Pressure and redemption

A line I once read stays with me, and I quote it in various social situations: “You know you’re an adult when taking a nap changes from being a punishment into being a reward.” As children, a nap is something imposed on us, a demand from the outside, a break from play, imagination, and movement. As adults, a nap becomes a kind of small mercy, a pause from the pressures and responsibilities that shape our lives, a quiet moment in which we briefly step off the moving walkway of expectation. 

Our parsha opens at just such a moment. The Jewish people are cracking under the strain of slavery, Moshe is cracking under the strain of leadership, and Pharaoh, feeling his authority challenged, responds not with reflection but with repression, tightening his grip and increasing the burden. The people turn on Moshe and cry that his intervention has only made things worse, and Moshe in turn cries to Hashem, “Why did You send me?” Why have I only increased their suffering? Why has my leadership not brought relief? 

Hashem’s response is subtle and demanding. He doesn’t remove Moshe from leadership, He doesn’t instantly soften Pharaoh’s heart, and He doesn’t immediately relieve the pressure. Instead, He guides a slow and steady process of redemption in which eventually even Pharaoh himself will give gifts to the Jewish people as he sends them to their destiny. Redemption, Va’era teaches, isn’t magic, isn’t quick, and isn’t painless; it’s movement, contested and difficult, and carried by people who slowly learn to take responsibility for a future they cannot yet see. 

This matters, because not all pressure is the same. Pharaoh’s pressure is the pressure of domination, designed to control and entrench power. Moshe’s pressure is the pressure of responsibility, the burden of carrying a people forward. The people’s pressure is the pressure of moral demand, the insistence that life must be better than this. Va’era is the story of these pressures colliding, and of the Jewish people moving – sometimes slowly and painfully – toward dignity, destiny, and holiness. 

I was reminded of this watching Herzlia matric pupils receive their results. The many smiles I saw weren’t only relief but recognition. They recognised that the pressure of years of learning and studying and failing and trying again, supported by teachers, parents, and friends, hadn’t been wasted. They recognised that it had become something, that effort had turned into direction and struggle into possibility, and avenues had been opened upon which they could build their future career and contributions. 

And I think, too, of the protests in Iran, where enormous pressure is again visible, not the pressure of tyranny but the pressure of a people demanding dignity, at terrible cost and with uncertain outcome. Va’era reminds us that history doesn’t change when pressure appears but when pressure is claimed by people who believe in a better future and are willing to bear responsibility for it. 

The Torah doesn’t promise us a life without difficulty. It promises us that difficulty need not be empty, that suffering can be resisted and shaped and sometimes transformed. 

Dear friends and leaders, let’s not pray for our troubles to be smaller, but for ourselves to be greater. Let’s not seek to escape pressure, but to face it with courage and moral clarity, and to wrestle with the angel and demand his blessing. 

Shabbat shalom!