Come to Pharaoh - Ari Abramowitz: The Land of Israel Fellowship

and god says to moshe come to pharaoh for i have hardened his heart and the hearts of his servants in order that i might show my signs in their midst so the famous question that sans stands out so prominently is why does it say bo el parro come to pharaoh and why not el parro that would make more sense go into pharaoh now there are many answers to the question but in light of what we've been focusing on and discussing in the fellowship the words of the laboratory of course spoke so strongly to me and that's what i want to be sharing with you so he brings the ancient sacred text of the zohar to provide some context right he explains that usually up until now moshe moshe would sort of ambush paro often he aparra was in like a compromising situation at the time such as the first plague when moshe approached paro while he was in the nile as he was relieving himself right which he did in the nile by the way to hide the fact that he even had to do such a thing because he was trying to pass himself off as a deity and deities don't have to relieve themselves so he would go into the nile and that's what he would do and that's where moshe would ambush him but now the sages explained that moshe was afraid because he was going to confront paro on his throne right in his palace the hub of his power surrounded by all the majesty and the glory of of his palace of his armon so moshe was more afraid now and hashem is saying bo el paro meaning come with me hashem is saying i'll go with you i will hold your hand plus he says because i have strengthened his heart i'm the one that strengthened his heart i'm the one that's created this whole situation i am with you but are you ready for this so now the zohar goes even deeper so why does it here's the verse from the zohar why does it say come to pharaoh it should have said go to pharaoh but god brought moses into a chamber within a chamber to the supernal and mighty serpent from which many levels evolve and moshe feared to approach himself right he'd been going to pharaoh for months right now all of a sudden he's he's scared why is this so different because now he was being told to enter into pharaoh's very essence right he was told to penetrate to the very soul of pharaoh he wasn't just going to confront pharaoh externally but he was going to confront him on the soul level to peel away all of the clip all of these shells of illusion and impurity and ego within pharaoh and and really encounter the creator himself at the very core of paro right hashem was saying to moshe essentially come to see me within pharaoh and i think maybe that's the reason why he was so afraid you know we saw a similar fear of uh beholding the greatness of hashem at the burning bush if you remember moshe was afraid to behold god it's not really pharaoh who moshe is afraid of but coming to an encounter with hashem himself with the yud the hay and the vav and the hay within pharaoh because how can a human being right a mere mortal of flesh and blood and blood possibly behold such a pure revelation of divine truth that is so transcendent that at the deepest core right it's equally the source of both good and evil the source of light and darkness right the the ultimate oneness and unity of hashem is within there that is that's got to be terrifying you know there are times i walk around the farm at night and i'm talking to hashem and often it's times where i'm like seeking understanding but there have been times where i ask hashem to give me some sort of revelation you know to to reveal himself to me in some way and there was a time that i clearly remember that that i asked him to reveal himself to me in some way and then my heart started beating really fast you know it was like accelerating and i started to sweat and i got flushed and then i remember thinking um you know what maybe we should just keep things at the status quo let's just uh stay where they are right now i don't need to necessarily understand everything you know i got afraid i was afraid you know really encountering hashem i i imagine it's quite a jarring event and moshe think about it when he went up to mount sinai he had to wear a mask for the rest of his life because there was such divine light emanating from his face so perhaps my friends that's what that's what scared moshe so profoundly the prospect of bo el paro right hashem saying to moshe come and encounter me within paro and um and that is the secret of hashem's name that he is behind everything that he's within everything that there is nothing other than him and that is my nine one one emergency mantra right it's actually the words are found in the fourth chapter of deuteronomy but they are expressed with the yud and the hay and the vav and they what are those words say it with me if you know en od milvado there is nothing other than hashem there's nothing other than him but i won't go so deeply into that because we've had entire fellowships based on those three words and so last week we discussed that we have a little pharaoh within us remember that that um and perhaps that little pharaoh was was part of moshe's fear that he would encounter that tiny sliver that little inkling of pharaoh even within himself that voice that knows the way things are supposed to be that voice that resists yielding to the creator of the universe that voice that would compel perhaps maybe this is blasphemous but that would compel even the holiest men to strike a rock instead of speaking to it as hashem asked him to do this highlight was taken from the land of israel fellowship every week hundreds of families from literally around the world come together on our live zoom sessions to strengthen each other to inspire each other and to learn torah from the land of israel in which we connect the dots between the bible the hebrew language and the confusing events of our times go to www.thelandvisual.com backslash fellowship or click on the link below to join thank you you