Learning and Bo

Learning is a great thing to re-discover. This week, as the last three plagues are upon us and God/Pharaoh are debating whether or not the Hebrews can leave Egypt, I am struck by how easy it is to become complacent when we don't know what will happen. Not only that, but after 9 plagues, the people are told to celebrate Passover - a terrifying thing if one doesn't understand the context: you, go take a lamb, kill it, and spread its blood on the doorposts of your house. Why, you ask? Because you want to keep your first-born sons and animals. Okay, you respond. That works.

But truthfully, all of this is a little hairy. I, for one, don't listen that well. However, and this is a big one, if things are presented correctly, or we can listen, everything can work out well. Honestly, things did work out well for the Israelites. They got out of slavery. Then, of course, things began to deteriorate again, but let's focus on one calamity at a time.

As I was sitting and learning a piece of Midrash for class on Monday, I was stuck by this. We were told to learn for 120 minutes tops and then quit, no matter where we were with the text. We didn't have this un-ending misery ahead of us, but rather a tenable, manageable amount of time (although it loomed like forever at the beginning). What I discovered is that when broken into pieces, anything can be manageable, and anything can make sense.

Therefore, maybe the reason the plagues are broken up, why there are multiple explanations of Passover, why the people are so willing to just go along with Moses's plans is that they are mostly given in small chunks (even though they hit one after another). The people are able to (barely) digest one thing and then given the next. Not a perfect plan, but A method of working.

Needless to say, I won't be working like that (no stops ahead) during my studies. Rather, I will work to separate my challenges into reasonable and manageable chunks. Hopefully in that, I will feel more prepared to face each chunk and piece of learning.

Shabbat Shalom