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By Rabbi Pablo Berman,
Comunidad Israelita de El Salvador

Translated by Inés Baum - Proofreading by Ellen Zindler

The world is full of despots, assassins, men (?) who, throughout universal history, held power and, by means of such power, sank their people and other nations along with them. Even today we can see them with our own eyes, messianic despots who suppose themselves divine envoys who have come to save the world. “I already saw that movie”, any one of us could say, but regrettably, many people enjoy seeing movies more than once.

In rabbinic literature, Pharaoh is seen as the highest exponent of evil, of “rasha”, and Egypt, “Mitzrayim” (Tzar, in Hebrew, something narrow, which suffocates and presses), as the best example of those nations that oppress other people, not stopping until they’ve destroyed them.

So we have, on this stage, Moshe and his brother Aaron on one side, Pharaoh and his magicians and sorcerers on the other, transforming the water of the Nile into blood, and the rods into serpents. The text of the Torah in this week’s Parashah, Va’era, will repeat, nearly twenty times, the phrase “kabed leb Parho” and “vayechezak leb Parho”, which we can translate, respectively, as “obstinate is Pharaoh’s heart” and “Pharaoh’s heart hardened…” as he did not free the people of Israel from bondage in Egypt.

It is extremely interesting that, in biblical conception, psychological faculties were considered to emanate from the heart. Human conduct was determined at the heart of people, which was, at the same time, the seat of all intellectual, moral and spiritual life of the individual.

This Torah image –a person who “hardens his heart”– expresses an arrogant state of moral degeneration, insensitivity in decisions, and inability to feel compassion towards other people.

Pharaoh is guilty, no doubt about that, and as we all know well, each one is the architect of his/her own destiny.

The Jewish sages of the Midrash Rabbah were impressed by the word kabed, which we translate as “obstinate is Pharaoh’s heart”, although the term kabed can also refer to the “liver”. The liver is full of blood, and one of its characteristics is that all the blood from the body passes through it. In moments of wrath, the blood liver boils and it swells, blows up, and the liver ducts shut down; that is why it is “kabed”, it is heavy. It becomes the heaviest organ, another meaning for the Hebrew word kabed.

Nevertheless, the Torah tells us that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, turned heavy, and the Midrash Rabbah answers: ma ha kabed koes, af libo shel ze naasa kabed, if the liver is full of wrath, the heart will also be full of wrath and blood, that is why the heart, too, will turn heavy and swollen with hate and rage.

Two images, heart and liver, to create in the text this idea of the despot, the rasha, the wicked, oppressor, unfair and insensitive, and although in ancient times psychological faculties were supposed to concentrate at the heart, in some way today, for us, the heart continues to have specific features, regarding good-hearted people and bad-hearted people.

Without needing to mention them, we know well who the “Pharaohs” of our time are, and who have their swollen and bloody livers weighing them down more and more each day. May their own wrath consume them, and may the sea waves, just as with Pharaoh and his army, close upon them.

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Forwarded by Rabbi Gustavo Kraselnik, from Kol Shearit Israel Congregation, Panama.
Translated by Inés Baum and proofread by Ellen Zindler, from B’nei Israel Congregation, Costa Rica.

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