Vaera

Hi,

This week's portion is Va'era (colloquially pronounced vah-AY-rah).

The portion begins where last week’s portion left off: Moshe has just turned to Gd and asked why his mission hasn’t succeeded in making things easier for the Jews in Egypt. Gd reminds him yet again that He is the Gd of the ancestors of the Jews, and He will set things straight soon enough.

The portion then begins to list the genealogy of the Jews, but it only reaches Moshe and Aharon, within the tribe of Levi, and then it returns to the mission of Moshe and Aharon to the Egyptian Pharaoh.

Moshe and Aharon return to the Pharaoh, and have a showdown with magicians who seem to use sorcery to mimic Gd's miracles. Pharaoh and the magicians deny that Gd can force the Egyptians to free the Jews.

In response, Gd sends Moshe to the Pharaoh to warn him that He will send plagues upon the Pharaoh and upon Egypt. This begins a cycle of plagues in which Gd twice sends Moshe to warn Pharaoh of plagues, then Gd strikes without warning, then He sends Moshe twice more, then strikes without warning, then sends Moshe twice more, then strikes without warning, and then brings the 10th plague, the Death of the Firstborn. With the onset of almost every plague, the Pharaoh promised he would let the Jews go if Gd would only rescind the plague, but then the Pharaoh changed his mind after the plague was removed.

This week's portion contains seven of the plagues:
1. Blood – Gd strikes at one of the Egyptian gods, the Nile, turning it to blood.

2. Frogs – Gd rattles the people, overrunning them with frogs, but the plague is not life-threatening.

3. Lice – Rattling and somewhat painful, but still not life-threatening.

4. "Arov" – There are two views as to what this was. Some say it was a plague of bugs, others say it was an attack by wild animals.

5. Cattle Plague - Much of the cattle died in this plague.

6. Boils – Painful and destructive without being fatal.

7. Hail – A mixture of fire and ice. Fatal to anyone outside. Some of the Egyptians believed Moshe's warning and brought their livestock indoors before the plague.

The Torah portion ends with a statement about the after-effects of the Hail, and this statement is also a general lesson: Those who could not bend were struck down by the Hail, while those who were flexible survived.

Have a great day,
Mordechai