The Plague of Darkness

Rabbi Melanie Aron

February 3, 2001

Last Passover, at my in-laws home in Cincinnati we conducted our seder in the dark. No, we were not modern day Marranos. What had happened was that the city was struck by tornados just before the seder began second night, and the storm created power outages throughout the area.

I was worried about the kids. At home Shifrah still gets very agitated by power outages and is afraid of the darkness that comes on so suddenly. But at Passover, once the sirens stopped, the kids actually enjoyed conducting seder this way. Surrounded by their grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, conducting the seder by candlelight was actually very cozy.

Darkness can be very frightening, particularly when it is unexpected. For that reason, it worked as one of the plagues. It forced Pharaoh to consider giving in to the Israelites request, that they be allowed to travel three days into the wilderness to worship their God. The darkness that struck Egypt was a very thick darkness, different from the darkness of a normal night. It is described in the Bible as something one could touch, vayamesh choshech. It prevented an individual from seeing the face of his neighbor: thus each person felt cut off from all human contact. Those of a more naturalistic bent identify the plague of darkness with the desert chamsin, the hot sorocco winds that often blow fine sand so thickly that it is impossible to see even one's hand in front of one's face. They claim that the chamsin was particularly bad, because the locusts had destroyed all the vegetation and there was nothing to catch the blowing sand.

The rabbis though question the plague of darknesses' position as the ninth, second to heaviest plague. They note that in psalm 105, darkness is mentioned before the plagues of blood, gnats, hail and locusts. They point to the book of Job. When Job is stricken, he is stricken first through his property, second through his family, and finally through his own physical being. Shouldn't the plagues have proceeded also in that order? Why was darkness, then, rather than disease, the ninth rather than the fourth or fifth plague?

The midrash has a very curious answer. The plague of darkness came just before the final plague, so that the Israelites could bury their dead without the Egpytians seeing. Those who were not going out into freedom, died before the final plague, and God did not want the Egyptians to see this, lest they think that Israelites had lost God's favor.

There is even a tradition that from the day of the Exodus until the sin of the spies, no Israelites died of natural causes, of aging in the desert, but only died because of a particular rebellion. The punishment that follows the rebellion of the incident of the spies, is the naturally occurring death by aging before they reached the promised land, of all those who had been slaves in Egypt.

There are many explanations of this strange midrash, that the plague of darkness came so that the Israelites could bury their dead, but to me, what makes sense is that God allowed those who would not be able to make the trip, those who were moribund, to die before the Exodus, so that no Israelite would be torn between freedom and family obligation. How could one go off and leave a parent or loved one. How much better to be able to do for them a last kindness, before departing never to return.

During the plague of darkness the Isrealites had light in their dwellings. Where did this light come from? It was we are told, the light of mitzvoth, of commandments. The ner tamid and the Shabbat candles that they would someday light, shed their light back into history. There was light we are told, even from the work they were doing those three days, of burying their dead, as that too is a mitzvah and a kindness. This light allowed each person to see the face of a neighbor and to feel part of a greater and caring community.

The rabbis point out that light is not something one can make only for oneself. By its nature, lights spreads out and can be used by anyone. So too the light of mitzvoth cannot be a selfish, hoarded light, but must be shared in community.

In good times and in bad times, we pray that darkness may be removed from our lives, so that we too will enjoy the light of miztvot and the support that comes from being able to look into the face of another person.