Yesterday’s Vancouver Sun newspaper was not delivered. A fire at the press sent five people to the hospital, and delayed the paper by many hours.
So you might have missed the heartbreaking cover story about a woman on welfare who placed her son in foster care because she could not find an affordable place for them to live.
It’s an upsetting story no matter how you judge it. Because there are some things in life we believe should not be bought and sold.
Like a young child’s right to be cared for safely by her or his parents.
We think of this as an inalienable right. It should be protected, not compromised, by a government.
If everything in life is purchased on an economic market, no principles guide our social life at all.
So Parshat Bo (Exodus 10:1-13:16) teaches.
Sometimes Torah will give the same message in two different formats: a teaching story, and a list of ethical or legal maxims.
Think of the story of tension between Rachel and Leah, and the Torah’s later instruction to a man not to marry sisters; or the story of Sodom and Amorah, and Torah’s list of terrible curses that social injustice brings upon us.
The story of the Exodus has that relationship to the Ten Commandments.
Pharaoh is well aware that he is in a contest with a divinity, but believes he can hold his own.
When his choices bring terrible consequences to other people, he does not care.
He hates the foreigners who were welcomed by his ancestor, an earlier Pharaoh.
He is jealous of their success.
He enslaves them with an oppressive workload.
He tries to kill the baby boys.
He toys with the idea of letting only the men leave, perhaps thinking he can use the women to breed more slaves.
He owns all the results of the Israelite construction labor.
He lies consistently to Moshe.
Yes, that’s Pharaoh.
After the Israelites and their mixed multicultural multitude of friends cross the Sea of Reeds into freedom, God calls them to a special meeting at Mount Sinai. At that meeting, God invites them to accept a spiritual charter for their new nation.
The spiritual charter calls them to avoid everything that created the hellish situation of their slavery.
They will recognize God.
They will not imagine that anything else in earth or heaven is God, certainly not themselves or their kings.
They will be aware that their deeds have consequences that last for generations.
They will give every worker basic rights – family member, foreigner, male, female, animal, human.
They will honor the generations that came before them.
They will not kill or lie or steal or dishonor marriage.
They will not allow envy of another’s success to take them down a terrible path.
They must resist even the beginnings of a Pharaoh within their thoughts and feelings. They must pledge that they will never compromise certain ideals.
Parshat Bo’s story offers more detail about the ideals no Pharaoh can own.
