Dvar Torah on Parshat Bo

In Parshat Bo we come to the end of the ten plagues, brought upon the Egyptians by God to convince them to let their Israelite slaves go. The ultimate plague, the one that finally convinces Pharaoh and the Egyptians to free the Israelites, is the death of the first-born Egyptians. It is described by the Torah in the following way:  "And Moshe said, this is what God has said: 'At midnight I will go out into Egypt. And all the first-borns in the Land of Egypt will die, from Pharaoh's first-born who sits on his throne to the first-born of the maidservant at the mill stone'..." (Exodus, 11, 5-6). Later on, when the plague actually begins, there is a similar verse: "And it was midnight, and God smote every first-born in Egypt from the first-born of Pharaoh on his throne to the first-born of the prisoners in the dungeon..." (Exodus, 12,29). 

The obvious question is this: why are the most disenfranchised members of Egyptian society - the prisoners, the servants - also included in the terrible plague of the first-born? Could they, too, have possibly been guilty of oppressing the Israelites?  Were they responsible for Egypt's terrible treatment of the Jews? Surely they should be counted among the oppressed, the downtrodden, rather than being punished along with the oppressors. Why do they share the same fate as those who enslaved and imprisoned both them and the Israelites?

Rashi explains that the prisoners deserved this punishmant, as they had been happy to see the suffering of the Israelite slaves. Furthermore, had they been spared, and survived the plague, they would have claimed that their Gods had been responsible for punishing the Egyptians who imprisoned them, to redress the way they had shamed them, rather than recognizing that it was the God of the Israelites who had acted on behalf of the downtrodden. The maidservants also deserved this plague, as they, too, had rejoiced at the suffering of the Israelites, and had, in fact, subjugated them as well, treating them as slaves, as their own Egyptian masters treated both them and the Israelites. 

Clearly, Rashi felt that were it not for these reasons for punishing them the servants and prisoners would have been spared, and would have lived through the plague of the first-born, inasmuch as they, oppressed themselves, were not of the ruling class, were not guilty of enslaving the Israelites, and therefore did not deserve to be punished. Sadly for them, this was not the case; they were as guilty of oppressing the Israelites as their own masters and jailers were. It would seem that rather than identifying with the Israelites, their fellow-sufferers at the hands of the Egyptian elites, the slaves and servants of Egypt internalized the attitudes of their  Egyptian masters, rejoiced at the suffering of the Jewish people, and took advantage of their slightly higher status to enslave them even more. They sided with the oppressors, rather than with the oppressed, and this is what earned them the same awful punishment the Egyptians received - the death of their first-born children.

When one finds oneself in a highly stratified society, with winners and losers, rulers and servants, the powerful and the disenfranchised, it is tempting to take any and every opportunuity to align oneself with the winners, to make their corrupt notions of entitlement and privelege your own, and join them in oppressing whoever might be somewhat lower than you on the totem pole. The servant and prisoner classes in Egypt did just that. They rejoiced at the fact that someone suffered more than they did, and joined in, when they could, in adding to their suffering. Rather than making common cause with their fellow-sufferers, and recognizing the message of freedom that their God, through Moshe and Aharon, was communicating to the Egyptians, they chose to internalize Egyptian notions of privelege, and behave towards those who were even less fortunate than they were just as the ruling classes of Egypt did.

The other element which Rashi introduces, the fact that, had they lived through the plague of the first-born, the prisoners and servants would have taken credit for it, and seen their false Gods as being responsible for punishing the Egyptians, adds an interesting dimension to the story.  Rashi says that these other disadvantaged people would have not seen the plagues as being directed towards freeing the enslaved, but for "redressing  the way they had been shamed" by the Egyptians. This is a much less  noble and important goal than achieving real freedom.  Unlike the Israelites, who see the plagues as a blow for freedom, justice, and equality, the servants and prisoners would have only seen it as a punishment that would have struck some sort of symbolic blow against the Egyptians, revenging the shame they felt at their lowly status. They would not  have understood it as a transformational event, freeing them.  The reason for this is simple: just as they internalized Egyptian attitudes towards the Israelite slaves, they also internalized the Egyptian view of themselves, as slaves and prisoners, and did not imagine that ever changing. Even the plagues, as dramatic as they were, would not have changed their essential stauses and identities. That is how completely they saw themselves as their rulers saw them - as less worthy, less entitled, and less free. Locked, as they were, into the ruling class's definition of who they, and the Israelites, were, God's intervention would not have changed their self-perception, it would have only given them the satisfaction of some momentary revenge.      

This is a common trap which oppressed or marginalised people can easily fall into. Looking for some edge, some way to identify themselves as being on a higher status than those on the lowest rungs of society, they join their oppressors in oppressing those who are slightly worse off than they are. In doing so, they also buy into the values and definitions of the ruling elite, and thereby accept their own marginalised and disenfranchised status as well. The plague of the first-born teaches us that those at the bottom of Egyptian society could, and should, have empathized with the Jews, made common cause with them, opposed, along with them, the Egyptian rulers' values and norms, and chosen to be on the side of the oppressed rather than stand with the oppressors. By identifying with the Egyptians, by internalising their world-view, in a bid to gain some measure of status, they became part of their corrupt value system, and, ultimately, signed their own death warrants.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Shimon Felix