Parshas Shemos 5784
The magician calls a member of the audience up on stage and poses a benign-enough question. “What’s that on your wrist?”
“It’s my watch.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, it’s my watch.”
“Please examine it again! Give it a good hard look! Again, what is that object?”
“It’s just my watch. I’m certain.”
We expect such theatrics from a magician because of the nature of his craft. The magician won’t perform any magic at all, only an illusion. He needs the participant to be fully on board that what he’s now in possession of is really just a watch, because in a moment, that watch will be swapped for a bouquet of flowers or an exotic bird right from under his nose. The trick itself demands the setup—confirmation that at present, it’s really just a watch.
Hashem is about to perform a trick on Moshe Rabbeinu’s staff. His opening question? “What’s that in your hand?”
Really?
וַיֹּאמֶר אֵלָיו ה׳ מַה זֶּה בְיָדֶךָ וַיֹּאמֶר מַטֶּה׃
שמות ד:ב
And Hashem said to him, “What is that in your hand?” And he said to Him, “A staff.”
Shemos 4:2
Hashem will shortly transform the staff into a snake. And that will be an act of supernatural physics-altering miraculousness. The staff won’t be swapped for a snake. Hashem will transform the very object itself. Moshe knows he’s speaking with the Master of the Universe, not the magician he hired for Gershom’s third birthday party in Midian. Why all the dramatic flair?
Rashi explains that the reason for this “magic trick” in the first place was actually to serve as a bit of rebuke to Moshe Rabbeinu. In the preceding pasuk, Moshe responded to Hashem’s instruction to go liberate the Jews, saying, “והן לא יאמינו לי—But they will not believe me.” How can he successfully lead the people if they won’t believe that he’s been sent by G-d and that the time for the redemption is at hand?
Moshe’s doubting of the Jewish People’s faith, the assumption that they would not believe, constituted a form of lashon hara spoken about them. Hashem responded to this by transforming Moshe’s staff into a snake—the symbol of inappropriate speech, dating back the Serpent’s misleading of Chava in Gan Eden.
But why was Moshe wrong? If we look just a bit further downstream in Jewish history, we find that Hashem Himself questioned the People’s faith. With the unfolding of the Exodus in Parshas Beshalach, a route out of Egypt had to be selected, and Hashem decided to lead the People along a circuitous path. Because should they journey directly, the thought of conveniently returning to Egypt at the first sign of hardship would prove too tempting. “כִּי אָמַר אֱלֹקים פֶּן־יִנָּחֵם הָעָם בִּרְאֹתָם מִלְחָמָה וְשָׁבוּ מִצְרָיְמָה—For Hashem said, ‘Perhaps the Nation will reconsider upon seeing war and will return to Egypt.’” (13:17)
Moshe is not the only one to doubt the People’s commitment to the dream of liberation and redemption. Hashem does the same. What, then, was so wrong with Moshe’s response? Why is he rebuked for expressing a sentiment so similar to that of Hashem’s?
The answer is in one small word, “פן—pen.” Maybe, lest, perhaps. Hashem does not express certainty that the People will falter, only concern that they might. He devises a plan to mitigate this worry, but does not state conclusively that the People will waver in their faith. And this coming from the only One who actually knows what the future truly holds.
But in Moshe’s response, concern is replaced with conviction. Moshe is not worried the People will not muster due faith, he considers it a forgone conclusion.
Which perhaps explains the theatrical precursor to Hashem’s “magic trick.” Hashem asks Moshe, “What is in your hand,” prodding him to consider, “Are you truly certain about any of the things that lay before you? Even something right before your very eyes? That you’ve held in your hand for countless hours and has never shown itself to be anything more than a staff?”
The Mishna in Avos (5:6) lists Moshe’s staff as one of the items created by Hashem at twilight of the sixth day of creation. Which is to say that Moshe’s staff was not now transformed into something different, unusual, and magical. It was, in fact, always that way. It always had the capacity to turn into a snake, to produce blood from water, lice from earth, and to split a sea. Moshe just never knew it. He knew it only for what it was at face value: a wooden staff.
“What’s in your hand?” Hashem asks Moshe. Because it’s actually far more than he believes it to be, than he can perceive with his eyes. And if there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to the staff, perhaps there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to the Jewish People.
What looks like a staff can actually become something so much more because it is precisely how Hashem programmed it to be. And what looks to be a stubborn Jew—set in his ways, a hardened creature of habit—can actually become something so much more because it is precisely how Hashem programmed it to be.
Hashem’s concern is that the Jews may be set in their ways, may not rise to the occasion. Indeed, there are no promises that potential will be actualized, that the awesome endowments of the Jewish neshama will be brought to bear. But He insists that it can happen. And insists, likewise, that every other Jew truly believe in that possibility.
It doesn’t matter how many times we’ve looked across the shul, or the street, or even right in the mirror, and have seen the same stubborn person, forever exhibiting the same behavior, remaining annoyingly unchanged for years. Make no firm assumptions about who that person can and will be in the future. His soul is programmed with the capacity to transform him into something so incredibly great, so vastly different from who he is now, it would make the transformation of a stick to a snake look like a trick performed by a magician at a three-year-old’s birthday party.