Parashat Bo: Free at Last

Here is your Holy Scrollers Preview, courtesy of this week’s facilitator, Rick Hornung. After your session, I hope you will join us at 10:30 am for our Shabbat Morning Service, including the Bar Mitzvah celebration of Jack Conley. Shabbat Shalom!

Dear Scrollers:

This week, we read of plagues and festivals of unleavened bread, paschal lambs and hardened hearts. This week, in portion Bo, Ex. 10:1  – 13:16, we read of recounting stories to our sons’ sons and the Egyptians fathers’ fathers. This week, the first born of our ancestors’ masters are slain and the first born, man or beast, of every Israelite is consecrated to the Lord.

This week, our ancestors flee from the house of bondage.

The portion details the eighth, ninth and tenth plagues. In addition to this narrative, the portion also includes instruction about the festival of unleavened bread — when it is to be celebrated. Another section includes instructions about eating the passover sacrifice.

And, at the end, the portion tells of being freed by a mighty hand and keeping symbol on our forehead and the teaching of the Lord in our mouths.

With a variety of recursive and repetitive techniques, incantations and phrases, these chapters describe the penultimate interactions between Moses, Aaron, Pharaoh, the Egyptian court. We are given a hint about the Egyptians, who became impatient and possibly encouraged our departure.

As you read the portion, I ask you to consider the following:

Ex 11:3 — “The Lord disposed the Egyptians favorably toward the people. Moreover, Moses himself was much esteemed in the land of Egypt, among Pharaoh’s courtiers and among the people.”

Ex 12:2 — “This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you.”

Ex. 12:15 — “Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread; on the very first day you shall remove leaven from your houses; for whoever eats leaven bread from the first day tot he seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel.”

Ex: 12:49 — “There shall be one law for the citizen and for the stranger who dwells amongst you.”

Ex. 13:8 — “And you shall explain to your son on that day, ‘It is because of what the Lord did for me when I went free from Egypt.'”

And finally, we are blessed with a majestic Haftarah, Jeremiah 46:13-28. I ask that you consider the climactic verse at the end. With purpose, I quote from the King James Version:
Fear thou not, O Jacob my servant, saith the LORD:

For I am with thee;

for I will make a full end of all the nations

whither I have driven thee:

but I will not make a full end of thee,

but correct thee in measure;

yet will I not leave thee wholly unpunished.
Gut shabbes,
Rick

CONGREGATION BETH SHALOM RODFE ZEDEK

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