This week we visit Parshat Bo, where we read of the final three of the Ten Plagues. I can’t help but think back to last March, when the first Stay at Home, Stay Safe orders were put in place. Passover was right around the corner, and we were making nervous jokes and comments about modern-day plagues. While the parshiot outlining the plagues do not fall on Passover itself, they appear just a few months away from the holiday. On a practical level, they remind us that the seder meal is just around the corner, and on a spiritual level, they remind us that, to a certain degree, we are always plagued by something.
Exodus 10: 23 tells of the penultimate plague of darkness that, “people could not see one another and for three days no one could move about; but all the Israelites enjoyed light in their dwellings.” This is among my favorite verses of Torah, not for its simple meaning, but for the drash, the meaning we can make of it. We have all become far more acquainted with our dwellings over the last ten months. For one thing, they are a symphony of sound: the creaky floorboards, the buzzing refrigerator, the sound of the furnace kicking on. For another, they are sources of light: morning light on the eastern-facing side of the house, brilliant sunsets to the west. Our dwellings are our most sacred places and we create the realities within them. The light that illuminated the Israelite’s dwellings was ostensibly from God, but perhaps it also arose of their own awareness. When confronted with darkness, is it not a human instinct to look for the light? The plague of darkness caused the Egyptians to be blind to one another, but the light in the Israelite dwellings allowed them to see each other, to see themselves. That light is always available to us, even when it feels that we are in the midst of a plague. It is a light that allows us to see one another, apart though we may be. It illuminates the pain and the work that is yet to be done, and also the deep bonds of love that exist between us. Let’s find that light and share it broadly