Parshat Bo: The Snake in the River
“Come to Pharaoh ”
The parsha begins with God’s curious phraseology to Moshe.
Why “come to Pharaoh?” Why not “go?” What is the difference in feeling between “go” and “come?” Come means the person who is speaking is already there. They are waiting for you there. It’s intimate. It feels very close: “Come here.” “Come home.” “Come over”
So if the Divine is beckoning us to come closer, to come in to Pharaoh, what are we being drawn to? Especially at this highly dramatic point in the story, why say “come to Pharaoh” when all but the last few plagues are about to hit the land and the Israelites are finally preparing to leave?
The Zohar asks the same question:
Why does it say, "Come to Pharaoh"? It should have said, "Go to Pharaoh" .... But God brought Moses into a chamber within a chamber, to the... heavenly and mighty serpent from which many levels evolve...which Moses feared to approach himself... (Zohar, part II, 34a)
What is this chamber within a chamber?
We have already been told multiple times that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. Perhaps God has been in that resistant heart – beckoning Moshe to “come” to it Perhaps the chamber within a chamber is the dark and resistant inner-place that must be approached and understood before freedom is possible.
Once we approach, once we face our fear and come close to it, what is the “heavenly and mighty serpent” that we find within that resistant place?
In a fascinating teaching, Yanki Tauber (based on the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe) connects the serpent that the Zohar mentions to a verse in Ezekiel that
“Bo el Paroh… ”
describes Pharaoh as "the great serpent who couches in the midst of his streams, who says, ‘my river is my own, and I have made it myself.’" (Ezekiel 29:3).
In this reading, at the root of Pharaoh’s hardened heart, in his “chamber within a chamber,” there is extreme self-centeredness, or ego. He clings to his sense of self and its superiority over everything so tightly that he is like a serpent that believes he created and owns the stream in which he finds himself.
It seems so extreme and delusional. And yet, don’t we all partake in this type of thinking every day? We use the word “my” to describe a body that was given to us, over which we have very little influence, and which will one day die. We use the word “my” to describe our family and loved ones, which we did not create (even if we played a part in their creation) and over which we have very little control. MY house, MY laptop, MY wife/husband, MY child, MY anger, MINE, MINE, MINE. We tend to live every moment of our lives in a prison of Me and Mine, desperately trying to claim ownership and credit (and deflect blame) for the rivers in which we find ourselves and the lives that are gifted to us.
And it’s a recipe for suffering because the world insists that it isn’t ours. The more we cling and grasp and try and manipulate life that is constantly changing, we continue to find ourselves endlessly losing a fight with a world that doesn’t bend to our will.
What is the alternative? What do we (and Moshe) do once we approach that hardened, grasping, egocentric place within?
Interestingly, in the text, God beckons Moshe to come to Pharaoh’s hardened heart:
2. and in order that you tell into the ears of your son and your son's son how I made a mockery of the Egyptians, and [that you tell of] My signs that I placed in them, and you will know that I am the Lord."
(Chapter 10:2)
There is nothing that Moshe must do once he “comes” to Pharaoh. Once he approaches, he will be able to tell future generations of the many miracles God performs. The coming close is the action in and of itself.
In my experience, gently breathing into the places in my life where the ego is grasping and clinging and trying to control the world can provide a great deal of relief and freedom. It doesn’t mean I remain passive – Moshe did have to repeatedly come to Pharaoh, after all. It means recognizing the limit of what I can and cannot do and letting go of that which is out of my hands.
Additionally, unlike the serpent in the stream, when I recognize that every cell in my body and mind, every person I love and every thing I own is actually on loan from the universe, I feel enormous gratitude for every moment I have with them. What a treasure in my healthy digestive system. What a gift in my sisters, my boyfriend, my parents.
Many people who survive life-threatening illnesses understand the “borrowed” nature of the body very acutely. Mark Nepo, a writer, poet, and cancer survivor, wrote the following poem that expresses the freedom at the other end of letting go:
SURVIVING HAS MADE ME CRAZYI eat flowers now and birds follow me. I open myself like an inlet and dolphin energies swim on through.
Wherever I go, I remain silent and the silence begins to glow till one eye in the light outsees two in the dark.
When asked, I now hesitate for there are so many ways to love the earth.
I water things now constantly: water the hearts of dead friends with light, the sores of the living with anything warm, water the skies with a thousand affections and follow the voices of animals into grasses that move like ocean.
I eat flowers now and birds come. I eat care and things to love arrive. I eat time and as I age whatever I swallow grows timeless.
I eat and undie and water my doubts with silence and birds come.
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