The Stench of Rot: Va’era

Well, the shit has finally hit the fan.

Or more like: fire and smoke rained down on Washington. 

In my own personal life, last week rained down a few, smaller, stressful things, including some sad and slightly traumatic news that came my way, followed by injuring my lower back, and culminating in the insanity of an attempted coup on Washington, all three of which happened on the same day! So, yes, fire and smoke rained down. 

What happened in U.S. politics last week and in Pharaoh’s Egypt of the Torah this week are one and the same. 

In Torah, the conversation God had with Moses in the previous parsha is put into motion; Moses does what God tells him to do, performing all the “signs” in order to prove God’s existence, strength and greatness so that Pharaoh will let the Hebrews, as they’re called, go and worship in the desert.

There is a rod turned into a snake; it’s the same rod that then strikes the Nile and turns it to blood, killing all the fish, causing a stench that makes the water too putrid to drink; there’s a second rod that turns all other Egyptian rivers and bodies of water into blood, blood that fills all vessels used anywhere; there are swarms of frogs that come out of the river and fill Pharaoh’s bedchamber and bed, all Egyptian ovens and kneading bowls; after they die, they are piled in heaps, and the stench fills the air. Next come the lice which cover “man and beast,” followed by swarms of insects and then a pestilence that kills all Egyptian animals, and finally all humans and beasts are covered in boils. 

It all culminates with fire and a very destructive hail raining down from the sky, ruining most of the crops, but none of this touches the Hebrews.

For a while, Pharaoh’s magicians are able to match and perform every single sign Moses performs, but eventually they can’t. And he keeps promising he will let the people go and worship their god, but immediately goes back to his old ways each time the present situation is solved. 

Pharaoh’s deceit continues until he must finally concede that he stands guilty-—yes, guilty: “Your God is right and I and my people are in the wrong.” 

You get a little jolt when you read this: Wow! Pharaoh admits he’s done wrong! 

But Moses is wiser than this. He says, “I know that you and your people are still not afraid/in awe of our God.”

And Moses is right not to trust Pharaoh’s words. Over and over, he has lied to Moses and to his own people as well. True to form, in the next moment, Pharaoh goes back on his promise to let the Hebrews go. 

This, my friends, is where the parsha ends.

The parallels between this story and our present day situation are eerie. The lies have been spewing out of Washington for years, and too many people have been fooled and manipulated. 

The stench from the dead fish is the stench of hatred in our country resulting in neglect, abuse, imprisonment, and disenfranchisement of certain populations, deportation of others and the long lasting repercussions that such policies have on generations of people---all of which has been hidden under the surface, swept under the rug, and has now been forced above ground like the swarms of frogs in Pharaoh’s Egypt. 

The blood is the blood on the hands of our president and his supporters: of hundreds of thousands dead from Covid, so many bodies that they had to set up outdoor morgues in L.A., no longer able to be tucked neatly from sight; it is the blood on the hands of police who have continued the legacy of racist ancestors, and of lawmakers who refuse to change their policies. 

And the fire and hail are what rained down in Washington last week. A final warning. 

Though I didn’t like his policies as governor of California, I have to admit that Arnold Schwarzenegger got it right, if you saw his Tweeted video. Here, he talks about growing up in post-war Austria with a father and neighbors who had quietly colluded with the Nazis and later couldn’t live with their guilt, becoming violent, drunk men. He made a warning to our nation that telling lies, the type that Hitler told and like those of Trump and his supporters, will destroy a country like they did Germany.

Like Moses with Pharaoh, we must be careful about believing that politicians who are abandoning their posts at the last minute are in any way repentant. We must be careful with a man like Pence and not hold him up as a hero just because of his actions last week. 

And we must remember that part of the lie is that we’re supposed to be “shaking hands across the aisle,” and negotiating. 

There was no negotiating with Hitler any more than there was with the KKK, and there is no negotiating with white supremacists today any more than in previous generations. There is no “agreeing to disagree.” 

Civil Rights advocates stood their ground, using Moses as an example, and calmly but forcefully kept repeating: Let my people go.

So must we.