Rabbi Guzik is on sabbatical. Please enjoy A Bisl Torah from Rabbi Avi Taff.
What does it mean to live in total and complete darkness? This week’s Torah portion gives us a vivid image. A heavy darkness descends upon Egypt, so thick that people could not see one another, and for three days, no one could move. This was the ninth plague, but it feels like more than a one-time event. It reads like the consequence of a blindness that had been growing for years. From the moment the Israelites were enslaved, Pharaoh and his people refused to see them as human beings. Now that moral blindness became real, immobilizing, and inescapable.
There is a story of a rabbi who once asked his students, “How do we know when the night has ended and the day has begun?” One said it was when you can tell your field from your neighbor’s. Another said when you can recognize your own house. A third said when you can identify your animal in the distance, and a fourth said when you can see the colors of a flower.
The rabbi said they were all mistaken. “All you do is divide,” he said. “When you look into the face of the person who is beside you, and you can see that person is your brother or your sister, then finally the night has ended and the day has begun.” True redemption begins not when we divide, but when we learn to truly see one another.
