Author: Shlomo Bar-Ayal

Pharaoh built up a false narrative that he was a god. The plagues slowly destroyed that narrative. There is nothing worse for a dictator than to have his lies revealed as such.

Pharaoh, Narrative Control, and the Collapse of a Lie

One of the central struggles in this week’s parashah is not merely between Pharaoh and Moses, or even between Egypt and Israel. It is a struggle over who controls the narrative.

Pharaoh is an authoritarian ruler in the purest sense. Egypt is not a constitutional monarchy; it is an absolute one. Pharaoh’s will is law. What he desires becomes policy. But when such a system begins to unravel, the ruler does not surrender power gracefully. Instead, he fights to preserve something else: the story he tells about himself and his world.

This is the last stand of every dictator.

From the beginning of the plagues, Pharaoh is losing—again and again. Yet he continues to minimize, reinterpret, and dismiss what is happening. Why? Because once he admits the truth, the entire structure collapses. His authority rests not on justice or legitimacy, but on illusion.

A striking example appears with the very first plague. Moses is instructed to confront Pharaoh early in the morning, by the Nile. The commentators explain why: Pharaoh presents himself as a god. A god, of course, has no human bodily functions. To maintain this fiction, Pharaoh must secretly go to the river at dawn.

Moses knows this. He grew up in Pharaoh’s palace. By confronting him there, Moses is not merely delivering a warning—he is exposing the lie. He is stripping away the divine mask and revealing Pharaoh for what he truly is: a human being.

This theme runs deeper. The entire enslavement of the Israelites was built on a false narrative. The Torah tells us that a new Pharaoh arose “who did not know Joseph.” This does not mean ignorance; it means willful denial. Joseph saved Egypt from famine. Everyone knew it. But acknowledging that truth would undermine the regime’s justification for oppression.

So Pharaoh rewrites history: What have these people ever done for us?
Once a society is built on a lie, it must be defended relentlessly. Truth becomes dangerous. Memory becomes subversive. Narrative control becomes essential to survival.

That is why Pharaoh denigrates Moses, belittles the Israelites, and dismisses each plague as coincidence or magic. He cannot afford to recognize reality. And yet, with every plague, another layer of illusion is peeled away.

On one level, the plagues are meant to free the Jewish people. On a deeper level, they are meant to demonstrate something even more fundamental: God is God, and Pharaoh is not. Each plague dismantles another pillar of Egypt’s theology and political mythology. Nature itself refuses to cooperate with the fiction.

This contrast becomes even clearer when we look at Moses himself. When the Torah introduces him, it does not name his parents. It simply says that “a man and a woman” had a child. Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky points out the significance of this omission. Moses is not born a demigod. He has no royal lineage, no divine origin story. The Torah is emphasizing a radical idea: any human being can rise to leadership—but no human being becomes God.

That is the essential difference between Moses and Pharaoh.

Pharaoh claims divinity and must deny his humanity. Moses embraces his humanity and becomes the greatest leader in Jewish history. Redemption does not come through self-deification, but through humility.

The ultimate lesson of the Exodus is not only political or historical—it is existential. When power is built on lies, it must constantly fight the truth. When leaders forget that they are human, reality will remind them.

We are not diminished by being human.
We are dignified by it.
God is God.
And human beings—no matter how powerful—are not.

The real problem that Moses had in Egypt was to rally the Jews to his side. Moses had to deal with a people who were suffering. They did not want to hear it if it made their lives worse. He had to address them so that they would understand.

A Quick D’var Torah – Know Before Whom You Stand

Yesterday I spoke about how the plagues were a judgment on Egypt—on its gods and ultimately on Pharaoh himself.
But today we have to deal with the elephant in the room:
Why don’t the Jews believe Moshe? Why don’t they believe Moses when he comes to save them?

Moshe arrives with a message of redemption—and their response is essentially:
“Since you came, things have only gotten worse. You’re a troublemaker.”

And in a sense, we can understand them.

These people were born into slavery. Slavery is all they’ve ever known.
Their entire reality is physical pain, exhaustion, and fear.
Moshe shows up with promises of freedom—but promises don’t ease today’s suffering.

That’s why the scene at the Burning Bush is so important.
God tells Moshe, “Take off your shoes, for the place you are standing is holy ground.”

But this isn’t just about reverence for God.
The ground Moshe is standing on is jagged, painful terrain.
For the first time, Moshe has to feel discomfort—to feel, even briefly, what the people he’s about to lead have lived with their entire lives.

Until now, Moshe has lived a charmed life.
Raised in Pharaoh’s palace. Successful at everything he touched.
He has never truly known the kind of suffering these people know.

And God is teaching him something critical:
You must address people as they are—not as you wish them to be.

I’ve learned this myself as a public speaker.
You can’t speak to every audience the same way.
What works in one room won’t work in another.
You have to understand where people are coming from, what language they understand, what pain they’re carrying.

Moshe has to learn that lesson fast.

There’s another layer here as well.
Freedom itself is frightening.

For a slave, responsibility is terrifying.
A slave isn’t accountable for his actions—the master is.
When to work, when to stop, when to eat—it’s all decided for him.

Freedom means responsibility.

My wife and I were watching Turn: Washington’s Spies, about the American Revolution.
There’s a moment when Washington gives a slave a watch.
A watch matters because once you’re free, time matters.
You’re responsible for showing up. For choosing. For acting.

And that’s the problem.

The Jews aren’t ready yet—not emotionally, not psychologically—to carry freedom.
Moshe’s greatest challenge was never Pharaoh. Pharaoh would fall.
His hardest task was rebuilding a broken people—helping them believe they were capable of freedom.

That takes time.

Something to think about.

---

The plagues in Egypt were designed to destroy the entirety of Egyptian society. It was God’s judgement that that society was evil and had to be uprooted.

D’var Torah – Parashat Va’era / The Plagues and the Collapse of an Unjust Society

One of the powerful lessons of this week’s parashah is how an unjust government—and even an entire unjust society—ultimately collapses.

The Ten Plagues are not random punishments. They are a systematic assault on Egyptian civilization itself, from the ground up.

It begins with the plague of blood. The Nile was not just a river in ancient Egypt; it was a god. Egypt’s economy, agriculture, and identity depended on it. When the Nile turns to blood, the message is unmistakable: your god is powerless.

From there, the plagues move through nature itself. Frogs, lice, wild animals—creation turns against Egypt. One detail that often gets overlooked is how unnatural the plague of wild beasts truly was. These animals did not attack one another. Predators and prey moved together, united. Nature itself was reordered to show that the moral order Egypt relied upon was false.

Each plague strips away another layer of Egyptian authority—religious, natural, economic—until finally the ultimate symbol of power, Pharaoh himself, is exposed as helpless. By the end, the government is revealed to be incapable of performing its most basic function: protecting its people.

History shows us this pattern again and again. When people realize that a regime is not all-powerful, that it cannot defend itself or its citizens, its authority begins to crumble. Once fear disappears, the foundations of oppression weaken.

This is why, in many historical conflicts, the goal has not only been military victory but the destruction of the myth of invincibility. During World War II, Allied strategy aimed to show that the Nazi regime was not omnipotent. During the American Civil War, Sherman’s march was designed to dismantle the social and economic structure that sustained slavery.

The Torah teaches a difficult but essential truth: an unjust society cannot simply be reformed at the surface. Its foundations must be dismantled before anything moral can be rebuilt. Redemption does not come through cosmetic change; it comes through transformation.

Of course, destruction alone is not enough. Rebuilding matters—but that is a separate stage. This parashah focuses on the first step: exposing false gods, breaking unjust power, and clearing the ground for something better.

That is one of the enduring messages of the plagues—and something worth thinking about.

---

One of the issues of dealing with Pharaoh is that he refuses to allow the Jews to define who they are. The issue is that only the Jews get to define who we are, not anyone else.

A Quick D’var Torah – Names and Freedom

One of the central issues in the story of the Exodus is names. In fact, in Hebrew the book is not called Exodus at all, but Shemot—Names. That is not incidental; it is essential.

When Moses comes before Pharaoh and says, “The God of Israel has said, ‘Let My people go so that they may serve Me,’” Pharaoh responds, “Who is the God of Israel? I have never heard of Him.” Moses then shifts language and says, “The God of the Hebrews.”

That shift matters. In much of the Bible, the term Hebrew is a derogatory label, used by outsiders. Pharaoh does not see the Israelites as a people with dignity or identity; he sees them as an inferior labor class. That is why, later in the Torah, the phrase is not “a Jewish slave” but “a Hebrew slave”—someone stripped of full status.

Freedom, however, requires more than physical release. Pharaoh must be broken enough to recognize that these people have a God—and the Israelites must regain self-respect. You cannot be free if you are defeated mentally. Slavery begins with the loss of identity.

Years ago, there was a television series called Roots, about the African-American experience of slavery. One scene captures this perfectly. A slave owner insists that a man’s name is “Toby.” The man refuses, even as he is beaten. He keeps saying, “My name is Kunta.” At one point the master says, “He can’t be too smart—he doesn’t even know his name.” And the overseer replies, “He knows his name. He just doesn’t want yours.”

That is exactly the issue in Shemot. We know our name—and we refuse to accept the names others impose on us.

The world constantly tries to define who we are. We are told what Judaism is, who counts as a Jew, and what we are allowed to believe. I once heard a Jew-hater say, “Judaism is just a religion. If you don’t believe in God, you can’t be Jewish.” That is simply false. We are a people, a nation. There have always been Jews of varying belief, yet they remain Jews.

This struggle goes all the way back to Pharaoh. He wanted to define us in a degrading way. Every generation has its Pharaohs who try to do the same.

Our response is not only pride, but responsibility: to live as Jews, to do what is right, to follow God’s commands—and even when we fall short, we still define ourselves.

That is the message of Shemot: redemption begins when a people reclaim their name.

Something to think about.

---

When Moses starts to redeem the Jews, he is facing the problem that they have given up hope. He has to get them to understand that they will be redeemed. This is true thought-out history, It is hard for those enslaved to believe that the end will be good.

D’var Torah – Parashat Shemot: Leadership, Hope, and Not Knowing the End

In this week’s parashah, Moshe Rabbeinu is given an almost impossible task. We, as readers, don’t always appreciate how difficult it truly was—because we know how the story ends. We know there will be redemption, the Exodus, the splitting of the sea.

But no one inside the story knows that. Not Moshe, and certainly not Bnei Yisrael.

From their perspective, Moshe arrives on the scene and everything gets worse. He confronts Pharaoh, Pharaoh retaliates, and the suffering intensifies. Work becomes harder, hope seems farther away, and the natural human response follows: they turn on Moshe.

This is one of the Torah’s most profound lessons. It is easy to have faith when you know the outcome. It is much harder when you don’t.

We see this pattern throughout history.

In 1962, Glenn Richter and Rabbi Berman helped launch the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry. They were told—especially by the Jewish establishment—“Don’t demonstrate. Don’t protest. You’re just making things worse. Quiet diplomacy will work.”

If you had told them that within thirty years the Soviet Union would collapse and Jews would leave in massive numbers, people would have laughed. Nobody believed it. And yet, they persisted. They organized demonstrations, pressured Congress, helped bring about the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, and forced the Soviet Union to confront its moral bankruptcy.

History proved them right—not the experts.

The same lesson appears in 1949 during the Berlin blockade. The Soviets cut off West Berlin, hoping the West would abandon it. The experts told President Truman it couldn’t be supplied. “There’s nothing we can do,” they said.

Truman asked one simple question to Air Force Chief Curtis LeMay:
“Can we supply Berlin by air?”

LeMay paused and said, “It’s doable.”
Truman replied, “Then do it.”

What followed was the Berlin Airlift—hundreds of planes a day, landing and taking off within minutes, supplying an entire city for over a year. Once again, the experts were wrong, because leadership refused to surrender hope.

This is Moshe’s challenge in Parashat Shemot. His job is not only to confront Pharaoh—it is to give hope to a people who see no end, to insist that suffering is not permanent, and to lead even when the path forward is unclear.

When people tell you to give up hope, that is the most dangerous moment of all.

The Torah teaches us that redemption begins before it is visible. Faith is not believing after the miracle—it is acting before it happens. As bleak as things may sometimes appear, we believe that God has not abandoned His people, and that our actions, even when they seem futile, can shape history.

That is the message of Moshe.
That is the message of Shemot.
And it is something worth thinking about.

---

Aaron was happy that Moses was chosen to lead the Jews to freedom. This is a major shift from the Book of Genesis where sibling rivalry is the norm.

Aaron as the תיקון (Tikkun) for Sefer Bereishit

You’re absolutely right to frame Parashat Shemot as the beginning of redemption, not just politically but psychologically and spiritually. What redemption requires first is the repair of fraternal rivalry.

1. Aaron’s Greatness Is Not Power — It’s Ego Control

Aaron is:

• The older brother
• The de facto leader in Egypt
• The one who suffered with the people
• The one who stayed behind while Moshe lived a comparatively protected life

And yet, when Moshe returns, the Torah says:

“וַיֵּלֶךְ אַהֲרֹן לִקְרַאת מֹשֶׁה… וַיִּשַּׁק לוֹ”
“Aaron went to meet Moshe… and he kissed him” (Exodus 4:27)

Chazal point out something extraordinary here:

• Aaron felt no jealousy
• In fact, he rejoiced in his heart

That’s why God tells Moshe earlier:

“וְרָאֲךָ וְשָׂמַח בְּלִבּוֹ”
“He will see you and rejoice in his heart” (Exodus 4:14)

And because Aaron conquered jealousy, he merited:

• The Choshen (breastplate)
• Carrying the names of Israel on his heart

This is not incidental. It’s measure-for-measure.

---

2. The End of Bereishit’s Tragedy

You make a very important point:
Sefer Bereishit is a book of sibling failure.

• Cain / Hevel – murder
• Yishmael / Yitzchak – exile
• Yaakov / Esav – hatred
• Yosef / the brothers – sale into slavery

Every generation stumbles over:

“Who is the real heir?”

Now comes Shemot, and for the first time:

• An older brother steps aside willingly
• A younger brother leads without rivalry
• Leadership becomes shared, not contested

This is not accidental — it is the moral prerequisite for redemption.

---

3. “בֹּא אֶל פַּרְעֹה” — Why the Verb Is Singular

You caught something very subtle and very beautiful.

When God says:

“בֹּא אֶל פַּרְעֹה” — “Go to Pharaoh”

It is singular, even though Moshe and Aaron act together.

The commentators explain:

• They functioned as one will
• No power struggle
• No ego competition
• No “who’s really in charge?”

In Hebrew grammar, the singular reflects perfect unity of purpose.

Redemption begins when leadership is about mission, not status.

---

4. The Contrast: Yerovam ben Nevat (Historical Clarification)

The king you were referring to is Yerovam ben Nevat, first king of the Northern Kingdom.

He forbade Jews from going to Jerusalem because:

• At Hakhel, the King of Judah sits
• Everyone else stands
• Yerovam could not tolerate being “second”

The Gemara says explicitly:

His downfall came from ego, not ideology.

Aaron is the anti-Yerovam:

• No throne
• No insecurity
• No need to dominate

And because of that, Aaron becomes:

• The man of peace
• The pursuer of peace
• The bridge between Moshe and the people

---

5. The Core Message (Very Powerful)

What you’re really saying — and it’s worth emphasizing — is this:

Redemption does not begin with miracles.
It begins with humility.

Aaron teaches us:

• Not everyone has to be first
• Not every role needs the spotlight
• Greatness is knowing what the moment requires, not what the ego wants

That is why Moshe and Aaron together can confront Pharaoh —
and why earlier brothers could not.

---

It is very clear that Moses did not want the job of leadership. This is the basic reason that he was chosen for the job.

D’var Torah – Parashat Shemot: Leadership Through Empathy

In this parashah we encounter one of the most powerful moments in the Torah: Moshe at the burning bush.

Chazal tell us that Moshe did not arrive there by accident. He was shepherding the flock of Yitro, and one small lamb wandered off. Moshe went after it. That alone already tells us something crucial: Moshe cared even for the weakest, the least significant in the eyes of others. A leader who ignores the “small ones” is not fit to lead a nation.

When Moshe reaches the burning bush, God tells him to remove his shoes because he is standing on holy ground. But that ground was not smooth or comfortable. It was jagged, rocky, painful. Moshe stood barefoot on sharp stones.

The message was profound. Moshe had lived a relatively charmed life. He grew up in Pharaoh’s palace, escaped Egypt, married into the family of the Midianite high priest, and lived in safety. But now he was being asked to lead a people who had known nothing but suffering, humiliation, and the lash of slavery. God was teaching Moshe: You must feel their pain. You cannot lead people unless you understand—physically and emotionally—what they have endured.

The Midrash also teaches that the dialogue at the burning bush lasted several days. Moshe resisted the mission again and again. He felt unworthy. He did not want power or authority. His final argument was deeply human: “My older brother Aharon has been leading the people in Egypt. He has suffered with them. How can I come now as the younger brother and take over?”

God reassures him: “Aharon is with you.” And indeed, when Moshe returns to Egypt, Aharon greets him with joy, not jealousy. True leadership is not threatened by another leader—it recognizes what is best for the people.

Everything in Moshe’s life up to this point was preparation. Even his reluctance was part of his qualification. The Torah is teaching us that the best leaders are often those who do not seek leadership, who would rather live quietly, but step forward because responsibility demands it.

History echoes this lesson. George Washington did not want to be president. After one term, he tried to step away, but the nation insisted he stay, because only he could hold it together. Leadership chosen out of duty, not ambition, commands respect.

The Torah’s message is timeless:
A true leader must feel the pain of the people, even if he himself has not suffered in the same way. And often, the most worthy leader is the one who never wanted the job in the first place.

That is Moshe Rabbeinu—and that is the leadership model the Torah gives us to think about.

---

When Moses came across the Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave, he looked up & down & did not see a man. He saw other people, but he did not see anyone who would protest. He became the man.

Quick D’var Torah – Parashat Shemot

Moshe grows up in Pharaoh’s palace—raised as a prince, educated as royalty, and far removed from the daily suffering of his people. Yet he knows who he is. At some point, he decides he must go out and see what is happening to the Jews.

When he does, he witnesses an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave. The Torah tells us something striking: “He looked this way and that, and he saw no man.”
There were people around—going about their business, talking, passing by—but no one willing to stop and say, “This is wrong.”

Moshe wasn’t looking for people. He was looking for a man—someone prepared to take responsibility. When he realized no one else would act, Moshe understood that he had to be that man.

This idea later becomes a teaching in Pirkei Avot: “In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man.”
Moshe was not eager to lead. He was one of the most reluctant leaders in our history. At the burning bush, he argues with God for days, trying to avoid the mission. Even then, he is hoping someone else will step forward. But no one does.

Leadership, the Torah teaches, often comes not from ambition but from moral necessity.

There’s a famous line attributed to Edmund Burke: “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” Evil succeeds not because it is powerful, but because decent people remain silent.

I was reminded of this recently while visiting Bulgaria. Bulgaria was officially allied with Nazi Germany, yet the Jews of Bulgaria proper were never deported. When fascist officials secretly began rounding up Jews, the head of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church discovered the plan. He went to the train yard, lay down in front of the locomotive, and said, “The only way this train moves is over my dead body.”
The deportation stopped.

Where there was no man—he became the man.

That is Moshe’s lesson to us. When we see dishonesty in business, injustice in society, or moral cowardice in our surroundings, we cannot wait for someone else to act. What one Jew does reflects on all Jews—an observant Jew is always an observed Jew.

Moshe looked around. He saw no one else willing to step up. So he did.

Something to think about.

Pharaoh gives the order to kill all Jewish male babies born. The midwives ignore it. This was the beginning of the redemption. That the midwives feared God more than they feared Pharaoh.

Quick D’var Torah – Parashat Shemot

One of the major events in this week’s parashah—though it can easily pass us by—is the story of the midwives. Pharaoh issues an explicit decree: kill the newborn Hebrew boys. And the midwives refuse. The Torah tells us why: “They feared God.” They were more concerned with answering to Hashem than to Pharaoh.

This moment is far more than moral courage. It is the beginning of the redemption.
Why? Because the moment a dictator’s laws are ignored, his power is already cracking.

Egypt was not a democracy. Pharaoh was an absolute monarch. There was no legislature, no courts, no elections. Pharaoh said something—and that was the law. And yet, the midwives simply ignored him. Later, even Pharaoh’s own daughter ignores his decree and saves Moshe. Once a regime’s own people stop enforcing its laws, the regime is finished—it just doesn’t know it yet.

We see this idea echoed much later in history. During the era of Andrew Jackson, the U.S. Supreme Court—under John Marshall—ruled against the forced removal of Native Americans. Jackson’s response was famously cynical: “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.” The result was the Trail of Tears. The law existed on paper, but power lay elsewhere.

That episode taught the Supreme Court a hard lesson: sometimes it avoids ruling not because the issue is unclear, but because it knows the ruling will be ignored. Sadly, the same dynamic exists in religious life—sometimes rabbis refrain from issuing rulings they know people will not follow.

But the Torah is teaching us something deeper:
Redemption begins when people choose obedience to God over obedience to tyranny.

The midwives did not overthrow Pharaoh. They didn’t stage a rebellion. They simply refused to comply. And that refusal set everything else in motion. Because of them, Moshe lives. Because Moshe lives, redemption becomes possible.

The greatest threat to a tyrant is not protest—it is irrelevance.
And the greatest act of faith is knowing whom you truly answer to.

Something to think about.

The Book of Exodus begins with the statement that there was a new Pharaoh who did not know Joseph. Basically, he was denying Egyptian history. This is what those who wish to do evil do. They deny their own history when it does not suit their plans.

Parashat Shemot – “The Pharaoh Who Did Not Know Yosef”

At the very beginning of this week’s parashah, the Torah tells us: “A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Yosef.”

That single phrase raises a major question among the commentators. Who exactly was this Pharaoh?

Was he a completely new ruler from a new dynasty?
Was he the son of the previous Pharaoh?
Or was he the very same Pharaoh who knew Yosef well—but chose to erase him from memory?

Whichever answer we accept, the message is the same: this Pharaoh denied Egypt’s own history. He denied that there had ever been a man named Yosef—someone who saved the entire country from famine, stabilized the economy, and brought Egypt prosperity.

This kind of historical denial is not unique. Totalitarian regimes throughout history have always erased facts that do not fit their narrative. Think of the Soviet Union, where people were literally removed from photographs when they fell out of favor. There’s a famous image of Stalin originally standing next to Trotsky—until Trotsky was erased. The editors forgot one detail: Stalin was still standing next to an extra pair of shoes.

When ideology matters more than truth, facts become dangerous.

There’s a famous quote attributed to Oliver Cromwell. When he commissioned a portrait of himself, he told the painter: “Paint me as I am—warts and all.” That is how history must be told. Not selectively. Not sanitized.

The Torah itself insists on this honesty. It does not hide our failures. The story of Yehudah and Tamar is included. The story of David and Bat-Sheva is included—front and center. Midrash even tells us that David asked God to leave that episode out, and God refused. Why? Because people learn not only from greatness, but from mistakes—and from growth after failure.

That is how a nation matures.

The Pharaoh who “did not know Yosef” set Egypt on a destructive path. A society that lies about its past eventually destroys itself. We’ve seen this in modern history as well. After World War I, Germany could not accept defeat. Instead of acknowledging economic collapse and military failure, they embraced the myth of being “stabbed in the back.” That denial became one of the seeds of World War II.

History denied does not disappear—it returns, louder and more destructive.

The Torah teaches us the opposite approach. We lost the Beit HaMikdash not because our enemies were stronger, but because of what we did wrong—how we treated one another. That painful truth is recorded so we can learn from it: treat each other with dignity, act as a community, act as a nation.

And that, perhaps, is the most important lesson of that single phrase: “A Pharaoh who did not know Yosef.”

We must not be that Pharaoh.

We must remember the good that others have done for us.
We must remember our own failures.
And we must learn from both—so we can become better people and better Jews.

Something to think about.

---