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In any encounter between two people, there is chemistry and energy going on. Some people are more sensitive to it, some are less. In this week’s parsha, or Torah portion – Bo – there is an encounter between Pharoah, king of Egypt, and Moshe, king of the Jews that at first glance raises eyebrows. It takes no time (two weekly portions, but in real time, just under a year) for us to read about the ten plagues with which God nearly destroyed the land of Egypt. By this time, Pharoah’s advisors have told him that Egypt was destroyed, and Pharoah himself wanted to climb down from his tree and let the Jews go. But he couldn’t – because God wouldn’t let him. As described very plainly in the parsha, God was “playing with him.” God goaded him further and further on the path of cruelty and stubbornness, to the point that even Pharoah himself wanted to stop. But, God wouldn’t let him, just to prove to him who the real Boss is. Just before the final “hammer blow” – the tenth plague in which all of the Egyptian firstborn died – Moshe had a meeting with Pharoah (Ex 10:28-29).
“And Pharoah says to him, ‘Go away from me, and be careful not to see my face again, for the day you see my face, you will die.’
Moshe replied, ‘Well you have spoken: I will no longer see your face.”
At first glance, this is not a surprising exchange between two adversaries. There was no love lost between them, so why hide the fact that they were pitted one against the other? Moreover, how often can you keep telling Pharoah that God is going to wipe him out, together with the rest of his country. At this point, both men knew that the ultimate test lay before them, so there was no reason to “mince words.”
But it is precisely here that those with a deeper insight into the parsha show their “stuff.” I am referring to the Chassidic master, the Ilana deChaya, R’ Menachem Mendel of Rimanov, in the name of the Yismach Moshe, R’ Moshe Teitelbaum.
He describes this as exactly that kind of meeting in which energy is exchanged and sparks fly – but not the kind of sparks you would think. Here, it is the sparks of holiness that fly. Let’s see how that works…
“the way of a tzadik (righteous man) is that when speaking with the wicked, he gathers whatever holy goodness is in the wicked person. He acts like a magnet that attracts metal filings to itself. But, after no holy spark is left in the wicked person, it becomes forbidden to speak with him, for then it may be possible for the wicked person to draw upon the good within the tzadik.
Thus, we can now understand the exchange that took place between Pharoah and Moshe: at this point, no holy vitality was left within Pharoah, so he said to Moshe, “Be careful not to see my face again.” He forewarned Moshe not to interact with him anymore. And if he did interact with Pharoah again, the energy might flow in the opposite direction, toward Pharoah. And then, of course, Moshe would be left without life.”
It is a little bit difficult to understand the “meta-physics” behind this interaction. It is possible to grasp that when the tzadik looks at a wicked person, he is able to detect whatever good might be inside of him, and somehow, because of his charismatic spirituality, to draw it to the surface and remove it. But, why would the dynamic work the other way around as well? Why would the wicked person be able to draw holy energy out of the tzadik precisely when the wicked person is empty of all content?
Perhaps the idea is that by merely grasping the attention of the tzadik, the wicked person is already drawing upon his holy energy. Since there is nothing of worth left in him, there is no reason whatsoever for the tzadik to pay him any attention whatsoever. Moreover, the attention that he directs to the wicked person may be energy that would be better directed elsewhere. At that point, the wicked person may siphon off energy from the righteous. That is apparently what the Ilana deChaya meant when he said that if Moshe were to look at Pharoah again, after no holy vitality was left in Pharoah, Moshe would “die.” By peering into the human vacuum that Pharoah had become, Moshe could only lose his own vitality.
This may also explain why it was forbidden for the Jews to return to live in Egypt. We left the land of Egypt “like a pond without fish” in it – that is, like a place that was completely devoid of any holiness whatsoever. The Jews “borrowed” gold, silver, clothes, animals and anything of value from the Egyptians, who actually pressed these articles upon the Jews as they left in the exodus. So, it was no wonder that Egypt was left empty, like a spiritual vacuum. The Jews rid it of any holiness that was present. And consequently, it was forbidden for hundreds of years for the Jews to return to Egypt (a couple of thousand years later, the Rambam and other sages lived in Egypt, but that was a different Egypt than the one that the Jews left). Any return by the Jews to Egypt at that time would have reversed the “energy flow,” the land would have sucked the energy out of the Jews.
What is the “takeaway” from this episode? It is that there are matters of the world with which we are capable of dealing, and matters that we need to stay away from. How do we know which is which? The Torah tells us; if it is permitted, we may use it, eat it, drink it, etc, because we are capable of uplifting the holy vitality within it to the level of kedusha, or holiness. And if it is forbidden, we must avoid it like the plague, because it will suck the vitality out of us. That is one of the things we may learn from this week’s parsha.