Egypt Must Fall
Our People’s Enemies and Knowledge of God
I landed in Puerto Rico for a family vacation, but my heart wasn’t in it. The trip, planned months ago, coincided with the hostage release deal. Watching my kids laugh in the pool felt unbearable while our people carried the weight of this moment. What I wanted—what I needed—was to be on a plane to Israel.
With advice from friends, I found a way to mark the hostages’ release with my children. We learned about Emily, Romi, and Doron and said psalms as they began to come out. We cheered when Ynet announced, “They’re in Israeli hands.”
Like the rest of the Jewish world, I waited desperately—for proof, for photos, for the relief of knowing they were okay. Then Al Jazeera broadcast the first images: Hamas fighters in green headbands strutting through Gaza, crowds jeering as they surrounded our girls and climbed atop Red Cross vans. I shielded my children from the sight.
And that was the problem. Not just the parading terrorists or the mockery of decency—including Hamas “goodie bags” for released hostages—but the crushing sense that liberation wasn’t what we thought it would be. Ninety-four hostages still held. Murderers walking free. The architects of October 7th back in charge.
But here’s the thing: those ugly images matter because they remind us that freeing our hostages (all of them, God willing) isn’t the whole story. This week’s Torah portion, Vaera, shows us that true liberation is about more than breaking chains. It’s about reckoning. God didn’t just free the Israelites—God brought Egypt to its knees. Pharaoh’s empire couldn’t stand in the presence of divine justice, and neither can Hamas. Their reign isn’t just a blight on us Jews—it’s an offense to the moral fabric of the universe.
And regimes that disgrace God’s sovereignty? They don’t last.
Pharaoh fell. Hamas will too.
Egypt wasn’t always a symbol of evil. In Genesis, Pharaoh showed kindness to Joseph, offering refuge from famine. He welcomed Joseph’s brothers and accorded enormous respect to Jacob. Yet over time, Egypt became a land of brutal enslavement for the Israelites.
This transformation began under a new Pharaoh, who ruled with god-like authority and leaned on the complicity of everyday Egyptians. Like Goebbels’ Nazi propaganda or today’s radical Islamist textbooks, Pharaoh weaponized fear, portraying the Israelites as a dangerous “people too numerous for us,” a fifth column who “might join our enemies” (Exodus 1:9). Nachmanides, the 13th-century sage, noted that Pharaoh didn’t impose anti-Jewish oppression overnight. He normalized it step by step until his people became complicit, carrying out genocidal orders to kill Hebrew babies when midwives resisted.
Still, complicity wasn’t universal. The midwives, possibly Egyptian, defied Pharaoh. Pharaoh’s daughter saved Moses, who, raised as an Egyptian prince, ultimately confronted Pharaoh’s tyranny.
I’ve always been struck by how much of the Exodus narrative focuses not on the Israelites but on Egypt. Once Moses arrives and the plagues begin, the enslaved Israelites almost fade into the background.
This week’s reading zeroes in on Pharaoh and his showdown with God. Through Moses and Aaron, God sends plagues. Each time, Pharaoh pleads for relief and promises to release the Israelites, with Moses praying for deliverance. But as soon as the plague subsides, Pharaoh hardens his heart, refusing to let the Israelites go.
Pharaoh becomes the ultimate self-destructive ruler—irrational, if rationality means seeking survival and stability. Despite Egypt’s devastation, Pharaoh stubbornly refuses to relent.
God could have freed the Israelites in a single stroke. Instead, He sent plagues to humble Pharaoh and show Egypt and the world that his reign was incompatible with God’s justice.
Consumed by belief in his divinity, Pharaoh clings to control, blinded by obsession like a gambler who won’t walk away. His arrogance, his refusal to acknowledge God’s supremacy, becomes his downfall.
This is why Pharaoh had to be utterly broken. He wasn’t just a ruler; he had become a symbol of unchecked power and dehumanizing evil. Centuries later, Pharaoh remains a metaphor for leaders consumed by hatred, willing to destroy their people and others to cling to power.
Egypt—both Pharaoh and those who enabled his cruelty—had to confront their own evil and acknowledge the one true God. Pharaoh’s oppressive regime couldn’t coexist with God’s presence. It had to fall then, and so must similar evils today.
Next week, Pharaoh’s Egypt will face its complete undoing as the final plagues strike. On Passover, we celebrate Egypt’s downfall while spilling wine to mourn innocents caught in the storm.
Yet our compassion must not obscure moral clarity. Like Pharaoh, radical Islamist terrorist propaganda today dehumanizes our people, fueling hatred and complicity. These tactics must be confronted with resolve and clarity.
We stand in the early days of a fragile ceasefire, praying more of our people walk into freedom. We cannot know what images of joy or horror lie ahead, but we know this: we cannot return to the illusions of a pre-October 7 world, assuming our enemies act with the same rationality we do—seeking survival, stability, and safety for their children.
These days demand determination, moral clarity, and steadfast hope. Egypt fell, Pharaoh broke, and God was known. Once again, freedom will reign, Hamas will fall, and God will be known.
So necessary to hear this optimistic yet realistic assessment off the situation we are in. But at least by our own hands we have seemingly not broken Hamxs. What will it take for them to "give up"?
Your commentary is so timely and helpful, given that that this present hostage conundrum smacks of the Hunger Games.