Parshath Va'era

One of my indelible childhood memories was the time I saw Walt Disney's "Fantasia." I can remember to this day the elephant in the pink tu-tu dancing the "Sugar Plum Fairy." But the image that remains most vivid in my imagination is Mickey Mouse's performance as the "Sorcerer's Apprentice."

The story of the sorcerer's apprentice goes like this: The apprentice finds himself alone one day with the sorcerer's book of spells. The sorcerer has gone out (probably to an interminable sorcerers' convention). Mickey has been charged, in the sorcerer's absence, with the cartoon equivalent of sponge-a -- mopping the floor. Lazy and over-confident, as sorcerers' apprentices are prone to be, he decides to take the book of spells for a small "test drive round the block." With the help of the appropriate spell, he succeeds in bringing to life the sponge-a stick to do his work for him. Mickey laughs with delight as the newly animated mop goes back and forth to the well, drawing heavy buckets of water and bringing them to the house.

With no work to do, Mickey dozes off. When he awakes, he practically has a heart attack. The house is flooded as the enchanted mop keeps drawing more and more water! All Mickey's efforts to stop the mop are in vain. Finally, he seizes an ax and tries to chop the mop into oblivion; the mop, however, divides like an amoebae into two. Now there are two magic mops flooding the house with water! Mickey chops these mops as well, and they divide into four. In a frenzy of panic and rage, Mickey slices and hacks, creating a new mop with each whack. When the sorcerer returns, armies of mops are flooding his house with gallons of water.

If ever there was a case of art borrowing from reality, this must be it. I doubt Walt Disney ever read the Midrash on this week's Parsha (Disney was known to employ neither Jews nor blacks), but if not, there's an uncanny "coincidence."

In this week's Parsha we learn of the plague of the frogs: "Aharon stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt and the frog-infestation ascended and covered the land." This translation is according to Rashi. The literal translation of the verse, however, is: "Aharon stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt and the frog ascended and covered the land." The Torah says that only one frog came out of the river. On this, the Midrash comments that it was a giant frog, and that it only multiplied when the Egyptians started hitting it. Every time the Egyptians hit the frogs they would multiply exponentially.

Now there's something that doesn't quite make sense here. If the Egyptians saw that hitting the frogs just made things worse, why didn't they stop hitting the frogs?

One aspect of having bad character traits is not just that they exert a negative influence on a person, but that they also dominate and distort his view of reality.

What made Pharaoh and the Egyptians refuse to let the Jews leave Egypt? Pride and anger. The Egyptians were so wrapped up in their anger that it never occurred to them to stop beating the frogs. It's true that at the beginning the frogs were the cause of the anger, but once the Egyptians started beating the frogs, the frogs became merely a means to vent their anger, and the more frogs -- the merrier (or the angrier).

At 8:35 AM, he leaves his apartment. A friendly blackbird chirps on a bough. He gets in his car and drives. The freeway is pleasantly un-crowded this morning and the warm sun persuades him to roll back the roof. With a touch of a button and a low purr, the softop glides into a small slit behind the rear seat.

Then he glimpses a shadow slip in front of the sun. Suddenly there is the sound of swooping wings, and a large crow impacts the windshield, shattering it into a thousand fragments. While trying to bring the car back under control, another crow dives into his right side. Soon the car is filled with birds of all kinds, their beaks bloodying his face, their talons shredding the dash and seats.

He hits the roof button, trying to make a bastion against this ornithological blitzkrieg. The roof decapitates a couple of robins, but it's too late. The car is filled with a churning mass of flesh and feathers. They reach his eyes. The car leaves the road and plummets down a hundred foot embankment, exploding on impact.

When we read about the plagues of Egypt, it's difficult to imagine them in all their terrifying severity. It's hard to summon into our minds a world turned upside down. Maybe it's because we grew up with Maxwell House Haggadas where the illustrations were about as frightening as a pussycat.

But what if that pussycat banded together with all the other pussycats and all the local dogs and rats and they all started to come down the street towards your house with their eyes fixed on your front door with single-minded malignity...?

What if after you locked every door and window in your house, you looked down to the floor and it was alive with the swarming of a million hidden creatures who normally live deep underground, a writhing blur of snakes and spiders and creepy-crawlies climbing up your leg?

I doubt that Alfred Hitchcock ever perused the Torah commentaries of the Alshich, the Malbim or the Sforno. I doubt that any of the other writers of horror movies read them either, but maybe we could take a cue from their labors.

On the night of Pesach we try to see ourselves as though we were truly leaving Egypt at that very moment. We strive to actualize, as much as possible, the reality of the plagues and our deliverance from Egypt. Maybe if we remembered that the plagues of Egypt had a lot more in common with the ghastly nightmare of a horror film than the cozy-cup visions of Maxwell House, we would say thank you to the Creator with a lot more conviction. For he turned the world upside just for us.

Please visit our web page http://www.kehilasmy.org