Good erev Shabbos everyone.

Parshas Bo.

Hashem said to Moshe, “One more plague I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt. After that he will send you forth from here.” When He said “send forth” it means completely. They will drive you out of here.

So we see in this week’s parshah, that the tenth plague is the equivalent of—in baseball they would say—bottom of the ninth, all bases loaded and the third ball. But if we could describe the situation between Israel and Egypt at the time, it would be bottom of the tenth. And here we are once again in world history, and it seems to be bottom of the tenth.

But a curiosity begins at the eighth plague.  Hashem said to Moshe, “come to Pharaoh, for I have made his heart and the heart of his servants stubborn so that I can put these signs of Mine in his midst, and so that you may relate in the ears of your sons and your sons’ sons that I made a mockery of Egypt, and My signs that I placed among them. You may know that I am Hashem.” There are a tremendous amount of insights in these words. What does it mean “come to Pharaoh?” That itself is bewildering. In previous parshos we have Avraham avinu, and it says, “lech lecha.” Go From this place. And here we see it says, come to Pharaoh. It’s a most curious premise, but it seems that in essence there is a very important lesson here. At the outset we see an incredible insight. When a person walks with Hashem, he is not walking alone. A famous commentary asked, “Where is Hashem to be found?” and the answer is, wherever we let him in.

So we see an incredible insight here, if we can describe it in physical-emotional terms. A little kid has been beaten up by the school bully and all his buddies are waiting to thrash this Jewish boy when he comes back to school the next day. Now what happens is, they got sledge hammers, and nun chuckers, and knives, and they’re really planning to do a job on this kid. Now imagine he comes with his dad to school that morning and, unbeknownst to these other gangsters, the dad is armed with an uzi. The kids surround the dad and the son. The dad says, “so whats it gonna be? You guys aren’t scared?” So they said, “No no no…” The dad says, “ok, whose first?” And this is really the ten plagues; tangible.

Am Yisrael were finished. There was nothing to hope for. It was total devastation that the Pharaoh was lashing and smashing Am Yisrael to make avodat perach; totally spiritually, emotionally, and physically devastating. So they crashed any hope of redemption. And this is in the essence how Hashem shows his miraculous chessed through world History. Who would imagine after the devastation of 6 million Kiddush Hashems at the hands of Esav and Ishmael that Am Yisrael would have the chutzpah to declare independence; to declare nationhood without even the first inkling of an army, against 7 nations that are totally trained by the most sophisticated military powers of the world, supplied with the military weapons of the world. And Am Yisrael had the chutzpah to say “Am Yisrael Chai;” after six million korbanot, after the whole world had cordoned off Israel so that no Jews can come in, no weapons can come in, and militarily they forbade Hashem from coming in to rescue—against all odds—the last remnant of his nation; and not once, not twice, after so many wars. Not just the war of independence: the 56 Sinai war, the 67, 73 Yom Kippur War, the 80 Lebanon war, the 90 intifada, the Gulf war, Gulf 2, Lebanon 2, Aza to Azazel… And you see until today that the breaking news across the world is that those leaders who had the chutzpah to defend Israel are now on trial for crimes against humanity. I would like to call it crimes against world insanity.

It really is a world insane. There are 70 wolves gaining up on this little sheep to have their final seudah. But what do we know from the Torah? Those who curse Israel are cursed themselves. And we see in this week’s parshah the combination through the last three blows that closed Egypt as a world power. People see a nation that the world recognizes as Am Yisrael again in world history, and they see the miracle that the G-d of Israel is doing for us; to the point that George Bush came a few months ago to testify at the Knesset—for anyone in the Knesset that had a shadow of a doubt—that we weren’t meant to survive our first birth as a nation sixty years ago. And now we are amongst the most blessed nation on the surface of the Earth. George Bush had to remind us of who we are. He said, “Can you people understand that the G-d of Abraham, the G-d of Isaac, and the G-d of Jacob has blessed you people now more than any other nation on the surface of the Earth? I would imagine, that after such a statement, in the corridors of Ishmael and Esav, they would want to throw a shoe at him for giving away the secrets. They would want to boot him out of his job for giving away the secrets. Mark Twain gave away the secrets. He said, “All else is mortal, except the Jewish nation. What is the secret of its immortality?” And Hezbollah thought they discovered the secret. When they captured and murdered those three soldiers, they displayed to the world the secret weapon of the Jewish people, a set of tefillin. When they were murdered their tefillin were taken away from them, and the nations gloated over the secret weapon of Israel on display at the hands of Hamas and Hezbollah. What they don’t realize is that those who curse us are earmarked for their own destruction. And its no surprise that Iraq said, all those years ago, that they wanted to destroy half of Israel. What kind of a curse is that? Nobody in the history of the world has ever cursed such a curse. The reality of that curse is that he was testing the waters. If half a curse works, then a full curse is hot on its tail, right?

As we see the Pharaoh said, “who is your G-d that I should consider him?” And even when Hashem gave him blow after blow he said, “your G-d is the true G-d, and I and my nation are the wicked ones. We’ll let you go. Now what do you want to go with; your animals, and your children, and your wives? Hold on a second. We have to reverse the deal.” Afterwards he goes stampeding off to them in the middle of the night, to forcefully extricate Israel from their midst. Such a thing it says in Hazinu, never happened in the history of the world before; that one nation was taken out from the midst of another nation. Look at world history. Nations are measured in their ability to consume other nations; no prisoners allowed; either shmad or die. That’s basic world history. Any nation that captured another nation infiltrated the other nation with their values and tried to assimilate them. The pride of America is their ability to consider themselves a melting pot. But it’s really a smelting pot. Russia prided itself in being the iron curtain. What they didn’t realize is that in one second, esser makkot came to a place called Chernobyl, and within one moment after that the iron curtains rusted and collapsed. And Am Yisrael were forcefully sent out. A million Jews arrived in Israel within a short period of time. It was the equivalent, I remember, of the whole of France being sent to America within a few days. How would America feature if all of France landed on their doorstep to stay forever? Do they have the infrastructure, resources, the ability, the homes? Not to be imagined.

Anyway, the smallest of nations with the most delicate financial-economic infrastructure, having survived six or seven wars against all its enemies across the world—the covert and the overt—somehow has the chutzpah to grow from strength to strength, defying all the pundits. Anybody that’s logical is totally horrified by the chutzpah of this nation that doesn’t listen to their slogan, “Am Yisrael die.” And instead we capture the concept of Am Yisrael Chai. And we see how this nation blossoms against all odds.

So in this week’s parsha we see the eighth plague, locusts; measure for measure. The Egyptians forced their Jewish slaves to grow crops. The locusts then consumed everything that the Jews had developed for them. Amazingly, it says in the plague of darkness that Am Yisrael went through the homes of the Egyptians and they knew exactly what was in each home, and what the Egyptians would be giving them at the time of yetziat mitzraim. So it turns out, more recently, the world accused Israel of stealing the wealth of ancient Egypt, and having to pay it back. There were real court cases in the Gemara where the world held Israel to trial to plead why it had emptied out and stolen the wealth of Egypt. So a leading rabbi of the time came forward and said that he would be willing to defend. And they had the trial in front of the Caesar of the day. The Egyptians claimed that the Jews had emptied out all the gold and silver of Egypt and left the country bankrupt. And how does the Jewish nation plead? So the Rabbi came forward and said, if we can make a simple calculation: there was something in the vicinity of six to twelve million Jews in Egypt at the time, all forcibly involved in slave labor—except for the Leviim—for 210 years at about 18 hours a day. They weren’t paid, not overtime, not interest. And the calculation is that until today Egypt owes us. So whoever is accusing us please pay up. And with that the Egyptians went pale and they ran for their lives.

So we see again today an incredible thing. Where Hashem blesses His nation you can be sure the rest of the world, the enemies of Hashem, are in abject horror. When seven thousand rockets are launched into the south of Israel not a word is said against the mass murderers and the conspirators of the holocaust, that they by their own voice testify that never happened. It never happened not because of a lack of desire. It never happened because of the grace of Hashem that they were not able to execute a complete holocaust. Their total desire was the extermination of Hashem’s nation; but measure for measure Hashem took revenge on the Pharaohs back then and the Pharaohs today. We see Hamas is bewildered. They can’t comprehend what happened; what went wrong in the world. What they don’t realize is that when Hashem blesses his nation it’s a blessing that is invincible. The real victory of the war wasn’t the military conquest and the devastation of infrastructure of Hamas. The real victory went to the soldiers, about ten thousand of them, that all made an urgent appeal for tzitzit. Tzitzit is a magen. -------We’re talking real secret weapons. These are the weapons thatmake am Yisrael netzach netzachim. This is the power to turn teva into supernatural. We see through our history that this in fact is the case. So its no surprise that the nation that brought the inquisition and called Jews in spain morronos, if any of you know what that means, it means pigs in Spanish. That they had the fine sensitivity to call jews back then what they called them. And the amazing thing is that today the anti semites of the world are having a schitzophrenic experience. Why? Because they call the Jews the Nazis, but the Nazis back then were their heroes. So make up your mind guys. You love to hate us or hate to love us? Whatever it is, Hashem will give you your just deserts. For the Reightous gentiles of the world, no question about it, they have their olam habbah assured if they keep the sheva mitzvos bnei noach.

Question: Why davka Spain? There are other countries that hate us just as much.

Answer: The Netherlands is the international court. Spain is the rotating EU. But it is irrelevant. That they decided to put Israel on trial we see at the intermediate dark ages that har esave lishpat et har yakov. And at the end of days it will be that har yakov lishpat et har esave. Bayom hahu yehiyeh Hashem echad ushmo echad. That in all the years that esave is putting the dreyfuses and the johnathan pollards into prison on devil island and whichever other islands of solitary confinement that they could put jews into for trying to save their brothers, so Hashem will take revenge. But what you see is that at the end of days, har yakov yishpat et har esave. And until then Hashem’s name is not echad. The rest of the world is testifying with all their might that the G-d of Israel is not right, that the G-d of Israel does not have the might. The one thing they write about is that they are Hashem’s enemies. All those that are trying to destroy Hashem’s nation are earmarked for gog u magog. Until then we see a world spiraling out of control economically, financially, morally, ethically, until today there’s still hope. The plague of darkness three thousand three hundred years ago, there were no light houses in that darkness where eighty percent of am Yisrael perished in the assimilation of Egypt. Today there is something unique going on. All the technology of the world and all the greatest minds of the generation are united in bringing the light of torah to all the recesses and corners of the world. Its unimagined that one Jewish website can have five million visits a month. When we see the incredible inspiration in Torah and in kiruv that is going on today, the plague of darkness is in critical danger of being replaced by the plague of light. That’s a plague for all those who wish to remain in darkness. But for those that wish to delight in the light of torah be it the sheva mitzvot or the taryag mitzvot of am Yisrael. Those people will delight in the geula and Hashem’s enemies will be like a straw in the light of the sun, a furnace for eternity.

So we see, as we go further into the parsha, the eight plague, locusts, that the next plague is the plague of darkness as we mentioned. And at that stage came the warning of the plague fo the first born. Perek yud beis, it says, Hashem said to Moshe at this stage, before the plague of darkness itself that there was a peep into the future. Hashem said to Moshe and Aaron in the land of Egypt, “this month shall be for you the beginning of months.” The first Rashi in all of Torah asks, why didn’t the torah start off with this? Why did it start with, bereishit bara Elokim es hashamayim v’es harets. Rashi then documents that his father, reb Yitzhak taught him all his torah and told him that there will be a time in the future that all the nations of the world will accuse am Yisrael, listim atem, of being plunderers. Plishtim atem, you are like the philistines the world will accuse us. And how parallel are these accusations to today? That the plishtim, the pallestinians are considered babies and am Yisrael are considered the goliaths in version of reality. What they are really doing is taking baby goliaths and putting it in front of the seven mighty goliaths. And be it as it may, Dovid will rise up and say that not only are we not the listim, are we not the invaders  but bereishit bara Hashem: in the beginning Hashem created the heaven and the earth. And Hashem gave to whom He pleased whatever land He pleased. And then He took it away from them because they didn’t please Him and Hashem gave it to us. If there are any problems please address your complaints to Hashem. From our vantage point we have to do the ratzon Hasehm. So we see an incredible insight at this stage, that Rashi says that this is where the torah should have started, that this month should be for you as the beginning of months which is the first halacha dereissa in the Torah. Which month is that; the month of yetziat mitzraim. It should be for you as the first month of the year. It is a very great curiosity because when is Rosh Hashana? Exactly on the other side of the Jewish spectrum, seven months later. Rosh Hashana is the seventh month. So what is the first month doing in the middle of the year? The year date doesn’t change, but the twelfth month which we will experience in another month, goes on to the first month. Taf shin samach tet doesn’t change. It stays taf shin samech tet for another seven months. Until we get to the first of the seventh month which is a day of memorial for you, yom hazicaron, yom hamalchiyut, yom hashofar, that it is a day of the shofar blasts, a day of kingship to Hashem, and a day of memorial for Am Yisrael. So we see, Rosh Hashanah is on the other side of the spectrum for the months. A great curiosity! Who counts their months in this way? So if we explore a little fur6ther the jewish luach is based on the moon and it is regulated to the sun. When we look at the western religion, its luach is based on the solar dating, 365 and a quarter. When we look at the Eastern world, Ishmael, what is their luach based on? The crescent, the moon. And what do they have on their temples? A sign of the moon. And what day do they worship as their day of rest? Yom shishi they claim as their day of Shabbos. And what day does the Western world? Yom Rishon. And what do they call their day? The day of the Sun. That was the ancient worship of that particular fiery planet in the heavens. That’s what Esav chose and that’s what Ishmael chose. But we see with Am Yisrael, that we don’t serve those planets, we don’t worship those planets. Those planets help us to serve Hashem. How so? How are the months of the years measured? Rosh Chodesh is declared by two witnesses that come to beis din to declare a new moon. So we see for thousands of years, the Greeks and the Syrians tried to prohibit three focal points at the center of the Jewish Religion: Shabbos, brit milah, and Rosh Chodesh. Rosh chodesh was on a plain of central significance compared to Shabbos and bris milah. How can we understand it? The only count that proclaims Rosh chodesh is based on the testimony of witnesses who observed the moon. Upon the proclamation the Jewish monthly luach is declared. Unless there is a declaration of the new month, it is not possible to keep the festivals at the right times. Rosh Chodesh is instrumental and fundamental to keeping our months in synch. Hashem gave us the moon to tell us the months. Hashem gave us the sun to tell us the years. Hashem gave us the stars to tell us the days. Vayehi erev vayehei boker.  So now when we review the Jewish concept of time and we consider the Grenich concept of time we know that there is no mean time. Everything is lemala min hateva, that all the planets serve Hashem and help us to serve Hashem. That the perfection of all the planets going around the Earth defythe common luach of esav and Ishmael. They are both out of synch. As soffisticated as the atomic clock is, its losing time, because every few years they have to leap ahead and spring back. And apparently there was a time in world history that they had to strike a date off their luach because they had more than enough time, and to adjust their luach they had to remove a substantial amount of time to readjust how out of synch they were. But the Jewish luach, to prove one sentence of the Gemara, the nasa space program invested fifty billion dollars to send the lunar space shuttle that landed on the moon. They put a solar reflector on the moon so that they could measure it on earth to a micro millimeter when it got to exactly the same spot again. What was the exact time that they measured to a micro millionth of a second? Twenty nine days, twelve hours, forty four minutes, three and a third seconds. That confirmed the Gemara, going back three thousand years. Fifty billion to prove one sentence of the Gemara correct. How much more so is every page and every daf and every mesechta of shas.

And it says, lachem, for you. The word appears twice in the verse stressing the new relationship between the Jews and time. As slaves, time belongs to their masters, not to them. They did not have the freedom to act as they pleased or when they pleased. But from now on, Jews will be masters of time and only they could turn time into eternity by serving their master Hashem. It turns out, that many times throughout world History that when one contemplates slave labor, a slave never had time off. And when we look at the Jewish concept of time, Shabbos comes as a strike. We go on strike. We go back to celebrating the gifts of Hashem to our nation and creation. And these two things are inexplicably bound, in the tefilin, in the mezuzah, in the sefer torah, in bris mila, in bar mitzvah, in chupah, and in everything we do. Every day, in every way, we have to contemplate, zecher letziat mitzraim. How important is that? It’s so important that in the Ten Commandments it describes it parallel to the act of creation: zecher lemasa bereishit, zachor et hashabbat vekodshehu. And Lishmor et hashabbat is zecher letziat mitzraim. It wasn’t less of an act of creation, the ten sentences of creation, was not less of a creation than the ten plagues that brought about the creation of Hashem’s nation. All these ten plagues were placed to the enemies and were all signs of Hashem’s love for His nation; that he turned light into darkness, sand into lice, water into blood, locust to ravage the total infrastructure of the food resources of the mightiest nation of the world, to bring it to its knees, and even then to prop it up again so that it could be knocked down even more; until the death of the firstborn—to an animal, to a human being. One of the big shocks of the death of the firstborn was that in many Egyptian homes the Egyptians were bewildered. They turned to their wives and they said, “what about that one and that one and that one?”

            “Yes of course. He was with you, that one was with him, that one was with that one…” So they testified.

And it turns out, according to many authorities, the nemesis of Moshe Rabbeinu was Ramses the second. He lived for about eighty years. He was the mightiest, most powerful, most illustrious Pharaoh of all Egypt. He had conquered most of the Mediterranean. And in one moment 150 of his sons perished and were buried in a tomb nearby his tomb with no explanation. Soon after that if anyone looks at Egyptian History, the Egyptian economy was gone, totally broken, and so was the kingship, that the Pharaohs after that rolled quite similar to the political system in Israel today. As soon as the guy got on the throne it collapsed, and another one got on the throne and that collapsed. So we see a tremendous irony at this moment, that as you mentioned, Rosh Chodesh represents the renewal, the ability of the Jewish people to rise up from oblivion and restore itself from its past greatness, just as the moon appears at the end of each month and returns and grows to fullness. So Israel suffered a very long darkness of exile but always renews itself, until the coming of Mashiach when there will be eternal light and there will never be a plague of darkness again. I want to reflect at this point on the idea of the sun, that every twenty eight years the sun gets to its original point in creation. And I want to also reflect on the idea of the names of the months. The names used nowadays in the tradition are the months according to the Babylonian origin, which came into use amongst the Jewish people only after the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash. And the names are a reminder of the Babylonian exile which caused tremendous suffering and destruction until today. Even the fourth month according to the luach is named after the idol that the Babylonians snuck into the Beis Hamikdash and caused people to worship. And it says in the Torah, “the names of foreign gods shall not be heard through your mouth.” So the question was asked of Rav Volman zatz’l, why was it that the fourth month is named after an idol if it is forbidden to hear it? Rav Volman answered, that it is named such as a mockery, and it is forbidden to mock anything except idolatry. So what happens is, it could be, that the Babylonians put that upon Am Yisrael, and Rav Kaminetsky from America ztzl put in a letter: why is it that the Babylonian months are used to day. And he answered because we are still shlepping the exile of Babylon on our backs. We haven’t rectified the first exile let alone the Roman exile. And we see that in the Jewish luach by keeping the days of the week, yom rishon b’shabbos, yom sheni b’shabbos, so we see that Shabbos is that light house that light unto the week. That point that refreshes that is a light unto the nations. When they see this nation keeping its Torah they are in awe because they know that this testifies to the creator of the world and the creator of Am Yisrael. When they see the months of the year, that a person talks about the first month the second month the third month from yetziat mitzraim. That is the first of months to us. And it turns out that the sun every twenty eight years reaches a point in the heavens parallel to the point at the beginning of creation. And according to tradition, almost always it lands on daled, the fourth day of the first month. It’s very rare that it ever fluctuates from it. Apparrently according to the Ostrova Rebbe, the first time that it ever fluctuate from that it was on the fourteenth of the first month, erev pesach 2448. What happened in that year on the next day? It was Yetziat metzraim. That was erev pesach that was birchat hachamma. The second time that happened was when hamman had gotten the decree from achashverosh guaranteed through thousands of tons of gold, and on erev pesach in the zechut of the kemitza, three fingers of kemach that was apparently being prepared for the pesach offering learnt by the tinuk shel rabban, the children in the cheders that were learning with mordechai hayehudi, the decree was overturned on erev pesach of that year, and that was erev pesach for the second time. And the din of death went from am Yisrael upon the head of hamman and his ten sons. An incredible miracle of unprecedented world proportions. Achashverosh was the ruler of all the civilized world 127 nations. So we see that according to the Ostrover Rebbe the third time in world history will be taf shin samech tet in two months time. And we see an incredible insight that right now in this junction of world history the world is on a head on collision with Hashem. They are trying to tear down all semblance of Torah values by declaring equal rights for gays and heteros, equal rights for murderers and for victims. “One law indivisible by G-d and man.” Hashem does not agree with the game plan of amalek. Hashem Yishmor Am Yisrael bishalom. There is no question about it, that we are heading into times of world history with makkat choshech for Hashem’s enemies and the ohr shel geulah seems to be rapidly approaching. The big secret in these days is to hold on and see that even the hearts of the pharaohs are instruments in the hands of Hashem. Bezrat Hashem, kol Am Yisrael will do teshuva gamor, and the reightous gentiles of the world will do teshuva gamor. And the whole world will experience the geula shleima bemheira veyameinu. And that we won’t have to bo el paraoh, but paraoh will bo laHashem. Have a wonderful Shabbos.