This week we read about the last of the plagues in Egypt. The ultimate plague, the one which finally convinces Pharaoh and the Egyptians to let the Israelites go, is the death of the firstborn sons. This plague stands out, in contrast to the first nine, as especially tragic. Whereas the earlier plagues certainly hurt, and may well have caused fatalities, they also had something humorous about them - the frogs swarming all over Egypt, Pharaoh and his advisors itching with lice and then boils - it seemed as if the Egyptians were being toyed with by God, for our sake.

At the end of last week's parsha, Moshe and his brother Aharon, as instructed by God, had gone to Pharaoh and asked that the Israelites be allowed to take a few days off from their labors in order to go and worship God in the wilderness. Pharaoh refused, and punished the people for their impertinence and laziness by cutting off their supply of straw, with which they made bricks for building, and demanding that they produce the same number of bricks as before.

Recently, a lot of ink has been spilled and pixels generated over the American-Jewish demographic question. A survey, commissioned by a leading American Jewish organization, at tremendous cost, initially seemed to indicate that the number of American Jews has dropped, and will continue to drop, at what is, for many, an alarming rate. In fact, these statistics are so alarming and threatening that the full survey has suddenly and mysteriously disappeared, and will apparently not be released.

This week's parsha has a very dramatic and portentous ending. After the patriarch Yaakov, on his deathbed, blesses his children and then passes away, he is embalmed and taken to Canaan for burial. His children return from the funeral to Egypt, where Yosef also dies.

The theme of physical beauty figures prominently in the book of Genesis, and specifically in the story of Joseph. We are told that the matriarchs, Sarah, Rivka, and Rachel were all "fair of form, and fair to look at", or "exceedingly beautiful to look at". Pointedly, Leah, the sister whom Yaakov did not want to marry, is not described in this way. Joseph, we are told, was also "fair of form, and fair to look at". In this week's parsha, we have a whole group of creatures about whom it is said they were "fair to look at", and I would, in fact, like to take a look at them.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Attributed to Edmund Burke.

This dvar Torah is an attempt to remember, reconstruct, and embellish something I learned from Rabbi Jay Miller in the early 1970's.  If there is anything here that is less than wonderful, it's either a failure on my part to remember correctly, or an embellishment.