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God acting through nature
Contributed by Chacha Rotenberg

  • TOP HAGGADAHS FOR 2023

Mysterious little things happen to me all the time. Once I tripped and a ball zoomed past  my head, narrowly missing me. Another time, I fell ill and missed a science exam for which I studied the wrong material.Those little things saved me from unfortunate experiences that I look back upon and think, “Was G-d manipulating my life through outside events?”

On Passover, I would like to speak about how G-d works through nature. One of my favorite examples is the ten plagues.

Let us focus on the first seven of parshat Va-era: blood, frogs, lice, wild beasts or insects, pestilence, boils, and hail.


I read of a theory recently that stated that G-d only had to do one little thing to set off the first six plagues. What was that one little thing? He raised the temperature in Goshen. The temperature change then caused a chain reaction.

Rising temeperature would have lowered the nile to a slower and muddier river. These conditions would have been perfect for a species of red algae. Burgundy Blood algae is still seen today. It  grows in higher temperatures, but is poisonous to fish. As the algae died, it stained the water red. Then, the frogs would have died because the algae forced them out of the water. Swarms of bugs were attracted to the dead frogs. These creepy crawlies may have been the third and fourth plagues. Since there were no frogs to eat the bugs, they infected the livestock and the humans to cause the fifth and sixth plagues of pestilence and boils. Today, we can go to a pharmacy to get antibiotics for an infection caused by a bug bite. In ancient Egypt, however, the treatment for an open wound was a papyrus bandaid with honey.

Temperature change did not just cause natural events. This small change had a greater purpose! The SUPERnatural worked Its miracles through the natural to attack the foundation of Egyptian culture. The plagues were a humiliation of Egyptian society and gods.

Hapi, for example, was the Egyptian god of the nile (pause) not one of the seven dwarves. He was recognized by the Egyptians as creator of the universe. Plague number one was aimed at the spirit of the Nile.


Plague two was an attack on Heqt, the frog goddess. Frogs were associated with growth and fertility. It was a crime punishable by death to kill a frog in Egypt, even if accidentaly. Picture if you will, all of the horses and bulls running through the streets of Houston, then dropping dead on your front lawn right before the rodeo. So imagine the impact of Egyptians sweeping up piles of their sacred animals.

The insects of plagues three and four kept the Egyptian priests from performing their rituals, seeing as they lice free.


The plagues continue next week with Hashem’s attacks upon the sun god and the pharaoh, a self proclaimed god.


The plagues were the most dramatic of the many times G-d altered nature in the Torah. Others include: the famine in Canaan that drove Yaakov and his family south and the splitting of yam suf.

An important lesson we can take away from this is that things that may seem small, unrealted and coincidental to us might actually be miracles.

So pay attention to life and be grateful for everything.
haggadah Section: -- Ten Plagues
Source: Ari Rotenberg, Bar Mitzvah Speech, Age 13, Houston TX

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