Parsha Bo בֹּא

Parsha BO gives us the last plague, and we enter the parsha when God describes to Moses his plan to kill the first born of every Egyptian—from the “Slave girl who is behind the millstone” to “the first born of Pharaoh who sits behind the throne” to “the first born of the cattle.”  This is a massive punishment which seems to tell us that no one—even the cattle—was completely innocent when it comes to the enslavement of our people.

          And just before we encounter these instructions, God has told Moshe that this next (and last) plague is the one that will finally, without any question, lead Pharaoh to “drive you out from here one and all.”  And so it does.  But in preparing for that final departure, the people are told to “borrow” from the Egyptians silver and gold.  Is “BORROW” the right word? I assume that we don’t want to believe that we forcibly took this Egyptian booty. Rashi tells us that the verb DE-BAR-NAH is really a “request,” not a demand. Were we entitled to this compensation for all those years of slavery? Was this payback?

          Some interpretations remind us that God promised Abraham not only that his descendants would populate the earth in great numbers, but also that they would have enormous wealth. So this could be the fulfillment of that prophecy. But even if that’s true, it doesn’t tell us whether the Egyptians gave us the silver and gold willingly or out of sheer terror or because they recognized the wrong that they had done to us. Our Eytz Hayyim below the line (Rabbi Kushner, Z”L) offers another thought: that the slaves could have stolen everything from their Egyptian masters during the PREVIOUS plague—during the plague of darkness. And because they didn’t, the Egyptian people grew to admire their moral virtue—what Rabbi Kushner calls their “moral greatness”--and so they gave them the silver and gold willingly as a recognition of the ethical character of the people.

          I don’t know about you, but I find it hard to believe that ANYONE in power gives it up that easily.

          And this passage also is almost exactly in line with an earlier passage in SH’MOT where God outlines for Moshe what is going to happen and what Moshe’s role in it will be. He tells Moses that, toward the end, the Egyptians will look favorably upon the Israelites and give them their gold and silver. You will not leave empty-handed, God says.  That doesn’t sound like great wealth. It sounds more like a reasonable amount of resources to be able to start the next stage of the journey. But God also says something a little different in the earlier version: He tells MOSHE that the EGYPTIANS WILL BE STRIPPED.  Another translation is that “YOU SHALL EMPTY OUT EGYPT.” Doesn’t that sound a little harsher?  So it’s not just HOW they came to get the riches they got, but also exactly HOW MUCH they took (or “borrowed”).

          Over the years, various people—including an Egyptian law professor in the early 2000s—have tried to sue for reparations for precisely this episode.  Allen Dershowitz, law professor and well-known author of a number of books (including Chutzpah) once called these suits NUISANCE suits. Incredibly silly, he said. And he also said that he’d love to see one go to court so that a judge could figure out exactly what was owed to the 600,000 Jews who slaved for hundreds of years without compensation.