Posted on January 18, 2021
Shalom TBAY!
Wondering what we discussed this past Shabbat? Here is a link to Friday night’s D’var Torah on Va’eira: “We Cannot Be Complicit: Being Anti-Racist”. This D’var Torah is in honor of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
On Shabbat morning, we discussed Egypt’s magicians and why they could not also conjure up lice from the dust of the ground. You can find the Source Sheet here. We discussed what the text says the magicians were trying to do: Were they trying to copy what Moses & Aaron did? Were they using their own incantations? Were they trying to create or remove the lice We then discussed why it didn’t work (besides the obvious that it was God that worked through Moses and Aaron. Some scholars said it was because they could not replicate Moses and Aaron’s spell. Others thought that the magicians had the lice, too, and could not stay to work their magic. Other possibilities are that all the dust had turned to lice and there was no more dust, or that their feet could not touch the ground because of the lice and they could only work magic if they were directly on the earth. What do you think?
Shavua Tov!
— Rabbi Rubin : )
