הגדה ברורה

Haggadot and essays for Pesah and all year round

Gavriel

Parshat Bo: Why did they bake their dough into matzot?

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In the Geonic Haggadah that we use, we find the most well-known explanation for eating matzot on Pesah: the children of Israel brought dough with them from Egypt and baked it as matzot because there was not time for it to rise. This is based on reading Shemot 12:39 as a series of clauses each explaining the one before: and they baked the dough they had brought out from Egypt into matzot because it had not risen because they had been driven out from Egypt and were not able to tarry… This …

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Parshat Bo: Who were the firstborn?

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The Torah repeatedly emphasizes that all the Egyptian firstborn died, from the lowest to the highest rungs of society, as well as the animals. However, it leaves ambiguous exactly what a firstborn is. Generally, in the Torah, the term בכור refers only to the firstborn of a mother and usually only if the child is male. With regard to the mitzvah of pidyon haben, a בכור has to be the ‘opening of the womb’ and if the mother’s first baby is female there is no בכור. However, Tehillim 78:51, …

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Parshat Bo: Borrowing from the Egyptians

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On God’s instruction, the children of Israel ‘borrow’ valuable items from the Egyptians, thus leaving Egypt with great wealth. This presents an obvious moral difficulty because they never return what they borrowed. Ibn Ezra affirms that the children of Israel did indeed trick the Egyptians, but that this was entirely licit because all property belongs to G-d and he may transfer it from one person to another when He wishes. In addition, the Egyptians only lent their goods to the Hebrews …

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Parshat Bo: What was the plague of darkness?

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While all the plagues are supernatural and thus beyond human comprehension in terms of their cause, the plague of darkness is unique in that it is hard to understand what it actually was. Darkness is not a thing, so what can it mean that God ‘sent darkness and made it dark’ (Tehillim 105:28)? In addition, the Torah’s description of the plague is extremely brief and the phrase וימש חשך is ambiguous because it is not clear whether it comes from the root [מ ש ש] ‘to feel/grope’, [מ ו ש] …

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Parshat Bo: Was there ever another plague of locusts like it?

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The Torah states that not only was the plague of locusts unprecedented, but that it will never be repeated. However, the prophet Yoel describes a plague of locusts during the first temple period and says that this too was unprecedented in its severity. For that to be true, it must have been greater than the plague of locusts in Egypt, but the Torah seems to rule that out in advance. Rashi points out that Yoel (chapter 2:2) describes four sub-species of locusts ארבה, ילק, חסיל and גזם and …

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Parshat Vaeira: The sorcerers and the lice

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Up until the plague of lice, the Egyptian sorcerers had been able to mimic God’s plagues in order to convince Pharaoh that they were not genuine miracles. However, when they tried to produce lice, they were unable. There are different explanations about why they were able to turn their staffs into crocodiles, turn water into blood, and make frogs emerge from the water, but were unable to turn dust into lice. The sorcerers could not turn dust into lice because all the dust in Egypt had already …

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