Thread by @rabbisacks

Here is an idea from my #Vaera essay, "The Weighing of the Heart": 🇬🇧 bit.ly/2NNjVBZ / 🇮🇱 bit.ly/2Rhl4UN / 🇪🇸 bit.ly/38umXmF / 🇫🇷 bit.ly/30NFeZC / Family Edition bit.ly/2Rc015K / Listen spoti.fi/33Npq9s. #ShabbatShalom

The Torah tells us three times that the purpose of the signs and wonders was “so that the Egyptians may know that I am the Lord” (Ex. 7:5; 14:4; 14:18).

This is the core of monotheism. It is not that the Israelites have their God, and the Egyptians their pantheon, but rather that there is one sovereign power in the universe.

That is the point of at least three of the plagues: the first, blood, directed against the Egyptian god of the Nile; the second, frogs, directed against the goddess of fertility & childbirth; & the ninth, the plague of darkness, directed against the sun god.

The message of these plagues would have been clear to the Egyptians: there is a power greater than those they have worshipped until now. The God of Israel is the God of the world and of all humanity.

The religion of Israel is not intended to be the religion of all humanity. Nowhere in the narrative does God imply that He wants the Egyptians to adopt Israelite religious practices. The point is quite different. Religion is particular. Morality is universal.

Certain things are wrong, whoever does them and whoever they are done against. Justice is universal. That is the point made plainly by the Torah’s three stories of Moses’ early life.

He sees an Egyptian hitting an Israelite and intervenes. He sees Israelites hitting one another and intervenes. He sees Gentile shepherds behaving roughly to Jethro’s daughters and intervenes.

The first was a case of non-Israelite against Israelite, the second was Israelite against Israelite, the third was non-Israelite against non-Israelite. This is the simplest way of telling us that Moses’ sense of justice was impartial and universal.