Measure for Measure
“The Death of the Pharaoh’s Firstborn Son,” by Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1872).Credit: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
One of Judaism’s fundamental concepts is that every individual, along with the Jewish community as a whole, has a purpose to fulfill during their time on earth.
Among the various examples I could present to support this assertion, I choose two verses from the Book of Isaiah that I find to be particularly significant for the moment we are experiencing.
“ I made you and designated you a covenant people, a light for the nations to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison, and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness."
Jewish leaders from Moses to David Ben-Gurion fought hard for Israel’s right to exist as a free, independent nation in order to fulfill its mandate of being a light for the nations. It would be trite to list all of the well-known contributions made by Jews to humanity.
However, Pessah is more than only the Jewish people’s longing to be free to serve the world by finding treatments for diseases, water for drought-stricken areas, and so on. Pessah is also meant to bring to the forefront of our Jewish consciousness the Jewish belief that human actions have consequences.
Judaism is unwavering in its belief that, in addition to the forces of gravity and electromagnetism, as well as the rules of thermodynamics and evolution, the repercussions of human actions control human existence.
As much as Pessah teaches us that ,
"you shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt"
it also enjoins us to
…say to your children We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Lord freed us from Egypt with a mighty hand. The Lord wrought before our eyes marvelous and destructive signs and portents in Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his household
Jews have historically wrestled with the dilemma of prioritizing justice or mercy when confronting those who pose a threat to other human beings.
The prevailing principle has been
“middah ke-negged“ middah
“measure for measure” Doing to the offender what he did, or tried to do, to his victim.
I have said to you Pharaoh, “Let My son go, that he may worship Me,” yet you refuse to let him go. Now I will slay your firstborn son. (Ex. 4:23)
There comes a juncture, however, when all discourse regarding mercy becomes untenable.
Four centuries of anguish and death preceded the manifestation of the retributive power of the Ten Plagues in Egypt. Over 14 years of persistent assaults from Gaza to Israel have resulted in innumerable deaths, misery, and the obliteration of resources. But, after October 7, Israel’s response has been relentless. An old Yiddish proverb explains why:
“A rakhman oyf gazlonim iz a gazlen oyf rakhmonim,”
“kindness to the cruel is cruelty to the kind.”
.
That God had to become a destroyer in Egypt using the forces of nature and that the IDF was forced to kill thousands of people in Gaza is not a matter for celebration but the painful realization that Israel’s foes have a single mission in life: the destruction of the Jewish people.
No hater of the Jewish people has expressed this ill-motivated goal more clearly than Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, before he met the death he so much yearned for.
“The Jews love life, so that is what we shall take away from them. We are going to win because they love life and we love death.”
We observe Pessah to remind us that the desire to wipe out a people whose purpose is to strive for the perfection of creation ultimately leads to the downfall of those who harbor such a goal.
middah ke-negged“ middah- measure for measure
A final important note:
Though Israel has been empowered over Pharaoh, the Inquisition, Nazism, and many similar forces of human destructivity, the words of the prophet Amos are cautionary:
To Me, O Israelites, you are just like the Ethiopians—declares the Lord. True, I brought Israel up. From the land of Egypt, But also the Philistines from Crete and the Arameans from Kir.
Having to do what must have to be done doesn’t make us automatically better; it demands from us to be more responsible.