Pesach: Maintain your Balance

שואלים ודורשים 30 יום: A daily study of Mishna for the Jewish holidays

The makah of choshech, Darkness, is a puzzling one. Many meforshim throughout history, including Rav Shimshon Rafael Hirsch, pick up on the fact that the makot slowly rise in intensity. Blood in the Nile is bad, but it’s not pestering you and making your life unbearable like the makkos of sfardeya and kinim! And it is certainly not threatening public health like arov, dever and schein. But then, there are the 4 final bosses: Barad, a physical destruction of Egypt and all animals still left over from dever! Arbeh, a destruction of the entire crop supply by a dangerous swarm of locusts! All of the Egyptian firstborns, dead in a night! DARKNESS! darkness? This is supposed to be the second worst makah, the vice-president of makahs! The robin to the 10th plagues Batman! The shaggy to its scooby! The #9 piece in Stratego! But at the end of the day it’s just… dark? I mean, let’s be clear: we were all scared of the dark a.. um… really really really long time ago right? The unknown that it encases has always been frightening. But fiery hail firstborn death locust swarms are scary! What’s going on here? There is a famous Rashi on the passuk explaining that the words וְיָמֵ֖שׁ חֹֽשֶׁךְ connote that the darkness was thick and tangible, making it much more frightening and unpredictable. There is another explanation taught by the Ralbag. He teaches that the makah of choshech took shape in the form of an over abundance of light. The ironic thing is that choshech, which is usually defined as the absence of light, is being defined as an abundance of light. Often in our lives we do things under big proportions. Go big or go home! But in truth that isn’t really how life works, and it certainly isn’t how Judaism works. Something like light, which is usually what cuts through the darkness in the first place, when used over abundantly, has the opposite effect: it provides darkness instead of light. My mom will be the first to tell you that “too much of anything isn’t good for you! Even 100 apples is unhealthy!”. To live a lifestyle where we are too extreme with anything will lead us to be counterproductive in that area. May we be zoche to lead balanced, productive, and fulfilling lives.