Parashat Vaera
Plagues!
For Preschool Parents:
"Not all hazards are marked"
Of the ten plagues that befell Egypt, three of them (every third one actually) came unannounced. When the people were warned, at least they had the chance to prepare, but the unannounced plagues left no time to prepare and needed to be dealt with immediately.
In our own lives not every peril and challenge is announced. Some we are utterly unprepared for. While we wish that we would always know the difficulties ahead in our own lives and our children's we are not so lucky as to have that opportunity. Those occasions are much more scary but often can also bring out the best in us. It gives us the chance to trust our instincts and not over think, which is sometimes the best course.
For K-2nd Grade:
This week's Torah reading is all plagues all the time. While we are meant to take pride in what God can do and know that the plagues are necessary to bring about our freedom, we are still sad about all the destruction that befalls Egypt. That is why, when we are at the Seder, we take some wine out of our cups. We aren't entirely happy about being free because others had to suffer.
From this we can learn that we don't need to put others down in order for us to succeed. When others don't get something that we do, we should be happy to have it but also appreciate how the other person feels as well. Being aware of and sensitive to others, is also really important.
For 3rd-6th Grade:
In this week's Torah portion, both God and the Egyptians are able to bring frogs forth from the Nile, but only God was able to remove the frogs from Egypt. What does this show? I'd suggest that it means that sometimes its harder to make things go away than create them. Here is one example:
A Chasidic tale vividly illustrates the danger of improper speech: A man went about the community telling malicious lies about the rabbi. Later, he realized the wrong he had done, and began to feel remorse. He went to the rabbi and begged his forgiveness, saying he would do anything he could to make amends. The rabbi told the man, "Take a feather pillow, cut it open, and scatter the feathers to the winds." The man thought this was a strange request, but it was a simple enough task, and he did it gladly. When he returned to tell the rabbi that he had done it, the rabbi said, "Now, go and gather the feathers. Because you can no more make amends for the damage your words have done than you can recollect the feathers."
Speech has been compared to an arrow: once the words are released, like an arrow, they cannot be recalled, the harm they do cannot be stopped, and the harm they do cannot always be predicted, for words like arrows often go astray.
This week's portion teaches that it is important that we be careful what we do because we can't always take it back.
For 7th Grade and above:
One of the biggest theological struggles of the Bible is why God hardened Pharaoh's heart. Don't we all get free will? By hardening God's heart, God kept the Hebrews enslaved and caused the death of thousands. What kind of a God is that?
One explanation for why this happened is that it is all part of human nature. At first, we have a choice of what to do, but after a while of making certain choices we get trapped into those choices and even though we are able to change our minds, we feel obligated to stick to our guns and stay the course. Our hearts become hardened to our opinions and there is no escape. While we are technically able to change course, we are trapped by our choices and in that way a heart can be hardened even with free will.
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