Bo, Come

✦  All insights are drawn from articles by Michael Berg and Rav Berg, and a glossary entry by the Kabbalah Centre, published on onehouse.kabbalah.com.

The ninth plague wasn't only about not seeing the sun, it was about not seeing each other. God tells Moshe to raise his hands toward the heavens, and a thick darkness covers Egypt for six days. The Torah is specific: "they did not see one another, neither rose any from his place" (Shemot 10:23). Michael Berg teaches that this was no ordinary darkness, it was the Or Ha'Ganuz, the Concealed Light, revealed in full for the first time. And yet revealing that Light brought no relief, but pain, because, as Rav Ashlag teaches, quoted by Michael Berg: "the Light of the Torah, the Light of the Creator, only shines to a person who has certainty." Without certainty, that same Light is experienced as darkness. That is why this darkness also blocked people from seeing each other, doubt doesn't only blind us to the Light, it blinds us to the person beside us.

Inner certainty, though, isn't enough on its own, it needs to become visible. Before the final plague, Moshe instructs the people to put a lamb's blood on the two doorposts and the lintel of the house (Shemot 12:7). "When I see the blood, I will pass over you" (Shemot 12:13). Rav Berg, writing about this same portion, points out that the word bo (בא) actually means "come," not "go", the Zohar teaches that God was telling Moshe: come with Me, to the root of things, because "everything that takes place in the physical, material world is only the effect of a prior thought... in the non-physical, immaterial world." The blood on the door was never really about the wood, it was the visible effect of a certainty that already existed inside: a household that had already decided it belonged to the Light.

Before a single plague even finishes, God gives Moshe and Aharon the very first mitzvah of the people, and it has nothing to do with Pharaoh: "This month shall be for you the head of months" (Shemot 12:2), the mitzvah of Rosh Chodesh, sanctifying the new moon. According to the Kabbalah Centre, the New Moon is "the first day of the month in the kabbalistic calendar, when all the unique Light and blessings available for the upcoming month can be awakened": "just as a seed contains the DNA of the entire tree, the first day of the new month contains the DNA of what will be revealed that month." A people who had never controlled a single day of their own lives were handed, as their first act of freedom, control over time itself. The rest of the portion adds more physical anchors of that same freedom: eating matzah and removing chametz (Shemot 12:15–20), and the mitzvah of tefillin, "a memorial between your eyes" (Shemot 13:9,16).

1 · Phrases for Contemplation

2 · Takeaways

3 · Action Plan · 7 Days