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
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?
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?
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
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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What are צפרדעים?
In the entire Tanach, the term צפרדע appears only in this section of the Torah and Tehillim 105:30 where it also refers to the second plague. It is an unusual word and may not actually be Hebrew. The traditional view is that this creature is the frog, and this is its meaning in modern Hebrew. Onkelos translates the term as עורדעניא which likely means frogs. However, there is no source in Hazal that clearly identifies צפרדעים as frogs and a surprisingly large number of commentators believed that …