The Little Book of Jewish Celebrations by Ronald Tauber

Author:Ronald Tauber
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC
Published: 2014-03-13T04:00:00+00:00

As Moses grew up, he witnessed a Jew being subjected to cruelty by an Egyptian and intervened on the Jew’s behalf, killing the Egyptian. When Moses’ deed was discovered, he fled into the wilderness to avoid punishment. In the wilderness, God spoke to Moses through a bush that burned but was not consumed and instructed Moses to lead the Jews to freedom. Moses and his older brother, Aaron, went to Pharaoh to demand that he release the Jews but Pharaoh’s “heart was hardened,” and he made life more difficult for the Jewish slaves by increasing their workload. In order to intimidate Pharaoh into releasing the Jews, God brought Ten Plagues on Egypt:

blood: The waters of the Nile River and all other streams were turned into blood.

frogs: Egypt was overrun with frogs.

lice: Both humans and animals suffered from lice infestation.

wild animals: Egypt was invaded by fierce wild beasts.

death of cattle: Egyptian livestock became ill and died.

boils: Humans and animals suffered painful skin eruptions.

hail: Hail fell throughout the land and destroyed the Egyptian crops.

locusts: Egypt suffered an extraordinary locust invasion that destroyed everything in its path.

darkness: This was not just an absence of light but a palpable darkness during day and night.

death of the firstborn: The eldest child of every Egyptian from “the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne to the first-born of the maid-servant behind the millstone,” as well as the firstborn of every Egyptian animal, all died in one night (exodus 11:5).

Just before the last and most terrible plague, Moses instructed the Jews to mark their doorposts with the blood of a slaughtered lamb so that the Spirit of God would “pass over” the Jewish homes and spare the Jewish children. After this plague and the loss of his own son, Pharaoh relented and directed the Jews to depart from Egypt. Concerned that Pharaoh might change his mind, the Jews left Egypt in such haste that the dough they had made for bread did not have time to rise. For that reason, Jews eat unleavened bread, matzah (or matzot), during the Festival of Passover. Shortly after the Jews quit Egypt, Pharaoh regretted his decision and chased after them with his army. The Jews were camped by the Red Sea (or possibly, a Sea of Reeds) and found themselves between the Egyptian enemy and the water. To save the Jews, God parted the sea so they could safely cross, and then closed the waters on the pursuing Egyptians, who drowned.

red sea? Does the Bible really mean that the Jews crossed the Red Sea, which separates the Sinai Peninsula in Africa from Saudi Arabia in Asia? The Bible refers to the body of water crossed by the Jews as Yam Suph, which translates as Sea of Reeds. Most scholars today think that Yam Suph refers either to the Gulf of Eilat or to a now-dried-out lake in the Sinai Peninsula. The confusion probably arose in the English translation because of the similarity of the words red and reed.

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