I’m pleased to reproduce here a thought provoking piece by Lisa Feldman about the 10 plagues.

In our house we don’t do the plagues at Passover because Jack G thinks that they celebrate the wrath of God striking innocent people.  I have always tended to agree.  This is a different interpretation:

The Ten Character Plagues

by Lisa Feldman, Weizmann Day School Head

I recently learned a teaching by the Ishbitzer Rebbe that I thought you might find interesting.  Rabbi Mordechai Yoseph Lainer of Ishbitza lived during the first part of the 19th century in Poland.  He suggests that the 10 plagues do not just commemorate a historic moment, but rather they are character traits that plague us throughout the year.

“Frogs” – Exaggerated Speech

Dam, “blood” is symbolic of anger; Tz’fardea, “frogs” – exaggerated speech; Kinim, “lice”-gossip; Arov, “wild beasts”-wicked thoughts; Dever, “pestilence”-self-centeredness; Sh’heen, “boils”-arrogance; Barad, “hail”-imbalance of life’s priorities; Arbeh, “locusts”-gluttony/tenacity; Hoshekh, “darkness”-boastfulness and Makat B’khorot, “slaying of the first born”-being too proud.

If we’re honest with ourselves, we’ve probably been plagued with many, if not all of these at times throughout the year and it is at this season that we are asked to take a moment to reflect on our past actions  Rosh Hodesh Nissan, the month in which Pesah occurs, was originally the beginning of the New Year.  Although we now celebrate the New Year in the fall with Rosh Hashanah, the holiday of our freedom-Pesah still serves to remind us that we can be free if we do not allow ourselves to be enslaved with negativity and poor choices.  As we relax over the next 10 days I charge us to consider each day a different one of these character traits and to try and purge these behaviors from our daily lives.

Weizmann Day School is located at 1434 N Altadena Dr in Pasadena CA.  Lisa Feldman the Head of the school writes a weekly column for it e-Paper.  I have reproduced her column for this week here.  You can subscribe by following the link to the school.