You Wouldn't Believe What Happened

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So there was this dude named Pharaoh. At least, he was a really big deal in his own eyes. He thought only about what would make him richer (and he was already way richer than anybody you or I know). So he thought— I know! I’ll take these Jewish people who basically don’t like to fight and make them do all the work for me! They’ll build pyramids and then everybody will know who I am, and everybody will think I’m an even bigger deal! Then, because he was also kind of silly, I imagine that he beat his hands on his chest like a wild guy. If he had Twitter, he would probably be writing silly tweets in the middle of the night.

Well, it worked for awhile, but the Jews were (to say the least) not happy. They had to work really long hours under the hot sun, and both deodorant and sunscreen hadn’t even been invented yet! One day, Pharaoh got to thinking, not something he did very often, and he got worried. He thought maybe the Jews would—you know—fight back. Back in those days, many people thought only boys and men could really fight. Little did they know that girls can fight, too, when they need to. It actually just happened in our own country. If you don’t know about this, ask your mom. So anyway, Pharaoh said, “Hmmm… If I could just get rid of the boys…”

During this time, a Jewish boy was born. His mother worried about Pharaoh and his crazy ideas, so she built a raft out of sticks and twigs and all kinds of riff raff. He was kind of like a refugee, meaning a person who had to leave his home because it was not longer safe there. And even though it really broke his mom’s heart, she put her baby on the raft and said a prayer, hoping he would be saved. Well, then that’s when things got kind of interesting and funky. ‘Cause Pharaoh’s own daughter found a raft with a baby drifting in the river. She knew it was the baby of a Jew, but she also knew the right thing to do (hey, that’s a rhyme!). She didn’t agree with the bad ideas of her dad. So she took the baby into her house, made up the good kind of lie (yes, sometimes there’s a good kid of lie, but it’s complicated; ask your parents), and began raising the child as her own.

And they named that baby Moses, which means pulled from the water. So Moses grew up among the Egyptians and not living as a slave himself. One day when he was a teenager, he saw Egyptians treating a Jewish slave really badly, and he said, “uh-uh, no way, Jose, I’m not going to stand for this.” So he stepped up and said, “No!” You can’t be mean to another person! Bullying is wrong!” They looked at him like he was cray-cray, but he persisted until they stopped. But he kind of had a bad temper about it, and didn’t exactly keep his hands to himself. This kind of got him in a lot of trouble, and after that, he couldn’t live with the Egyptians anymore. He went to live with the Jews.

What would you do if you saw people bullying another person or being mean to somebody? Would you risk losing a friendship to stand up for what’s right?

The idea of one group of people treated differently from another group of people really bummed Moses out. I mean, he was totally worked up over this. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. I mean, why should one people get rich while another people worked hard to create all the things to make them rich? It just didn’t make any sense. And why should one people be richer than another people anyway? He began to think about justice. And for those of you who like superheroes, this is kind of when he got all ninja and turned into a Batman or Wonderwoman or Spiderman. Because thinking about justice and doing things to make the world a more fair place is kind of like a freaking superpower!

So one day Moses was walking he saw this bush that was burning. But it wasn’t like an ordinary bush that burned. The longer it burned the brighter it grew. Then a voice spoke to Moses from the bush! It said, “I am Adonai, your God, and I want you to go to that big guy Pharaoh and tell him to let the Jewish people go.”

Moses said, “Wh—wh-whoa, whoa, w—w-w—wait right there. Because Moses had a stutter. He said, “I can’t talk to Pharaoh. Whenever I talk, my words come out wrong. You must have some other guy in mind.”

But God said, “It’s you I have in mind.”

And Moses said, “No, no, you must have me confused with some other Moses.”

But God said, “No. It’s you. You can do this. I know you don’t think you can, but that’s not true.”

Have you ever felt like you couldn’t do something only to learn later that you can?

So eventually, Moses decided to believe in himself. He took his brother, Aaron, along with a weird magic stick that that turned into a snake, and went before Pharaoh, pushing his fear and his stutter aside, and said,

LET MY PEOPLE GO!

But the thing was, Pharaoh was kind of stubborn. Okay, not just kind of stubborn, way way stubborn. The kind of stubborn that doesn’t like to admit to the truth even when it’s staring you in the face. The kind of stubborn that doesn’t like to apologize even when you’ve done something wrong. The kind of stubborn that doesn’t believe in science (like some political leaders I know). The kind of stubborn that makes a bad choice and then just keeps going down that bad road. Do you know what he did? He laughed at Moses. He laughed at him! FYI, laughing at someone when they have a serious idea, is just not nice! Moses had a choice, then. He could have given up. He could have said, “There’s no point to this.This guy’s not going to listen to me. “ He even could have tried to get the Jews to fight back against the Egyptians. But he did something else, which turned out to be really badass in a strange way. He prayed to God.

Now this doesn’t sound like much. What was God going to do? Isn’t it up to people to create change in the world? What do you think? How can God help?

Moses thought people need to create change, but knew that it’s sometimes it’s hard to see the right path. He thought that prayer could strengthen the people’s hearts and weaken the enemy. He knew that when you know you’re doing the right thing, you usually win in the end. This principle may not work for a particular soccer game or a baseball game, but it just might work for justice. In fact a famous guy that you may have heard of said something similar along these lines. He said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” That person was Martin Luther King, Jr., and he was really influenced by Moses. He was fighting for civil rights for African-Americans in this country, fighting for the rights of people who were once slaves. And just like Moses, he didn’t reach the Promised Land, but was a big part of the journey to get there.

Anyway, back to our story. When Pharaoh said no, God got kind of pissed off. I mean, God doesn’t get angry in the way that we do. God doesn’t throw things around or shout, but God gets worked up, too. Because basically, the way I see it, God wants people to treat each other kindly. Seems simple, but often is not. So God said to God’s self, maybe if I send them hints, they’ll let the Jews go, because after all, that’s the right thing to do. So God started sending them hints. Like God sent them these really gnarly insects to destroy all their vegetables. God sent them frogs to keep them up all night and jump in their beds. God tried every trick up his/her sleeve (you notice I don’t use either him or her to refer to God, because God isn’t a person, so isn’t really a man or a woman; in fact, some like to think of God as both). So God tried everything. But nada. Nothing. It didn’t work. Pharaoh just couldn’t take a hint.

So God kept sending more and more hints, and they got more and more scary. Like covering the land with darkness. Moses said, LET MY PEOPLE GO! But still, Pharaoh would not take a hint.

Finally, God said to Moses. “Forget about this guy. Some people never change. What I want you to do is to gather up all the people and get ready. Because I’m going to take you out of this place in a way that you could never expect.” Meanwhile, though, Pharaoh changed his mind, or at least sort of. He was afraid of the insects and darkness and all that. So he said to Moses, “Okay, then, if you insist, you can go leave to pray, but you need to come back. And you have to leave the women and children.” Moses said, “Actually, mister. that won’t work. We’re all going or none of us, and basically we’re all going whether you want us to or not. Well, it wasn’t by limo and it wasn’t through lots of explosions or fireworks, but the next morning the people left.

As soon as they did, Pharaoh had a change of heart. He was afraid that the Jews would leave and afraid of what his life would be like without living off their free labor. So he sent his army after them on horseback. Du- duh-du-duh-du-duh, the horses galloped after the Jews.

The Jews meanwhile got to the river, but this was a big old river and you couldn’t just walk through. Besides, there were many old people and people who didn’t know how to swim. Because when you’re a slave, you’re not exactly taking swim lessons at the YMCA. What were they going to do? It seemed like there was no hope. But the legend tells us that there was this guy named Nachshon who was brave and took a risk. He decided to set foot in the river. Now this is a trick you should not try at home, but the point is: sometimes somebody has to take a risk to make change. Nachshon was ready to take that risk.

And then the wildest thing of all happened, something that you couldn’t believe in a million years. The sea just spread apart, with a dry path for the Jews to walk through. It was a little scary, because there was water on either side, but the people took what is called a “leap of faith,” and they just kept on walking. They had confidence because of their belief in their God. Again, not something you should try at home. But the point is: sometimes you have to put aside your lack of belief that something will work for something you really believe in. Sometimes life throws you for a loop and you can’t see how something is going to work out, and suddenly everything works out in a way that you couldn’t have imagined. Sometimes, believe it or not, things happen that way.

Anyway, to make a long story short, the sea closed up as the Egyptians tried to follow them, and the Jews got to the other side. They were free! Miriam and the women started singing a big song, which gave the people spirit and courage. But soon after becoming free, the people found out that freedom was kind of a problem without structure or rules. Now, I know most of us don’t really like rules, but a world without rules would be all mixed up and aggy. I mean, you think rotaries are bad now? What would they be like without rules? Or if people didn’t know that red lights meant stop? We all need some basic agreements about how to live. Pretty soon after they got free, God told Moses to come up to the top of a mountain and there he gave Moses a stone upon which was written a set of guidelines for how to treat each other. Most of what was written were the kind of things you learn in pre-school. Don’t bonk someone on the head when you want their ball, don’t act dishonestly, treat your parents well, don’t spend all your time wishing you had something someone else has, like the newest iPad or Playstation 3. It’s a waste of time. Don’t work nonstop— take at least one day off to rest and appreciate life and nature. The rules basically amounted to this: treat other people the way that you would want them to treat you.

And that was the beginning of the journey of the Jewish people, a journey that wound up taking them to the land of Israel. But it took them an unbelievably long time to get there. It was like it took them a week just to get from Davis to Porter Square. It’s not clear whether they were confused, didn’t know how to read maps, or weren’t sure they wanted to leave slavery. We know they didn’t have a GPS, because it wasn’t invented yet. Other than that, it was kind of like they went on a ride at an amusement park and got really dizzy. Only it lasted for about forty years. They had to be really patient and really persistent. But eventually they got to their home. And the Bible describes it as a land flowing with milk and honey. Meaning basically that it was really sweet in every sense of the word.

And that is kind of the end of the story. I mean, there’s way more, and as you can probably guess, it gets really complicated once again, but that’s a story for another day. Our story is a tale about how the Jews got free, and maybe it teaches us a little about the struggle for justice in our own time. Think about it. Come up with your own ideas. Maybe as you grow up, you will find your own way to contribute to the cause of justice.

But now, we’re hungry.

LET’S SING A SONG, THEN EAT!

haggadah Section: -- Exodus Story