הגדה ברורה

Haggadot and essays for Pesah and all year round

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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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