Have you ever been on a tour of a cave? If so, you know that after wending your way through lighted pathways, the guide will ask you to stand or sit in place then turn out the lights. At that point, you dwell briefly in complete and engulfing darkness. It is disorienting.
This week's parasha called Bo describes the last three plagues that afflicted the Egyptians before Pharaoh finally released the Israelites from their four hundred years of enslavement. The parasha begins in darkness, as the Egyptians suffer under plagues of locusts, darkness, and the death of the first born, but ends in light as the Israelites, finally freed, begin their Exodus out of Egypt and towards the Promised Land.
The ninth plague of darkness is on my mind this week. The text describes three days in which all of Egypt dwelled in a complete darkness that was so thick that one could feel it. Midrash suggests that it got so thick that "those who were standing couldn't sit and those who were sitting couldn't stand."
We often imagine the plague of darkness as something physical. However, Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg in her masterpiece commentary, The Particulars of Rapture draws upon an early 20th century commentary called Torah Temimah (1902) to provide a different interpretation: "An intriguing suggestion is made in Torah Temimah: This darkness was a subjective blindness, experienced by the Egyptians, perhaps as a cataract as 'thick as a dinar'. . .This darkness is not a prodigy of nature so much as an inner experience of each individual: a catatonic terror of absolute helplessness." (page 165). It was this spiritual darkness that paralyzed Pharaoh and all Egyptians, that inner experience as they witnessed the power of the God of the Israelites over their Egyptian gods.
Many of us know what it is like to live in darkness. Depression, anxiety, questions of faith or purpose, and other conditions that affect our mental health and well-being make us feel helpless and alone. Sometimes we feel this darkness engulfing us and disorienting us. Until, that is, someone helps us see the light.
When we dwell is spiritual or existential darkness, what are the lights that that help to extinguish some of the darkness? Is it prayer, community, friendships, action, therapy or more that helps shine a bit of light in dark places?
When we are in a physically dark room, all it takes is the flickering flame of a candle to cast some light and extinguish some of the darkness. Little by little, we can summon light, and we can look to others to summon light. When we come together to shine our lights, we extinguish darkness.
If you are feeling in a particularly dark place, know that TBE can be a resource. Pray with us, learn with us and be with us. If you'd like to talk one on one about spiritual matters, let me know and we will spend time together. Living in some form of darkness is all too common among us. We shouldn't have to dwell alone. Let us cast some light upon one another to help one another see more clearly the gentle faces of those who are here to help one another heal.
Shabbat Shalom,
