Where is Your Heart?

Parashat Bo, Exodus 10:1–13:16

Ben Volman, Vice President of the UMJC

In 1936, David Ben Gurion addressed the British commission under Lord Peel, who was officially in Palestine to examine the reasons for local unrest. Ben Gurion understood that despite the original promises for a Jewish homeland, the delegation now had other priorities. Yet, with thousands of Jewish refugees flooding in from Europe to escape Nazi antisemitism, the Yishuv was building new cities, reclaiming the desert, and uniting under one language, Hebrew. Their success had led to violent Arab protests and the British wanted to hold them back, so Ben Gurion posed some questions:

The Mayflower’s landing on Plymouth Rock was one of the great historical events. . . . But I would like to ask any Englishman . . . what day did the Mayflower leave port? I’d like to ask the Americans: How many people were on the boat? Who were their leaders? What kind of food did they eat? More than 3300 years ago, long before the Mayflower, our people left Egypt, and every Jew in the world, wherever he is, knows what day they left. And he knows what food they ate . . . we tell the story to our children and grandchildren to guarantee that it will never be forgotten. And we say: “Now we may be enslaved, but next year, we’ll be a free people.”

Ben Gurion’s message was simple: you cannot stop us, for this freedom is already alive in our hearts.

Among all the epoch-making events in human history, there are few as compelling and impactful as Israel’s exodus out of Egypt. It is the touchstone narrative for people who have aspired to freedom across the globe. But in some ways, for those of us who have celebrated it every year throughout our lives, it’s almost too familiar. We sometimes rush toward the climax of the story, and don’t always take in all those essential details of the hard-won journey to freedom.

This parasha opens with the grating reminder that Moshe and his brother faced a persistent, unyielding adversary. Perhaps they were not so pleased to hear the Lord tell them: “Go to Pharaoh, for I have made him and his servants hard-hearted, so that I can demonstrate these signs of mine among them” (Exod 10:1).

Who wants to have the Lord deliberately make our mission harder? This was the great task before Moshe and Aharon: to keep facing Pharaoh’s resolute, “No!” After seven terrible plagues, he was warned, “Don’t you understand yet that Egypt is being destroyed?” (Exod 10:7). The eighth plague, an infestation of locusts, was utterly devastating: “Not a green thing remained, not a tree and not a plant in the field, in all the land of Egypt” (Exod 10:15). For a brief moment, the tyrant seemed to relent; then he did nothing. The ninth plague was even more overwhelming: three days of total darkness, “darkness so thick it can be felt” (Exod 10: 21). Again, after the sun’s light was restored, Pharaoh gave only the pretense of conceding. It was another “No.”

If there is one thing that has not changed after 3000 years, it is the obstinate nature of the human heart. We often look at Pharaoh’s stubbornness with an air of contempt, but it is a detail that ought to remind us of our own condition. As I prepared this d’rash, I had a long conversation with one of the Messianic rabbis whom I most admire, and he reminded me that the condition of our hearts before God is the most essential part of this story. Like Pharaoh, we think we can try to compromise or negotiate with God about our sins. But in the end, there is no way forward, no peace with him, no path to life until we surrender our hearts.

Everyone in the Exodus story has struggles of the heart with God, including Moshe in front of the burning bush and the Israelites, angry because their life had become harder after he told Pharaoh to let God’s people go. Finally, Moshe gives the Israelites all the instructions for the Passover, commanding them to cover their doors with the blood of the lamb.

When you come to the land which Adonai will give you, as he has promised, you are to observe this ceremony. When your children ask you, “What do you mean by this ceremony?” say, “It is the sacrifice of Adonai’s Pesach [Passover], because [Adonai] passed over the houses of the people of Isra’el in Egypt, when he killed the Egyptians but spared our houses.” (Exod 12:25–27)

As Rashi notes, the people seem to have finally understood that God was going to redeem them, bring them into the land of promise, and bless them with future generations. The verse continues: “The people of Isra’el bowed their heads and worshipped.” All those who had been wrestling in their hearts were now ready to surrender to God. This is the turning point, and the climax will soon follow.

The Peel Commission report of 1937 recommending the partition of Palestine between the Jews and Arabs was soon rejected and the British released a “White Paper” in 1939. Under the new policy, the British mandate admitted only a few thousand Jewish refugees per year. In North America, the U.S. closed its doors to Jewish immigrants and in Canada the government quietly adopted the principle of “none is too many.” The hearts of the world had grown cold, but that was not the end of the story.

On May 14, 1948, before signing Israel’s Declaration of Independence, David Ben Gurion looked back over 2000 years of our history and declared how the Jewish people had returned in a second exodus, “undaunted by difficulties, restrictions and dangers, and never ceased to assert their right to a life of dignity, freedom and honest toil in their national homeland . . . like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.”

Sometimes, our task is to believe that God’s work is not yet finished. On Friday, January 27, the world marks the UN’s Holocaust Memorial Day in remembrance of the 1945 liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. It is not a celebration of victory, but an inflection point in modern history, a moment when the world is called to consider past choices and ask, “Where were our hearts?” The prophet warns us, the heart “is more deceitful than anything else and mortally sick. Who can fathom it?” (Jer.17:9). We also have to answer, where are our hearts today?

The God in whom Israel have put their trust still confronts tyranny, still upholds justice, and will certainly deliver those who put their trust in him. This is perhaps the most profound message of all: God, who moves in our hearts, brings a meaning, purpose, and dignity to human life that no tyranny, no injustice can erase.

Scripture references are from Complete Jewish Bible, CJB.