian reaction to the result of Makkas Bechoros, where אֵ֣ין בַּ֔יִת אֲשֶׁ֥ר אֵֽין־שָׁ֖ם מֵֽת, and the whole population thought כֻּלָּ֥נוּ מֵתִֽים?  If the astrologers had tried to make an issue of it, would anyone have paid attention?

Moshe’s “edit” might have been a case of עת לעשות לה׳ הפרו תורתך : if Moshe had given Pharaoh's astrologers even the slightest opening at that moment, it might have even just slightly diminished the “unity” that prevailed among the Egyptians after Makkas Bechoros—כֻּלָּ֥נוּ מֵתִֽים as the Egyptian bizarro כְּאִישׁ אֶחָד בְּלֵב אֶחָד —from Pharaoh on down to even the other non-Hebrew slaves who were almost as Hebrephobic as their Egyptian masters.  Moshe took into account what he saw as entrenched local cultural tendencies, and predicting the that the real Kiddush Hashem would resulted from the effect of the plague, he didn’t want to leave open the possibility of that moment being diminished even slightly.   Hence the edit, which, pace the midrashim, seems to have been approved after the fact at least.

This incident may have educational implications, with support both Scriptual and post-Scriptural: the Jews at Har Sinai had the Revelation on a personal level “adjusted”—as it were—based upon each individual’s ability to receive and withstand the message.  Yet, prior to that, at krias yam suf, it was said that “a maidservant saw at the sea what Yeshayah (Isaiah) and Yechezkel (Ezekiel) did not see.”  Ostensibly an insistence on the doctrinal can detract from the experiential.  This is true: but only up to the point that said doctrinal isn’t subverted, only that it isn’t necessarily presented all at once.

[Consider, even, the Talmudic narrative surrounding the Ptolmaic translation (TB Megilla 9a), where G-d performed a miracle and allowed for simultaneous translation even with ostensible departures from p’shat; but the anniversary of the date—8 Tevet—was at one time considered a day of national mourning and fasting.]

One attempt to explain this—which, to this authors mind, ultimately further complicated the matter because, even though that author made the claim up front that “you’re lied to in Baal Teshuva Yeshiva”, he couldn’t seem to decide whether to condemn or condone the approach—did say this, which might encapsulate the entire educational conundrum:

“If the Yeshiva is devoted to the delicate art of forming real Jews, the Rabbi’s answer must be complicated…Truth is ineffable and simple, and therefore cannot be communicated, even to the perhaps paltry extent the Rabbi has attained it.  The individual is complex, communicates only through fragmented words, and is looking for an answer.”

In other words, The Message might be received if presented in a more subtle form; and not only will it not detract from the Message, it might enhance it.

That said, there are some approaches that should definitely be considered out of bounds.   Aside from the aforementioned piece—which apparently just describes the philosophical and educational conundra, but doesn’t delve into what some have described as marketing ploys—there are cases where the philosophy itself is twisted, and the justified to “make people frum”.

But don’t take my word for it:

“The way Prof. Barry Simon and I see it is that nine years ago [1998] we saw the [Torah] Codes as probably without merit, and possibly dangerous.  Things have changed. Today [2007] we regard them as definitely without merit, and certainly dangerous to the Torah community…We understand the methodology of the experimenters much better. We’ve had an opportunity to subject the phenomenon to other tests, including one agreed upon in advance by both sides. We’ve seen some of the problems generated by people coming to believe that this is really a part of Torah.”

In the end, one just has to make sure that what one presents as Torah—or even as part of Torah—really is a part of Torah.