The 10 Plagues

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Water to Blood

Today we can see this plague in the wars that infest the word. On a more personal scale, we can see this when people get getting beaten up for being different. The challenge of blood is to stand up not just for each other, but for anyone who is being unjustly injured.

Frogs

How could frogs be a plague? They're so cute! Well, too much of anything can be bad. In today's world, the challenge of frogs can be seen as the challenge of over-consumption. We are not called to a life of spartan austerity, but we should also avoid the pitfalls of greed and over-consumption.

Gnats or lice

I think everyone here has had lice before and had to put up with the super annoying task of getting them out of everything. They're persistent and hard to see, like the unconscious biases that we pick up from our cultural surroundings. The challenge of the lice is to root out that which is not just in our own hearts and lives.

Noxious and wild creatures

The plague of noxious creatures represents our duty to oppose noxious ideologies. The internet that we spend so much time interacting with is full of noxious trolls and people spouting the ideas of fascism. We cannot let them seduce our neighbors into believing that these ideas can be debated in the marketplace of ideas - the personhood of ourselves and our neighbors is not up for debate.

Pestilence upon animals

After the plague of being overrun by wild animals, the plague of disease upon domestic animals descended. Unlike the biblical plague of pestilence on the animals though, our challenge was created by people through colonial forces that destroy the earth. The 6th great global extinction event is occurring due to the wide-spread ignorance and inaction in the face of one of the biggest challenges of history. Our calling in the face of this massive die-off is to dismantle the idea that nature is to be conquered and used and promote the role of humankind as the good stewards who are but one part of the web of life.

Boils

People are just one of the types of animals in the world, and after the plague of animals out of place, and a loss of domestic animals, the Egyptians themselves were afflicted with boils. Boils are like giant, painful, infected, pimples that need to be cut open and drained before they can heal. Like boils, some members of our community engage actions that are painful to ourselves or others. Sometimes these actions are small, like an unkind word. Sometimes they are largescale, like the horrifying treatment of people at the border walls, both in the United States and in Israel-Palestine.

Hail & fire

The plague of hail and fire-storms is unfortunately not even an analogy for climate change. We are at the top of a precipice, just starting to slide down the steep slope of unprecedented rapid changes in the global climate. It's too late to stop the sled, but if we can just grab the reigns maybe we can steer around the worst of the obstacles. This is the challenge of the hail and fire - changing the colonial system under which the world runs to give a chance at life to those who currently face certain destruction in this plague.

Locusts

The plague of locusts is the challenge of greed and hunger. Like locusts who consume everything in their path, there are those in our society whose greed cannot be satisfied. They have literal billions, and in their shadows, people starve. The challenge of the locust is twofold - immediate harm reduction through food distribution and systemic change so that people need not go hungry in a land of abundance.

Darkness

It can be hard sometimes not to give in to despair when we realize the extent of the challenges that we face. We must remember that even though these plagues and challenges face us, they did pass. But they did not pass just with time - the plagues required action from God, Aaron, and Moses, and these challenges require action from us to vanquish.

Death of the first-born sons

There is no equivalent to the pain of losing a child. Unfortunately, too many parents, especially Black, indigenous, and refugee parents in the United States, continue to lose their children at the hands of an unjust system.

haggadah Section: -- Ten Plagues