Before Whom Pharaoh Stands

 

Before Whom Pharaoh Stands

I find power fascinating. 

There are constructs of power within Jewish tradition which are by their nature uneasy. Social stratification might be necessary in some ways, but it also causes unending issues. God, in the early days of our existence in the Holy Land, does not want there to be a king. God seems to think, throughout the Book of Judges, that God can be the ruling social authority. There are prophets, after all; the divine message can be delivered, so why would the people need a king? 

It turns out - heresy alert - God is wrong. The people need a king, not because of anything lacking in God, but due to something lacking in themselves. Everyone else has a king. Kings are great cultural symbols. Never mind all of the issues that come with handing power over one man - the people demand a king, and so eventually God gives in and tells the Prophet Samuel to anoint Saul as their new sovereign. 

It goes, I hate to tell you, quite badly. 

Eventually, Saul is replaced with David, and King David becomes the paradigmatic example of good kingship. He is the mould through which the idea of a Messiah will be created. But he’s still not perfect; he still makes mistakes, sometimes very bad ones. Even his son, King Solomon, given the gift of great wisdom, ends up making mistakes that cost the Land of Israel its unity - and the land gets divided in twain, the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom. And there are more kings and more problems to follow.

Something about power and authority has built into it a fundamental flaw. It is exactly why God  in the Book of Judges wants to set up society with just God and just the people and nobody between. 

But I think the problem is not just power, it’s how we understand our own power. 

We are not the end of the line. It is too easy for people with power to understand themselves as in control. And it’s just not true. The nature of living in the chaos of the universe is that things will happen that are outside of our control. And this is the case whether you are seemingly-powerless midwives living under the whims of a great tyrant or whether you are, indeed, that great tyrant. 

In the case of Pharaoh, it could not be more stark. 

Pharaoh is set up in a kingship modelled after divinity. To Pharaoh, his kingship was not only ordained by the gods, but he was himself divine. The example of Pharaoh reveals, I think, that precise problem of power. In Pharaoh’s interpretation of the world, Pharaoh is in charge. And throughout the story, he’s going to be continually proven incorrect: by midwives and mothers, by a princess and her maidservants in the Nile, by an adopted Prince of Egypt who runs away and returns, by miracle after miracle, and finally by the crashing in of the walls of the Sea of Reeds. 

And every step of the way, Pharaoh will fail to learn the lesson that he is not actually in charge. 

It is not a story, by the way, teaching that we have no power. Pharaoh has plenty of power; a great many people died because of it. The midwives have this unseen, unexpected power: their resistance saving one child changes the course of history. It is instead a story teaching that even Pharaoh’s power is limited, because even Pharaoh is ultimately just another human being living in an unpredictable world. But he has been fooled by his own propaganda. 

Now, none of us in this room are kings (as far as I know). None of us have Pharaoh’s power - limited though it is - to throw around. But that is only a matter of scale. We exercise power and hand over power all the time. We trust people and we are entrusted by them. I am no stranger to that: every time a parent leaves their child, the most precious thing in their world, with me, they are handing over power to me. When congregants reveal pain and vulnerability to me, they are handing over power. In fact, all of the scariest things about a rabbi are (in my opinion) just a matter of scale on the scariest things about being a person. We are constantly handing over our hearts to people and constantly holding one another’s hearts in our hands. 

Sometimes it is as clear as caring for someone else’s child or listening to their pain. Sometimes it is as seemingly mundane as getting behind the wheel of a car. We are taking and handing over the ability to hold each other and the ability to harm each other. 

So on the one hand, we should be amazed at the power that we have - and on the other hand, we should be amazed at the power we don’t have. 

If the problem is both power and powerlessness, then the medicine to both of those problems is, I think, the same thing:

Da lifnei mi atah omeid. 

Know before Whom you stand. 

It’s a Talmudic saying (B’rakhot 28b) which is often found written on the ark of a synagogue. Actually, in its Talmudic context, the quote starts “when in prayer” - which makes a lot of sense of why it might be in the synagogue. When in prayer, know before Whom you stand. But I think it is more than a reminder for when we stand for the Amidah; in fact, Jewish prayer is about more than what happens in the synagogue. In Jewish tradition, we are “in prayer” constantly: in the morning and evening with the Shema, with blessings over food and over rainbows and even after using the bathroom. In every one of those moments, from the most magical to most mundane, we are called to know before Whom we stand. 

Religious consciousness about power is about understanding the context of our power. In the context of the world, I am small. I stand here today and one day I will not be here anymore. But it’s also about understanding the power we do have, sometimes unpredictably; the way that things we do and say can have a great impact on the world around us. 

It is about understanding both what we are and what we are not. 

The human being is not God. Not even Pharaoh. We are finite, not infinite; we are limited in understanding; we are fragile and achingly temporary in this world. 

And also, neatly alongside that even as it feels contradictory: we are made in the Image of God. We have a spark of divinity within us, a spark of something mysterious that will remain even when the body returns to dust and ash. 

We are powerless and mortal, and powerful and eternal, and it is somehow in the knowledge of both things that we can act well and properly in the world. 

To know before Whom we stand is both to recognise that we are not God and that we are made in the divine image. We are powerless and limited and we are powerful and eternal. Reb Simcha Bunim famously encapsulated this idea by saying a person should have a slip of paper in each pocket, one reading “I am but dust and ashes” and the other reading “the world was created for my sake”. 

This kind of awareness is not simple. 

In fact, it is something entirely possible to know logically when we sit and think about it and then forget entirely when we leave this kind of space. How important, then, that we carve out time deliberately to remind ourselves. How important is Shabbat, which forces us to step away from social stratification and asks us to be present only in the here and now. How important is tefillah, prayer, which asks us to make space in the day to think about the God who gives us life. How important are blessings, over mitzvot and over food and over all kinds of things, that ask only for a breath and a sentence of recognition that the things we do have value, that they matter. 

Da lifnei mah atah omeid. Know before Whom you stand. 

This is what those midwives did, how they changed the course of history forever.  It is what Pharaoh never managed, despite having every chance to. 

I know who we would rather emulate.