Do you believe in magic?
In addition to Moses, Aaron, and Pharaoh, Parashat Va’era features a somewhat mysterious group of individuals known as hartumei mizrayim – the Egyptian magicians. They play an ironic and darkly humorous role in the unfolding story of the signs and wonders that afflict Egypt in the lead up to the Exodus itself. Whatever Aaron and Moses do, the Egyptian magicians mimic. They too can transform their walking sticks into serpents; they too can turn the Nile to blood and fill Egypt with frogs. They run out of steam with the third portent, the plague knowns as vermin. “The magicians did the like with their spells to produce lice, but they could not…and the magicians said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God!” (Exodus 8:14-15)
At the beginning of the tale, however, it is Pharaoh who mocks Moses and Aaron. In the words of the Midrash: “These are the kinds of wonders that your God does?! People generally bring merchandise to a place where they don’t have already have it! Do they bring buckets of seafood to Banias? Do they bring fish to Akko [a fishing town]?! Don’t you know that all the magic arts are in my domain?” (Shemot Rabbah 9:6) It’s the ancient near eastern analogue to ‘bringing coals to Newcastle’! And indeed, ancient Egypt was known as the world’s leading center of magic and magical arts.
The tables turn, of course. Total reversal is, on one level, what the Exodus story is all about. Slaves can become free people, and they do. The world’s greatest power can be laid low by a ragtag group of former servants, and it is. The Sea can be split, and indeed it is. Tomorrow can be a new day, and the past needn’t define or dictate the future. And so, with sincere apology to the Harry Potter fans out there, including the ones with whom I live, there’s a power greater than wizardry. Magicians and tyrants, blessedly, are not the ultimate authority. As Mel Brooks (in his 2000 Year Old Man guise) might have put it, “there’s something bigger than Pharaoh.” And it isn’t smoke and mirrors.
Shabbat Shalom.
