Rabbi Binyamin Yuhanan Parshat Bo 1

good evening today we are learning parat Bo May our learning be for all the Jewish people that need and and yua Ben Le we are using the article Kash and we are on page last week we started speaking about the plagues that God brought upon egyptions for the Jewish people to see and to be inspired one of the reasons that Hashem brought the 10 plagues on Egyptians is to punish the Egyptians so that the Jewish people see the Revenge that God did upon their enemies and they see that God is just and second reason is that the Jewish people should see the Miracles and learn about the power of God the greatness of God that God is uh supervising the world and is um in control of nature he he can change the rules of nature sorry he can change the rules of nature according to what his people need what the Jewish people need and in this case the Jewish people needed two lessons number one they needed to learn that God is just and he gives reward and Punishment according to people's uh actions and the second lesson Jewish people needed to learn was about the power of God that God is not a being that is far away not connected to us but rather he is what calls a personal God uh that means that God has connection to every person every individual he's not a national God he's not a universe God he is my God personal and that is why in our prayer we say we say you are my God and the god of my forefathers first of all Hashem is my God and after that he is the god that we had in our family and in our nation all the way from our forefathers and these things we learned from the 10 plagues because Hashem said to par let my people go let my firstborn son go so Hashem showed his love to the Jewish people by calling us his firstborn baby and his chosen nation and uh through these 10 plagues Hashem showed that he means business that he actually can provide what he promised he promised that he will make us a great nation that he will give us the land of Israel and he promised to Abraham that the Jewish people will be enslaved for 400 years in the land not their own and then they will leave that country with a great wealth and now time came for him to fulfill his promise okay now chapter 10 verse1 on page 341 Hashem said to Moshe come to par and speak to him again because I have made his heart and the Heart of his servants stubborn why verse two explains why does Hashem make par stubborn so that you may tell your son and your grandson that I made mockery of Egypt I made fun of Egypt with my signs that I placed among them with the Miracles Hashem wants that we should actually say these words the Egyptians thought that they are Mighty and Powerful both physically and spiritually they can control the physical world and they can control the spiritual world that's what they thought and Hashem showed them no you were able to turn water into blood you were able to turn stick into snake you were able to uh bring out frogs through sorcery but that's where your powers finish after that every other Maka from number three and on the sorcerers could not reproduce so Hashem showed them you're not in control of the spiritual world and Hashem said you're not even in control of the physical world everything that you hold dear will be destroyed from your River to your ground to your crops to your animals and even to your own selves until the last plague the death of the firstborn people so we are supposed to speak to our children and tell them you know Hashem made fun of Egyptians he played with them they tried to fight and he like with with toys he was throwing them one way and then another and they were trying to fight and they couldn't Hashem was mocking the Egyptians enjoying the game and uh today I heard from the bakan hotline an interesting idea about what's going on in the world now he said the same idea is happening all over the world people are saying we are in control we have advanced technology we have advanced medicine and we're not afraid so Hashem says okay what about my little creature a virus the tiniest one and we say that's okay we're going to close the borders and we're going to put on masks and we're going to be protect Ed and hasm says no if I want it to spread throughout the world I'll make it spread no border closings and no masks are going to help and the virus attacked everybody and the people said it's okay we will use our bioengineering technology and we will develop a vaccine to kill the virus and Hashem said try and they tried and they administered the first dose and Hashem said that that's okay I'll send a a a a brother of the virus and the people said o what going we going to do so they developed a second vaccine so Hashem said I'm going to send a cousin of the virus and they developed a third vaccine and Hashem said I'm going to send an uncle of the virus and they developed the fourth vaccine and as you see it's it's a cycle that until people realize it's not in our hands we give up Hashem please help it's going to continue and thank God people start to wake up and as I was listening to radio I heard two wonderful things finally one commentator said Omicron variant is a gift of God to humanity what does he mean and he explained because until now we've been trying to fight the virus and we couldn't and we were scared and God sent us such a u virus that infects everybody so everybody's going to get sick as it's happening now and he's going to send a virus that is mild it uh doesn't kill people so much it's safe and the antibodies that it produces are good against all the other variants so far so Hashem decided to put a stop to this pandemic so he sent a virus that's going to go against the first vaccine the second vaccine the third vaccine against the natural immunity and he's going to infect everybody and through that virus he's going to heal everybody amazing thing the same thing that Hashem sent to punish people once the people realize that there is God and I better change my ways Hashem says I'm going to send the virus itself to heal you amazing with the same as it says in Russia clean clean you fix something with itself and that's what the way of God is he shows us that the same thing the same thing that causes the disease can cause healing and uh the next day I listen to the radio and another commentator says God willing we will see the end of pandemic soon how often do you hear the such words on the radio it's a gift of God God willing secular radio stations are speaking about God I was shocked and I was happy to hear that they are saying God willing the end of pandemic is near so that is what's happening Hashem says I'm making the heart of Paro and his people stubborn they will not realize that these plagues are coming from Hashem and as long as they don't realize the plagues are going to continue to come until the final plague when people start dying only then par and his people are going to wake up now verse three mosha and Aon come to par and say until when when will you refuse to be humbled before me that's the solution as soon as you become humble the plagues will stop send out my people that they may serve me but if you refuse to send forth my people behold tomorrow I shall bring a locust swarm into your border it will cover the surface of the Earth you will not even be able to see the Earth and it will consume the remaining residue that was left to you by the hail and then Moshe and Aon left and parro's servants said to him in protest how long will this be a trap for us send out the Jewish people and let them serve their God don't you see that Egypt is lost so some of his servants are not as stubborn and they already realize that their end is near and they plead with parro please let them go so parro summoned them mosha and Aon returned and he said to them go and serve Hashem your God now we're on page 343 but his heart right away became stubborn again and he qualified his statement yes you may go I let but who is going I need a list of everyone who's going and Moshe said our children and our elders our girls and our boys everyone is going to go even our animals and Par was very surprised before he had before this he already had a similar discussion he told Moshe go serve God leave the animals here why do you need animals because Egyptians don't eat animals and then don't sacrifice animals so par said why why people serve Gods animals don't serve gods leave the animals behind and mosha said no our way to of serving God is not to do human sacrifice but rather to do animal sacrifice we value people more than animals and therefore we don't kill people rather we kill animals and that was very hard for par to understand because Egyptians don't eat animals they put animals above people so that attempt failed and now par similarly asks who's going mosha says everybody's going and says why does everybody need to go you going to serve God who serves God the man let the man go why do you want to take the grandmothers and the little babies they don't need to serve God and Moshe said yes why not among the Jewish people Everyone serves God from Little to elders and Par said to them so be Hashem with you as I will send you forth with your children and again it seems like par is giving in he's saying okay I'll let you go together with your children may God be with you and again his heart strengthens and he says look the evil Vil intent is visible on your faces he said I figured out that you really want to run away from Egypt that's why you want to take your families and he said not so let the man go serve Hashem for that is what you seek if you honestly looking to serve God just take the men serve and come back and the women are going to be uh hostages over here so the men come back and he chased them out so Hashem told Moshe let the eighth plague come Moshe stretched his staff over the land of Egypt and strong wind came the entire day and night and the East Wind carried the locust swarm why did we need the wind why not just make the Locust appear and that is because Hashem wants to make it look like it's a natural phenomena to give Egyptians an excuse to interpreted as if it just happened by chance and the similar thing will happen again with the splitting of the re sea yam before the sea split the entire night there was a strong wind in the morning Egyptians see that the sea split so they again made a an excuse oh must be is the strong wind that blew the entire night somehow it had an effect and made a Furrow in the ocean such a thing is not possible but when a person wants to deny he grabs on to straw so the locust swarm ascended over the entire land of Egypt before it there was never a locust swarm like it and there will not be its equal it covered the surface of the entire land and the land became dark they ate all the grass and all the fruits of the tree that were left from hail no Greenery remained in the entire land of Egypt amazing par quickly admits his guilt begs for forgiveness and asks to remove the plague par rushed to summon mosan Aon and said I have sinned to Hashem your God and to you please forgive my sin just this time and ask Hashem your God that he remove from me only this death one last time I'm asking you please save me I'll let you go so mosha left par and prayed to God and Hashem again made it look like it's natural he made a very powerful west wind to blow and the wind carried the locust swarm and hurled it toward the Sea of reeds verse 20 but Hashem strengthened the heart of par and he did not send out the children of of Israel now um today I heard from a wonderful person in the name of Rabbi de from the book let my people go he asked the question why is par being punished like this if Hashem would leave him alone he would let let the Jewish people go why is Hashem strengthening his heart and taking away his freedom and uh making him stubborn and he answered because Hashem wants to preserve a person's freedom of choice however if a person is subjected to pain he will not be able to choose with Clarity rather he'll run away from pain he'll choose whatever is going to save him from Pain just like par here he's running away from Pain and he's saying just save me I'll let you go take this death away from me I'm I'm going to let you go so Hashem says that's not fair you're only saying that because it hurts so I'm going to give you anesthesia I'm going to make your heart stubborn so that you don't feel the pain you don't feel the worry and the suffering and then let's see what you're going to say and as soon as par doesn't feel the pain he makes a conscious decision I'm not letting the Jewish people go so Hashem says look it's your fault you are bringing it upon yourself I'm giving you the freedom to choose and I'm not taking away your freedom and that is one of of the answers why Hashem strengthened paro's heart and another answer was that actually it was good for parro you see that parro's defenses are breaking apart he's already admitting his guilt he's saying Hashem is the righteous one and I'm guilty and we know that after the the the last plague of the first born parro let the Jewish people go and then again his heart became strengthened and he run after them and he witnessed another miracle and another plague by the Sea where his entire Army drown and it says that at that moment par Dida repented parro said God I believe you please give me another chance and Hashem saved par he was the only Egyptian that was saved from the splitting of the sea he survived and he ran away from Egypt he didn't want to have anything to do with Egypt and he became the king of nve king of nin and the king of nve we we hear about him in the story of yonah the Prophet Hashem told yonah go to the city of nve they're doing bad things and tell them that if don't if they don't change their ways I will kill the entire city and yah went and he came to the marketplace the center of the town and he said in 40 days n is going to be destroyed that's it he didn't say anything more and as soon as people heard such Wars in 40 days nville is going to be destroyed they said there's a mad man talking nonsense and they reported it to the officers and the officers reported it to the king of of n as soon as the king of n heard in 40 days n is going to be destroyed why must be God is unhappy with us again and he quickly decreed that the entire city should stop doing all evil they should put sackcloth on and they should fast they and their children and their animals everyone fasted and Hashem forgave them so we see that strengthening parro's heart was actually for his benefit so that eventually he should do T if Hashem would not strengthen his heart he would let the Jewish people go early and Par would continue being evil par as he was and he would die peacefully in his bed and that's it he would disappear together with his Evil Soul but Hashem saved him he made his life difficult and because of that eventually par repented Dida and he died as a righteous man so suffering can be viewed as punishment but more precisely it's viewed as kindness of God to bring the person back to the right path now we are on page 345 and that is the ninth plague Darkness Hashem said to Moshe stretch forth your hand and there shall be Darkness upon the land of Egypt and the Darkness will become tangible like you are in a swimming pool you cannot move it's hard to move something is blocking you that's for Egyptians they couldn't walk normal and there was a thick Darkness throughout the land of Egypt for 3 day period and after that no man could see his brother nor could anyone rise from his place for 3-day period so together it was a six day period of Darkness for 3 days they just couldn't see and for another 3 days they couldn't even move so thick the darkness became but for all the children of Israel there was light in their dwellings for two reasons I'll say just say that the plague of Darkness was preparation for Exodus in two ways number one the Jewish people had light and this was a special light that the Jewish people were able to see through walls like x-ray vision they could see into Egyptian houses into their closets and into their inside the walls and they saw all the treasures and they saw all the uh precious gold and silver and clothing that the Egyptians were hiding so that the night before they they leave they will ask Egyptians to borrow all those golden and silver vessels and clothing for their trip and Egyptians will hesitate and the Jew will say yeah yeah I know it's right there it's right there so many of them bring them out I just need to borrow and the Egyptians will be shocked how did he know must be they have power and they would get scared and they would bring out all the precious utensils and the second reason why the Jewish people had light while the Egyptians had Darkness was so that those Jewish people who did not believe that God can save them and who did not plan to leave Egypt they should stay and die and be buried in Egypt during those six days and Hashem didn't want to embarrass the Jewish people and let Egyptian see that the Jewish people are dying and therefore the Egyptians were placed in darkness in cartine for 6 days while the Jewish people the righteous among them were able to watch and see where Egyptians are hiding their gold and at the same time do kindness to their Brethren who were dying and bury them now verse 24 after the six days of darkness par called Moshe and said go serve Hashem only your flock and cattle shall remain behind but your children can go with you again paru is playing he's dishonest he's telling them yes everyone can go but don't send don't I'm not going to send animals and mosha makes fun of par and he tells him not only we will go and we take our animals but even you will give us some of your animals so that we offer um sacrifices for you on your behalf not a hoof will remain in Egypt and Moshe explain because we don't know how much Hashem is going to demand of us maybe he'll ask for all our animals they