Dartblog

I spent a most enjoyable first night of Seder at Rabbi Gray’s and thought that I would share the happy Passover message with Dartblog readers…

The children of Israel were fruitful and increased and became very very strong, and the land became filled with them. A new king arose over Egypt, who did not know about Joseph. He said to his people, “Get ready, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they increase, and a war befall us, and they join our enemies and depart from the land.” So the Egyptians enslaved the children of Israel with backbreaking labor.

And Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, “Every son who is born you shall cast into the Nile.” One day Pharaoh’s daughter saw a basket in the midst of the marsh. She opened [it], and she saw him the child, and behold, he was a weeping lad, and she had compassion on him, and she said, “This is [one] of the children of the Hebrews.” She named him Moses, and she said, “For I drew him from the water.”

Now it came to pass in those many days that the king of Egypt died, and the children of Israel sighed from the labor, and they cried out, and their cry ascended to G-d from the labor. G-d heard their cry, and G-d remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. G-d directed Moses and his brother Aaron to tell Pharaoh of G-d’s message of freedom but Pharaoh’s heart was hard and G-d brought down 10 plagues on the people of Egypt:

Water turned to blood, frogs, love, beasts, disease, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and the death of the first-born sons of all Egyptian families.

On this last plague G-d directed that, I will pass through the land of Egypt on this night, and I will smite every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, sparing the Israelite houses marked by the blood of the Pascal lamb on the doorposts.

G-d led the people by way of the desert to the Red Sea, but the Pharaoh reconsidered giving the Israelites their freedom and directed his army to pursue them. At the shores of the sea, G-d directed Moses to stretch out his hand, and the Lord led the sea with the strong east wind all night, and He made the sea into dry land and the waters split. Then the children of Israel came into the midst of the sea on dry land, and the waters were to them as a wall from their right and from their left. When the Israelites had crossed safely the waters returned and drowned the chariots and the horsemen, the entire force of Pharaoh coming after them into the sea; not even one of them survived.

Wandering in the desert, the children of Israel were provided for by the Lord and ate the manna for forty years until they came to the land of Canaan…

…and the rest is history. Thanks to Chabad.org for their translation of Exodus, one of my favorite books of the Bible and I think a book filled with a truly inspiring message of faith, righteousness, and freedom.