Shabbat Commentary - Bo

On the Jewish calendar, we may be only two weeks away from Tu B'Shvat, but in this week's Torah Portion, Bo, it's Passover - THE original Passover!
Pharaoh remains steadfast in his refusal to free the Israelite slaves. As a result, three more plagues ( locusts, darkness, and death of the first born) descend, upon the Egyptians.
Before initiating the deadly Tenth Plague, God directs the Israelites to mark their doorways with the blood of a lamb, so that when the first born of the Egyptians are struck down, the Israelite homes will be "passed over" and their first born spared.
Devastated by the death of his own first born child, Pharaoh demands that the Israelites leave Egypt at once.

God, through Moses, instructs the Israelites in the ways that they (and we) are to commemorate the Exodus from Egypt and observe Passover on into the future. God commands that we tell the Passover story to future generations.
"And you shall explain to your child on that day, 'It is because of what the Eternal did for me when I went free from Egypt.'" (Exodus 13:8)*The very act of saying "...what the Eternal did for me..." places each of us in the company of the fleeing Israelites. When we celebrate Passover, we re-enact an event at once ancient and immediate.

When discussing Parshat Bo with my sixth graders, one student asked, "What if when Moses and Aaron asked Pharaoh to free the Jews, Pharaoh just said, 'OK, go?'"

This question, like the Four Questions of the Passover Seder, provides an opportunity to tell the story . The Torah tells us in the opening lines of the Parsha that Pharaoh was not free to act as he wished. God "hardened" Pharaoh's heart for reasons which forever resonate through and underlie Jewish belief.
10:1"Then the Eternal One said to Moses,'Go to Pharaoh. For I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his courtiers, in order that I may display these My signs among them, 2 and that you may recount in the hearing of your children and of your children's children how I made a mockery of the Egyptians and how I displayed my Signs among them - in order that you may know that I am the Eternal." (Exodus 10:1-2)*

With Moses as God's reluctant agent, God demonstrated to the Egyptians, to the Israelites, and to us modern Jews, the power of the Eternal.

We were in Egypt and we are here now preparing to welcome Shabbat with the words of the Kiddush - "zeicher litziat mitzrayim" (remember the Exodus from Egypt.)
We remember God's "signs."

The Torah, a past, present, and future " reminder" that God works in wondrous ways.

Shabbat Shalom - Rest and Renew.

*From The Torah - A Modern Commentary W. Gunther Plaut, General Editor Union for Reform Judaism