(Delivered January 17, 2026)

Torah study folks have heard me say quite a bit since I came here: the Torah is always right on time. No matter what’s happening in the world, or in our individual and communal narratives, somehow the Torah hits a nerve, often several. And so, as we find ourselves this week in the sweep of one of our foundational stories, the echoes and resonances to our current world abound. At some moments these past few weeks, it has seemed to me like there are Pharaohs everywhere I look. Even when I look in the mirror.

Let me explain. 

The beginning of Sefer Shmot—The Book of Exodus—stacks the deck for confrontation. The Israelites in Egypt have become numerous, and where previously they had enjoyed the favor of Egyptian society by association with Josef; as we roll into Shmot, the shine has worn off. The current leadership has no idea that Egypt’s status was built on the backs of Josef’s foresight and charisma. The new leadership looks at all these foreigners and sees only a drain on society, a threat, people who are barely human.

The stage is set: when God urges Moses to go make it right, and Moses shows up, the Pharaoh is already on edge and the Israelites have had enough. In Parshat Shmot—last week’s Torah reading—God hardens the Pharaoh’s heart against the Israelites’ righteous cause of freedom. And just that little whisper from God is all it takes for the Pharaoh’s heart to form the habit of hardness. By the time we get to Vaera—this week’s Torah reading—the Pharaoh’s heart has learned its lesson all too well. 

The hardened heart is not a virtue but it has capacities that, in times of intense upheaval, can start to seem appealing. It’s strenuous labor to hold prejudice, hard work to nurse a spark of hatred into a flame. It’s also hard to go about daily life in the presence of such hatred. The tough heart can more easily face the world without being subsumed. 

And so, in this time, our time of mounting chaos and trauma—with political turmoil, violence, and antisemitism raging—I find myself simultaneously wishing for a harder heart and worried about becoming numb. I worry that finding ways to cope with the horror of corruption and violence, with the hardness of hearts all around, will turn me into a Pharaoh myself.

Our tradition does not look kindly on the toughened heart. We are not meant to look up to the Pharaoh, and certainly not meant to become like him, hardening our own hearts until we cannot bring ourselves to care about the suffering around us. Our haftarah this week from Ezekiel has the Pharaoh exclaiming more than once:

לִי יְאֹרִי וַאֲנִי עֲשִׂיתִנִי
My Nile is mine, and I made it

These are the words of a person who sees himself as a god, as our historical knowledge of ancient Egypt supports. There is a midrash that teaches that God tells Moses to go to the Pharaoh by the river at dawn, because that’s where and when he is most vulnerable. That’s where the Pharaoh relieves himself. He is so committed to reinforcing his elevated status that he cannot allow the populace to see him as having human bodily functions. His complete self-absorption leaves him unable to see, much less care about, the people in his midst. 

Our task as Jews and as humans is to take the opposite approach. Our tradition demands it; God commands it.

A friend from rabbinical school who now serves a congregation in the Twin Cities texted me a little the other night. He talked about how scared and frazzled and drained everyone he knows is. It’s hard even to take it in. Nothing in rabbinical school would have prepared him for the reality he is currently facing. But rather than cut himself off from the world around him, he described how he and his congregants are rallying around neighbors who are at risk. My friend now carries a whistle on his keychain so he can alert people about ICE. Three short blasts mean ICE is in the neighborhood. Longer blasts mean they are actively taking someone. My friend now delivers groceries to families who are afraid to leave their homes. His community has, virtually overnight, established a Justice Committee to mobilize and help where they can.

This is the opposite of the hardened heart. And rather than succumbing to the danger of קוֹצֶר רוּחַ—the crushed spirit which numbed the Israelites even to the possibility of change, my friend and his local colleagues are managing to face the world as it is and spark in one another a commitment to human flourishing. 

To walk a spiritual path is to cultivate flexibility, to allow our hearts to remain open even when it is painful. Because the alternative—of disengagement or numbness—leads to harm and destruction. Just as the Pharaoh’s hardened heart allows for him to hold onto the enslaved Israelites despite the blood and vermin and disease, so too our hearts must retain enough “give” to keep us here in the world, even when the reality seems too much to face.

It’s not that we should wallow in every heartache, nobody can function that way. But the practice of resilience requires a balance of hardness and softness. There is a teaching from Rebbe Menachem Mendl of Kotzk that speaks to this alchemy. In the first paragraph of the Shema, familiarly known as the v’ahavta, we are taught that the love of God should be at the core of our every action, so that we love God with all our hearts, with all our souls, and with all our strength. 

וְהָיוּ הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ הַיּוֹם עַל־לְבָבֶךָ
And these words which I command you today will be on your heart

The Kotzker Rebbe wonders: Why are these words ON your heart and not IN it? He goes on to answer: the way we begin is to is settle the words on our hearts, and then, when there is a moment of opening, the words will enter. A hardened heart cannot allow the divine in, but if we keep the words on our hearts and soften just a touch, the words will find their way. Opening leads to opening. The love of God derives itself from the love of God. 

This is similar to the two types of rain we encounter in the second paragraph of the Shema, the soft rain and the hard rain. The autumn rain—יוֹרֶה—is a gentler rain; its role is to soften the ground. On its own, it is not sufficient to make crops grow, but if we don’t have that soft rain, the soil cannot support life. The spring rain, on the other hand—מַלְקוֹש—actually comes in a volume sufficient to make the crops grow. If the ground is hard from not having יוֹרֶה, it cannot take in the מַלְקוֹש. The soft rain is the words landing on the heart. This prepares the way, but it’s the hard rain of taking those words in that enables growth. 

May we each find the strength to be soft, and find the softness that strengthens us and reawakens us to our deepest values.