What is darkness? Most people would admit that it is nothing more than the absence of light. No light? we wonder. It must be dark. After all, step into a dark room switch on the light and the darkness disappears. Light dispels the other. Yet the Torah here speaks of a darkness that can be felt. What does it mean?
In Bereshit, the language is very clear that darkness existed before light ("Darkness on the face of the deep"). If it is true that darkness only exists at the expense of light how could there be darkness in the void of the great Beginning? Light would not be created until later. Perhaps this pre-creation darkness means more than just before the sun came into being. The Vilna Gaon reveals:
"There are some who say that light is an independent creation, and that darkness is an independent creation.... Darkness is a creation that is pushed away by light. That is the way The Holy One, Blessed is He, made nature. Here -in this plague- God changed the course of nature. When the Torah says, 'a darkness which can be felt,' it means that the darkness 'pushed' away the light..." (Kol Eliyahu, Bo 53)
The darkness of which the famed Vilna Gaon speaks is "a darkness that can move light." In our thinking it only works the other way; light chases the darkness. This Egyptian night was a palpable darkness that was not displaced by light. The darkness had its own power and could thrust aside light.
This was the same darkness that engulfed the nascent universe before God cast into being an opposing force.
There is a certain kind of darkness that moves itself like a thick curtain blocking out light. It is a spiritual vacuum where hope and vision are obscured. It is as Martin Buber taught, “an eclipse of God.” When Pharaoh was utterly intent on genocide, banishing goodness and destroying life the darkness of the primordial universe returned. It shut out the possibility of balance, teshuvah and redemption. Was it not so in the Holocaust? Is it not so in Darfur?
Exodus Rabbah 15.1:
"And the Lord said to Moses… This month shall be for you the beginning of all months" [Exodus 12:1-2]. It is written there: "The voice of my beloved! Behold, he comes" [Song of Songs 2:8]Why would the midrash take this phrase from our parasha and join it with this passage from the Song of Songs? They seem to have no historic or thematic connection with each other.
Come closer.
The Festival Of Freedom, Passover, is truly the New Year for our people. It is the point of our liberation. It is the moment of conception a group of people that had passed through a crucible transforming them into God’s children, a covenanted nation. On that day the Jewish people were born. That is why the imagination of the Midrash leapfrogs to paeans of love. God is coming to embrace the Jewish people.
As is said, "My beloved answered and said to me" (Song of Songs, v. 10). What are you doing here in this place of unclean people, "whose flesh is the flesh of donkeys, and whose flow is the flow of horses" (Ezek 23:20). "Arise, my beloved, my beautiful one, and come away."
Bursting out of this passage is the poetry of a courtship that would span millennia. This is the first dance that would stretch though great epochs of time.
'Bo' is the first utterance of the Torah reading. “Go to Pharaoh” would be better translated as “Come to Pharaoh.” The word bo is not usual in this context. We would have expected 'lech,' perhaps but not 'bo.'
Bo is comprised of two Hebrew letters, bet and aleph, the first letters of the alpha-bet. However, they are inverted. Not in their proper sequence the word bo stands out as an inversion of the way life ought to be. Reason was suspended. Evil became the norm in Egypt. Bo also represented God’s reticent decision to suspend nature and bring devastation to the victimizers, which would ultimately bring about freedom for the enslaved.
D'var Acher:
COME VS GO
The parasha of Bo begins as God says to Moses: “Come to Pharaoh for I have hardened his heart.” Does it make sense that God says "come" and not "go" as He said to all the great prophets before? Think of the call to Avraham to when God declared to him "lech, go. " Even Jonah is told, "lech" but Moses is directed to "come" (bo) to Pharaoh”.
After all the plagues that have been
inflicted upon the Egyptians Moses is rightly unnerved by the growing
intensity of the the pain experienced by at the nation. He is
rightly fearful of what is about to come next, darkness and then the
death of the firstborn.
That is why God's reassuring words to him,
assuage his anxiety, "Come" God gently tells his servant
"and I will be with you."
Rabbi Menachem Mendl of Kokzk observes that “you
cannot move away from God; you can only advance with Him.” It is therefore better to be mindful that we
are not alone on our life’s journey.
A great lesson for us: God is always wherever
we are. He is with us at every pivotal and mundane moment of our
lives.
You are never alone.
The Lubavitch Rebbe was once seen writing some words down on paper by one of his students. The master then took out an eraser and erased what he had just written.
The student queried the rebbe, “Why did you wipe away what you had just written?”
He replied, “At the time I wrote it the words spoke great truth. That moment had passed. New words must now come to me. I wait for them.”
Arguably, the greatest moment of our people’s past is described in this parasha. Forged in the fire of slavery the Jewish nation emerges from the ashes of Egypt. Yet, it is so hard to recapture that grandeur of liberation. Despite the many references to "remember the Exodus from Egypt,” it is far easier to simply remember the story than feel the sensation of witnessing the actions of God and feeling the miraculousness of the event. It is even difficult to feel the power of the Exodus as we celebrate at the Seder table.
That is the meaning of the rebbe’s words. Time will pass. As it does, our task is to renew our relationship with the Almighty and find new light in the present.
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