Remember when Moses threw his staff down before Pharaoh and it turned into a snake, and when Pharaoh’s magicians did the same, Moses’s snake ate the others?
Well, as it turns out, our memory might be faulty! Like some Biblical Mandela Effect, it was Aaron who cast down his staff in Pharaoh’s throne room—and it was not a snake either, unlike Moses’s staff at the burning bush…
When Aaron cast down his staff, it turned into a sea monster—a leviathan! What’s more, all of the rabbis agree that the staff actually returned to its original form of a staff before consuming the other serpentine sea monsters and Pharaoh’s magicians, too.
Even still, with such a calamitous scene unfolding before him, Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, seemingly unable or unwilling to see the forest for the trees. One would think this supernatural, terrifying scene would be enough of a display to reconsider his position, but alas, even ten more plagues were not enough proof for Pharaoh’s ever-hardened heart.
The Baal Shem Tov once wrote, “The world is full of wonders and miracles but man takes his little hand and covers his eyes and sees nothing.” We should learn from the shortsightedness of Pharaoh’s heart and soften our own, opening our hearts, our hands and our eyes to the miracles of daily life both great and small!