
The Haftarah Project: Va-era — Humility and Forgiveness
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At the opening of this week’s haftarah, the prophet Ezekiel is instructed to deliver a message to Pharaoh that predicts the downfall of the Egyptian kingdom and the exile of its people. The prophecy is grotesque; Pharaoh is depicted as a monstrous water creature swimming in the Nile, and Ezekiel is commanded to tell him that God plans to “catch” him like a fish: “I will put hooks in your jaws, and make the fish of your channels cling to your scales; I will haul you up from your channels, with all the fish of your channels clinging to your scales.” God will then fling Pharaoh and all of his courtiers out of the Nile and into the desert where they’ll be left to gasp for air and become food for wild animals. “Then,” we are told, “all the inhabitants of Egypt shall know that I am God.” Ezekiel concludes this section with a cataclysmic prophecy: he promises that Egypt will become desolate; it will be uninhabitable for forty years, its cities will be ruined, its people scattered, “in response to your stating, ‘The river is mine and I have developed it.’” (29:8-9). God makes clear that this Divine wrath comes as retribution for Pharaoh’s claim that he is God, and for the evil that that arrogance brought into the world.
The primary theological issue at hand is the punishment of evildoers. How should evil be punished? And how should we respond when the people who perpetrated evil against us are punished? Surely it is not spiritually healthy to delight in suffering, even if it is the suffering of our worst enemies; at the same time, it is hard not to find some dark joy in an ultimate Divine gesture that affirms everything that we – we Israelites, or perhaps we modern social justice-oriented Jews – care about by finally thwarting Pharaoh, the king of injustice.
The haftarah’s treatment of the fate of Egypt calls to mind the famous midrash about God witnessing the angels celebrating the Egyptians drowning in the Red Sea during the Exodus:
“The ministering angels wanted to sing their song, for the angels would sing songs to each other, as it states: “And they called out to each other and said” (Isaiah 6:3), but the Holy One, Blessed be He, said: The work of My hands, the Egyptians, are drowning at sea, and you wish to say songs? This indicates that God does not rejoice over the downfall of the wicked. Rabbi Elazar said that this is how the matter is to be understood: Indeed, God Himself does not rejoice over the downfall of the wicked, but He causes others to rejoice. (Babylonian Talmud, Megillah 10b)
The text communicates Divine disappointment with the celebrating angels; God does not rejoice over the downfall of the wicked, and neither should the angels. But the midrash concludes with Rabbi Elazar explaining that while God does not celebrate the death of any individuals, God created humans such that we would naturally feel joy at the downfall of our enemies. We are not God. We do not have endless compassion. As we read this portion of the haftarah, it is natural to feel some satisfaction; indeed, the haftarah’s juxtaposition against the parasha itself, which narrates the original enslavement of our people, sets us up to inevitably feel a degree of Schadenfreude.
But then, as it so often does, the haftarah takes a sharp turn and emerges into a landscape of previously inconceivable possibility. While verse twelve describes the desolation of Egypt’s cities, verse thirteen reads, “After a period of forty years, I will gather the Egyptians from the peoples among whom they were dispersed.” The worst of the punishment will end, and Egypt will receive a second chance at life. Ezekiel puts limits on this process of Divine forgiveness; Egypt is to return to its land as the lowliest of all of the kingdoms, and will never have power over other nations again (29:14-15). This promised return is not a carte blanche pardon for their evil deeds. Nevertheless, the Egyptian people are apparently being offered another opportunity to act justly.
In his book Forgiveness, the 20th century philosopher and musicologist Vladimir Jankelevitch took up the question of whether any human action is truly unforgivable. Can we do things to each other that are so beyond the pale that they can never be atoned for? He concludes that forgiveness is infinitely possible, because the process of forgiveness is ultimately nothing more than a recognition of one’s own humility. We forgive each other because we see in others’ evil actions our own potential to do the same. “This is what the marvelous gentleness of forgiveness implies,” writes Yankelevitch. “Forgiveness whispers in a quiet voice: Et ego! Me, too…De vistris fuimus. You are sinners, well, I am another one of them, too. I, as well, I sinned or will sin…I am like you, weak, fallible, and miserable.” (Vladimir Jankélévitch, et al. Forgiveness.) Humility in the face of our own fallibility is the bulldozer that clears a path for forgiveness – and for teshuvah.
The haftarah is asking us to extend this humility to our enemies, and God models this by offering Egypt a second chance. Just as God created us to naturally feel a degree of joy when those who hurt us suffer the consequences, the haftarah insists that God also created each person – and each nation – with an endless ability to do teshuvah. Even for Egypt, the paradigm of evil in the Biblical world, a route towards restoration is provided.
The haftarah ultimately invites us to hold onto that capaciousness during these few weeks of the Torah cycle, when we read about our ancestors’ enslavement at the hands of Pharaoh. We are not asked to unconditionally forgive Egypt; rather, we are asked to tap into the deepest reserves of our humility, and recognize that just like us, even the evil Egyptians might be capable of profound inner change. We are asked to distinguish ourselves from Egypt by responding to the suffering of our perceived enemies with as much humility as we can muster.
Editors Note: The reflections from the Haftarah Project represent the thoughts and opinions of the author.