Heavy Heart
Parashat Va-eira conveys a lesson that is as theologically challenging as it is personally enlightening. Even before the actual implementation of the plagues, God reveals to Moses that Pharaoh’s heart will be “hardened.” On one level, this seems to deny Pharaoh the free will that is critical to both the morality of our tradition and the foundation of our human experience. However, the exact language in the Torah after each plague and Pharaoh’s refusal reflects a key nuance. For the first five plagues, Pharaoh hardens his own heart. For plagues six through ten, God hardens Pharaoh’s heart. The tradition teaches that after Pharaoh chose the path of rigid obstinance—having had ample opportunity to change course—God then merely amplifies Pharaoh’s existing traits. On a personal level, we learn from the Hebrew word for this “hardening”—kavod, or heaviness—that a heart burdened by self-interest and insulated from basic human empathy is incapable of fully choosing the moral path of goodness and service to others. We are inspired by this negative object lesson to soften and lighten our hearts, and thus exercise our free will righteously, so as not to become victims of intractable circumstance.