The Passover Story in 50 Minutes - Rabbi Benzion Klatzko - Library of Torah Thought

[Music] so we're going to start with the history of pesach okay so jacob had sons from four wives in those days polygamy was okay and he had uh he had four wives there were reasons that he did he meant to have one then the wrong wife was given to him eventually he ended up marrying four uh four wives and from those four wives he had 12 children and now there was one son whose name was joseph and joseph was the son of the favorite wife yes he had a favorite wife how did why do you have a favorite wife the answer is he was supposed to marry just as one lady he was his favorite because that's one he was supposed to marry his father-in-law tricked him and under underneath the chubba at the wedding he replaced the father-in-law replaced one of his daughters with another so he always had special love for hell and rachel had a child named yosef and yaakov jacob loved jose very much he even gave me a beautiful colored coat and as a as a gift and the brothers were very jealous of him because you know you're jealous of dad and mom like someone else better than you right it hurts and joseph actually had these dreams and he would tell over these dreams to the to the brothers he would say i had dreams that the stars were bound down to me or uh i had dreamed that different all sorts of uh different hey everything was bowing down to me so they said oh i guess you mean that we're going to bow down to you so what are you your favorite son you want to rule over us they felt that he was a danger to the family structure and at first he said you know we have to get rid of him you know he he's going to he's gonna destroy the beginning of what will eventually be the jewish people at the end judah said you know let's not uh kill him let's not kill him we're not gonna do that but we will have him leave the family and they ended up selling him into slavery and they went back to the father and they said to the father he died and the father mourned him for many years they took his colored coat that he had gotten as a gift they put a little blood on it they said dad so sorry you lost your son and jacob grieved it was a terrible thing and it was not the right thing to do and there was punishments later on but joseph ended up being sold to egypt where he became a servant to a wealthy man named potiphar and padiva liked him very very much uh he was smart he was a good-looking person who was able to run the household and that was great and yo yosef lived somewhat of a comfortable life for a slave uh except that potiphar's wife took a liking also to this slave and she tried to seduce him and uh when her husband go away she would try to seduce him and uh once she just grabbed his garment and said come lay with me and yosef said you know i'm not gonna do this it's like immoral and he went running out and she grabbed onto his garment and she ended up holding on to one of his garments as he ran out where she ripped it off of him well she was both she was insulted she was infuriated and she went to potiphar when he came home and said you know you're a slave so i do he tried to sleep with me trying to seduce me look here's his garment so she turned the tables on you know safe now the truth is paul thief i didn't really believe her story he knew what was going on but what could he do he had to stick up for his wife and he had joseph imprisoned yosef was put into prison for many many years 12 years he was put into prison so things went from worse to worse from being a brother of the tribes of israel to be sold to slave to now being thrown into prison he was there for many years however because he was this really special person he had this glory of the shine about him um the the the the prison warden was much nicer to him than everyone else and after many years being in this prison there were these two people one was a baker for the king and one was the wine mixer the wine server for the king and each one of them had dreams and joseph was able to uh translate these dreams and tell them what their dreams meant he said to the wine server he says it's going to be the king's birthday and you're going to be taken out of prison and you're once again going to be uh serving the king and you uh baker you're going to be put to death and it turned out that he was right this was right to the day exactly what happened and joseph said by the way he told the wine the the the wine server when you get out remind the king put the good word for me of course he went out didn't want to put the good word for the jew so he ended up there a few more years then the king one day had a dream and he had two dreams and there were dreams about skinny cows eating fat cows or bundles of wheat and and these bundles the thin ones absorb the big ones these were things that make sense to him and he called in his dream interpreters and they could not interpret the dream so eventually uh the wine services i couldn't help but hear the king saying that this is what happened that that you had this dream there was a fellow in prison who knows how to interpret dreams why don't you have him interpret your dreams and they called jose from prison they washed them up they cleaned them up he's about to come in front of the king and he tells the king this is what your dream means there's going to be seven years of plenty there's been loads of food in egypt and after the seven years of plenty there are going to be seven lean years and the lean years the years of famine and drought are going to be so terrifyingly uh severe that the seven fat years the seven years of plenty are going to be forgotten because of so many uh years of of leanness because of so many difficult uh years that are ahead and it turns out that the king was very impressed with him joseph was correct there were these seven years of plenty and yosef was promoted from being a prison prisoner to being second to the king and he was admired and loved by all of egypt eventually the years of famine did come and yosef had very cleverly put aside lots and lots of food over the first seven years because he knew that the years of of famine were coming and eventually egypt ran out of food and yosef uh gave food to egypt people paid tremendous tributes to the pharaoh of the king and the king was really happy at that same time jacob and the rest of the 11 tribes who were not living in egypt they were living in cayman but there was a famine and the famine was throughout the middle east and the father said look maybe go to egypt they have food over there their king was very clever put aside food go and get food bring it back to cayman bring back to the family so they went and they were looking for food well when it was told to jose that his brothers were in town he was excited and nervous and he tried to think okay how am i going to meet my brothers now the brothers had no idea that he was going to end up in egypt and they certainly had no idea that he was the viceroy of egypt that he was second in in command they had no idea so they all came in front of yosef and they called joseph yosef that was his egyptian name and archaeologically speaking we know that name exists it's really interesting and they stood in front of itself southwest who was really joseph and he said what are you doing in town they said we're here for food and he said to them well you look like you scattered out throughout the land and one of the reasons they scattered out was because they had heard maybe joseph was in egypt and they figured besides looking for food maybe they look for their brother joseph they knew how sad yaakov had become about losing his son and maybe if they could actually find him somewhere so yosef accused them of being spies they said no we're not spies and joseph said one second you said you're not spies but you also told me that you have one brother you left at home the brother's name is benjamin why don't you go home bring benjamin so i'll know that the rest of the story that you said it was true come back to egypt then i'll give you food and they said okay and they went back to canaan they said to the father father we we mentioned benjamin a benjamin was the second son of rachel rachel the favorite the favorite wife so raquel only had two kids one was murdered uh or not really he thought he was murdered but now he was the viceroy and then there was the second the second son and the father was so protective of the second son that he was not brought down to egypt you guys following along the stories though okay so you said okay we we've got to bring benjamin to this viceroy of egypt and jacob said no you're not bringing benjamin already his brother died because he thought he did die you're not going to bring him down judah said trust me i'm going to look after him i promise you on my life and on my future that i'm gonna bring him down that i'm gonna that i'm gonna bring him back safely we're gonna make the story even shorter benjamin comes up um joseph is very nice to him again doesn't say who he is gives them lots of food and gives them all sorts of gifts really nice they start heading back to to canaan and joseph did something really interesting he took the royal goblet that he used to use and he hid it in the bag of benjamin okay benjamin did not know that the royal cup uh that that that the pharaoh used was hidden in his bag they're all going back with their bags of food and all of the sudden you've got the the uh soldiers of the pharaoh running after them say hey one of you stole the royal uh the royal cup of the king and they said nobody stole it well they looked at all the bags and sure enough they found in benjamin's bag the royal cup and the brothers were mortified and benjamin's i didn't steal it what do you mean it's right right here in your bag they were all brought again back down to egypt and now they knew they're in a lot of trouble because you caught stealing from the king you can be put to death and the end as they're crying and they're they're they're getting ready to fight the king the king who's the viceroy of the king joseph sends everyone out of the room and joseph says i am joseph i am your brother i know you don't recognize me i didn't have a beard now i do have a beard i'm older how is my father doing and what he meant to say is how is my father how did he handle the news that you lied to him that i was that i was killed how did how's my father doing and they were so mortified all of their their actions came back to haunt them and they fell on the ground weeping and crying and apologizing so joseph picked up his brother and said it's okay i forgive you all he said look there's gonna be a famine for another five years bring the family down to egypt i'll get you guys a place to stay and we're gonna take good care of you and the brothers went back down to the father brought the father to egypt there was amazing reunion between jacob and his long-lost son joseph was 22 years he hadn't seen his son they hugged they kissed and they ended up living in the land of goshen so now you've got the all the tribes all the the the the brothers living in a land called goshen which was part of egypt and they grew fruitful and they multiplied and they had children and their children were of course first cousins and then they had children their children were second cousins and third cousins and soon this small family it was a relatively small family when they went down to egypt it wasn't just 12 because they already had children by that time there were 70 people 17 each one of them had a few kids 70 from 70 people came an entire nation now that nation is going to end up being us we are that nation we are the nation that went down to egypt now we're called jewish because we most of us come from the tribe of judah church so we don't come from joseph but we come from judah and there we were in egypt now all the brothers eventually passed away and a a new king a new pharaoh now all the kings in egypt were known as pharaoh a new pharaoh came and this pharaoh forgot about all the kindness that joseph had done remember he had saved egypt from famine he forgot about it he just said okay we're not gonna we're not gonna pay attention to that you know what you know what's troubling me the jews i don't call jesus them but they were the children of jacob and they troubled me and they they troubled me because they're growing so fruitful they're having so many children and they're not like us they don't dress like us they don't speak like us they have a different language they're so different these jews that i'm afraid that the next time there's a war between egypt and one of her enemies all these hebrews are going to take the side of the enemies we're we're we're fostering we're nurturing these this enemy element in our midst we got to do something about these jews we had to do something about them and the first thing they decided to do was that they're gonna start to kill the newborn babies we're gonna kill the newborn babies and we'll say this was a you know a death at birth it wasn't that uncommon of those days they didn't have antibiotics they didn't have that so people died at birth so they said you know what we're gonna and and they called these two ladies who were the midwives who used to help the jewish people give birth and they their names were your heaven and miriam they were the midwives they actually went by nicknames they were they were known as shifra and pua shifra comes from the hebrew word shafa which means to make nice and it was schiffer's job to clean up the baby from the amniotic fluid and you clear out the mouth knives she was called shifra and pua came from the expression that they used to use to coo the baby to calm the baby poo poo they would say soft words and like hold the baby so they they were suffering poor and shift were not just a tandem they weren't just the midwives but they were actually mother and daughter several poor their mother and daughter that we used to work together at midwives so pharaoh calls and from poor and says look you guys are midwives here's what i want you to do as you deliver the baby i want you sort of to choke them just kill them kill the babies well shift rampua did not listen they didn't listen and not only didn't they not kill the babies but they took extra good care of the babies and pharaoh got very upset he calls them back in and said didn't i tell you kill the newborn babies so they respond to this look what can we do the jewish women they're such they're so talented at giving birth to babies that by the time we come the babies are already born and what are we going to kill them with we can't you don't want us to come and choke a baby you want to look like an accident well we can't make it look like accidents if they're born already and that was their excuse not to harm the babies and they each got a special reward for for uh defying paro and um shifra whose um shifter who was your heaven one of her rewards is really interesting because she ended up having a baby herself now she already had two children remember one child was her daughter pua although otherwise known as miriam she had and then she's gonna have another child that other child you'll see will be named moses or moshe so now when we connect the dots in our minds moses or moshe was the child of the midwife that defied pera of pyro okay we got we got that really interesting so then power made a new decree and the decree was that all of the children all the the males should be thrown into the nile river and this was not subtle this is not meant to look like an accident it was the soldiers going from uh childbirth to childbirth saying if it's a girl let him live if it's a boy we're going to kill the boy and the reason they did that was because his astrologers looked at the stars and said we see there's going to be a boy that will be born for the jewish people and this boy is going to redeem is going to release the jewish people from bondage now speaking of bondage where did bondage come in well as the jews were multiplying paro said you know what i have to do something to make sure that the jewish people know their place so here's how it happened one day he said today we're having a day of of nationalism today is going gonna be a day all hands on deck we're gonna build you we're gonna build egypt anyone who wants to volunteer come to the quarry we're gonna volunteer we're gonna have a day of building you know like a day of cleaning up a beach like they would have today or a day of park well we're gonna have a day of building and the jews who very much wanted to show that they were part of egyptian society they wanted to be very accommodating they all came out that day okay let's go out let's go out and they began working in the quarry and they worked really hard that day rocks and hueing out rocks from big stones and you know for buildings and at the end of the day they felt this great sense of satisfaction like look what we did for egypt little did they and even pharaoh came out that day even pharaoh rolled up his sleeves and said okay i'm going to work also and some egyptians came to work and everyone this national day of unity but the jews did not know that there were egyptians who were there and they were writing down each jew how many stones they had been able to build that day how many they were able to extract from the rock and build and they would say to you hey what a great day you did amazing how many did you do and maybe one or two jews may have boasted i did you know 36 stones state 36 tune out good for you could be how many more do you think you i'm going to get you know seven more today wow that's going to be amazing and they wrote it down they wrote down the next day the jews were asleep in the morning they had worked really hard they got a knock at the door it's egyptian uh egyptian officers and they said okay time to go to the quarry because what do you mean yes today was the what do you mean you only pledge allegiance to egypt one day every day what do you mean and they force the jews out of bed they're born unto the quarry and today the jews were not into it as you can imagine like another day and the jews were schlepping stopping and the officers said excuse me yes today you did 43. today is like six let's go let's go you got to do your 43 and whatever they did on that first day they were forced to do and it was really really harsh and they weren't paid for it and then eventually they thought of an idea that many years later the nazis thought of as well which is to promote jews as capos over the workforce so instead of beating the jew who didn't work well or the jew who didn't reach his allotted amount they would beat the kappa who was in charge so you had a jew in charge of a whole bunch of jews forcing them to build bricks every day otherwise he would get beaten that's exactly what the nazis did that was really really really painful and sometimes capo these these jews who oversaw them they they had rahmanus had mercy they didn't want to push these poor jews so they took the beatings each day and many years later at mount sinai they were actually rewarded they got a reward they were allowed to come closer to the mountain at the giving of the torah than other people as a reward for not pushing the jews even though they could have so this was the state of reality to the jews we be we were tricked into slavery we were tricked and we ended up being slaves for how many years 30 years 50 years 10 years 210 years more than two centuries two centuries the jews were beaten and whipped and abused and ignored it was awful eventually pharaoh made this decree all boys they're going to be thrown into the nile shifra who was yochev we mentioned she had a baby and her baby she named him tovja god is good but i know amazing way of understanding of looking whatever god does for the good shenanigans and he was born prematurely he was actually born after six months and therefore the astrologers when they figured out when the baby was supposed to be born they had calculated nine months and he ended up being premature and what they used to do is what the nazis did as well they used to go from house to house with little babies and make babies cry so if you are hiding a baby in the house when babies hear other babies cry they cry so they would take a baby around smack the baby up the baby would cry and then if there was a baby that was hidden in the house the baby would cry then they'd take the baby if it was a boy and throw it into the nile tovia was born prematurely they did not knock on the door they weren't expecting it to be born they were aware that schiffer was expecting a baby and when nine months was over and she knew she'd be getting a knock on the door any moment she said i have to do something with tofia and they they took the little baby tovia and they created a basket and they outside of the basket they lined with tar on the inside with a kind of a very light cement plaster and they made in a way that it uh that it would float and it was it was it was buoyant they took this baby and the mother said to her daughter miriam who's also it was pua remember saying poo poo poo to the baby she said miriam please take your brother put him in the basket and bring him to the nile and hashem will watch him hashem is going to take care of him if he's here they're going to take him they're going to throw him in if he's in the basket maybe he'll be found who knows and miriam took little baby tovia put him in the basket put him in the nile and then she looked from a distance to see what's going to be and it was very scary there are crocodiles and alligators in the nile they're animal it's it was a it was frightening but it was the only way that they could escape these these soldiers that were everywhere well just at that time there was a lady who was coming down to bathe herself and her name was basia or bisiya a bishop and daughter of god and who was she she was actually the daughter of paro she was pharaoh's daughter except that she according to some opinions she was she had come down to the nile to convert she wanted to become jewish according to other opinions she came down because she had leprosy or she came down to bathe herself either way she came down with her maid servants and she was going to go dip in the nile and she sees this basket and she reaches out and she grabs the basket and she pulls it in and she sees this little baby cute little blanket in the basket and right away her heart melted and she said wow i'm gonna bring this baby home i'm gonna maybe it was a jewish baby i don't know i'm gonna bring it home and i wanna name this baby so i drew the baby from the nile river so i'm gonna name this baby drew [Music] that's interesting drew d-r-e-w is an english name but in hebrew to draw something is called moshe meena mai mishi who i drew him from the well further from well from the nile so his name went from tovja which was his given name to moshe drawn and because he was rescued with all this mercy from the daughter of para hashem declared decreed that his name even later on even when he went back to the jewish people even when he became the leader of the jewish people he did not retain his original name tovia but from then on he was called moshe he was drawn from the nile and today we know moshe's moses moses means to be drawn he's brought to the palace and she tries to feed him little babies nurse don't give a baby cow's milk so they used to have these wet nurses and the nurse the nurses would uh want to drink would want to give the baby sustenance to nurse the baby except that moshe even though he was tiny he was little newborn he did not take to nursing from a non-jewish lady that was just no one understands it was very it was a spooky holy the mouth that was one day gonna speak to god was not going to nurse from an idol worshiper and little miriam who had been following and watching suggested you know i know a wet nurse in uh in the in the jewish of the jewish city that is very good at this why don't we nurse this baby when the baby is finished nursing then we'll give back the baby and basically the donor part says okay let's do it and i'll pay for it so she ended up paying who you have it the actual mother of moshe to nurse moshe so how many mothers actually get paid to nurse their own baby well that's a good riddle and it was joche got paid by the daughter of power to nurse her own baby eventually moshe was brought back to uh to the palace now if you've seen prince of egypt you know you guys saw prince of egypt yeah nice music and so on but the story it just unfortunately it made the story about paro as a brother with moshe that's not the story that's just disney trying to make a story the story was cool enough without disney that's the truth it was a really interesting story and so and so here we've got moshe as he's growing up he is growing up as a prince and one day he goes out and he sees the jewish people he started making this habit of watching the slaves work and he didn't understand it like it actually bothered him you know he had a very soft heart he had a conscience and he couldn't believe that him being a prince in egypt why should they take this whole nation and allow them to be abused and whipped and beaten and worked for nothing it's not fair and moshe actually inserted himself in the quarry to try to work with them to give them energy and every time he tried their officers removed them excuse me you know it's not the dignity of egypt to have the prince of egypt working together with slaves one day moshe is walking outside and he sees that there's an egyptian beating a jew to the egyptian beating a jew and he was horrified now it's interesting that he was the egyptian was beating this jew says the madrid because the egyptian had cast his eyes on this jew's wife and he wanted this jew's wife for himself so the way he's going to take the wife is by killing the jew and he's beating this jew to death and moshe sees this and moshe cannot tolerate the brutality and instead moshe descends upon the egyptian kills the egyptian and saves his jew now this jew interestingly enough was not like a great guy later on he's a little bit of a villain in in more stories than the torah uh but his name was dassan or datan and it was his wife that the egyptian wanted and moshe literally saved his life a little while later moshe goes outside once again to wander amongst the slaves and this time he sees two jews fighting with each other it's horrified like it's one thing to see a a a slave master beat a slave it's another thing to see a jew descend upon another jew and he says to them why are you being wicked what are you hitting each other hurting each other and one of the jews who was doing the hitting that person ended up being it was the same one who was getting beaten by the egyptians he was now in a fight with the jew and instead of saying you're right instead he turns to motion and says oh are you going to kill me like you killed the egyptian can you imagine the ingratitude can you imagine that are you going to kill me like you killed the egyptian and moshe said wow now i understand why the jews are slaves if there's lack of unity if there's this kind of attitude there's correction that's needed but moshe also said you know what else i understand i now understand that it is known that i killed an egyptian and i better escape because even though i'm a prince unlike some monarch monarchs that just killed people willy-nilly just kill whatever they want that wasn't the case in egypt you couldn't just kill someone and as an officer you could get or even as a prince you get the trouble for killing someone for no reason and moshe ended up having to escape right before he was arrested and he escaped and he ended up in a place called midyan this is very far outside of egypt and when he was at madyan he was he saw uh he saw of this these ladies and they're waiting they want to draw water from a well and moshe abano helps them draw the water and and the water comes up to to him and he's drawing water he's helping them and and the ladies go back to their father and say to the father they he said how are you here how are you back so early today usually when he draw water for the well for our livestock for our sheep for our cows it takes time he said oh there was this egyptian guy not only did he draw the not only did he did he draw the water before us but we were being harassed by all sorts of peop other shepherds who were there because we're women and they were harassing us and pushing us out of the way and he pushed them all away and he saved us and he drew the water from the well so these ladies their father whose name was yisro or known english as jethro but we'll call him his hebrew name history said well where is that guy i have all sorts of daughters they all need husbands this guy sounds like a real mensch he sounds like a prince go find him and they found this guy who ended up being moshe and moshe ended up marrying the daughter of this person on the livestock one of the girls who were there at the well and her name was simpora support moshe married sapporo and he became moshe became a shepherd for his father-in-law israel and bigger shepherd is is it's a respectable living you can meditate on life it's not a very difficult job it is a great uh it is a great falling from being a prince to being a shepherd one day one of his sheep was very very thirsty and little sheep and the sheep head straight and he went to look for the sheep he finds the sheep and he takes care of the sheep shepherd's most amazing thing and hashem said wow somebody who takes care of my flock in such a beautiful way they take care of my larger flock the jewish people and moshe banu moshe is this shepherd is going one day running after a sheep and he sees a a bush and the bush is on fire but the fire is not consuming the bush the bush is just on fire and he says something is holy about this bush that's burning and he hears the voice of hashem and right away says wow this place is holy he takes off his shoes and hashem says moshe i've seen you i understand you i want you to go back to egypt and take my people out tell paro that the jewish people are going to be taken out and so motion said i can't i'm not the right person for the job moshe had a little bit of a speech impediment that was ahead with a story when he was young he couldn't speak well he said what am i why are you sending me send anyone about me i'm not i'm not worthy of taking the jewish people out and he argued with hashem he argued with god for seven days and finally god said listen i'm not taking no for an answer you're the right person aaron your brother he's going to help you out it'll be you motion aaron and he says you see that staff in your hand that staff is going to be assigned here was the sign they went to egypt moshe and r they went all the way back and they were not in danger moshe wasn't in danger anymore all those accusations were old they were forgotten the people who accused him and had passed away so he was able to go into egypt he was unafraid he got an audience with pyro now it was a good day for him to go because it was power's birthday and everyone was coming and offering power all sorts of gifts oh pharaoh i come from a city called nineveh and here is my get through i come from the philistines and here's my gift to you and then motion iron came and power was there and he was all ready for his gift and they said we don't have a gift we are here with a message god said let my people go to hebrews they're god's people let them go and para said who's god what what god what which god are you talking about i've got an encyclopedia of god your god doesn't it's not listed in my encyclopedia of god i won't listen to god i don't know who he is and i'm not sending the jewish people out and they said here's a sign that god sent us and they took the staff that threw it on the ground and the staff became a snake a big snake a stick to a snake so pirates said what are you bringing witchcraft to egypt we all know magic here this is egypt this is this is the source of sorcery is right here and he had his his children he had a lot of children from a lot of different wives and they all had practiced you know illusions and sorcery and they each took the little stamps and threw it on the ground and they all became snakes so pirates you see that's your that's the best your god can do it's just make a stick to a snake that's not a big deal all of a sudden the stick that moshe had thrown down it opened its mouth and it swallowed all of the other uh snakes so pyro says okay i was impressive but i'm not sending the jewish people i'm not sending them away well they met paro a few days later and paro was at the nile river what was power doing at the nile river well paro looked at himself like a god he actually wanted everyone to look at him like a god that's what pair of pharaohs were they were like gods one of the things gods don't do is they don't relieve themselves they don't go to the bathroom so you have to go to the bathroom bathroom secretly if you were a pharaoh so this would not have worked probably but for women but even for a guy it must have been very very painful in the morning pharaoh would get up early in the morning he would relieve himself and that was it for the day so quietly he'd go where he wasn't so godlike as he was relieving himself moshe approaches him as he's relieving himself which was very embarrassing because there he is doing his thing and moshe said listen you better let the jewish people go or everything is going to turn to blood all the liquid in egypt and paris said ah it's not gonna happen and sure enough that was the first plague the plague of blood and i'm gonna go through the plagues very quickly now because i want to get to a few of the laws we know the first plague was a plague of blood and everything turned to blood and that lasted for seven days a month later there were the plague of frogs and frogs don't seem like a very big plague but believe me when everything your bed and your oven and your fridge and your food and everything is filled and then at the end of the play they all died and a dead frog is worse than a live frog because like a dead fish and they were like dead frogs everywhere and egypt stink from the dead frogs then chem lice we it's hard to imagine having a body infested with lice up your nose lice in your mouth in your food in your ears burrowing their way into your ear canal lice everywhere lies a month later came wild animals every kind of wild beast you know we live in months here they say once a while you can see a bear bear is everywhere lions everywhere dreadful animals the egyptians were mold again warning let the people go each time pharaoh said yeah maybe yeah changed my mind kept saying yeah maybe that changed my mind two twice it was one third time no warning and that's how that was the pattern first two plagues worn third plague no warning next two plagues warren then the warning then after the wild animals came the death of their livestock lots and lots of the egyptians uh the horses and the goats and the sheep and the cows and it ruined the the egyptian trade tremendous losses then came boils boils you ever have chicken box imagine boils filled with pus and swollen and all over your body imagine the scars they're going to leave all the ones on your nose and on your face that was awful then came hail it's a very unique kind of hail it was fire and ice together very unique a a miraculous hail and it was fire and ice making peace with each other so the fire the the ice was heavy as it would fall it would crash through the roofs and the ceilings of homes and then the fire part of the hill would then set the home on fire and ruin the tremendous amount of houses a tremendous amount of of gra of orchards and vineyards all destroyed by the hill then came locust and if we think that the hail destroyed a lot a plague of locus is death right it's literally looking at death when locusts come within hours they can eat every last grain there's nothing left you cannot hide from them they can get anywhere they eat everything they're voracious eaters even today there are plagues of locusts you can go onto youtube you see it it's terrifying and egypt was destroyed with that then came the plague of darkness the plague of darkness had was a six day plague it was the only plague that was six days instead of seven except for the last plague which we'll talk about in a moment but there were six days the seventh day of the plague of darkness was reserved for the night before the sea split god carried it over like a roll over minutes he did a rule over a dark day for that last day before the the sea split well the darkness had another purpose as well the jewish people during the darkness were commanded by moshe go into egyptians homes they cannot see you as a matter of fact the second three days of darkness the darkness was so thick that they were rendered immobile so the first three days of the plague of darkness i couldn't see the second three days they were stuck in place because the darkness was a thick matter or almost like we called dark matter today but much thicker than dark matter and the jews were commanded go through the egyptian houses see where they keep their gold and their silver and their precious things but don't take any of it don't touch it but know where they keep it then came the last plague and last plague was the death of the firstborn and this plague didn't last for seven days didn't last for one day it all happened in the same moment and one moment all of the firstborn of the egyptians were killed the firstborn if the firstborn was already dead then the next born died in every single egyptian house there was one person who died and the scream the scream in egypt was so crazy loud that the torah speaks about this scream now by the way these plagues many of these plagues have been found in egyptian writings as well so it is not just jewish legend there's a something called the ipo or papyrus and the papyrus speaks about the nile turning to blood it speaks about the wild animals it speaks about all sorts of plagues in egyptians words and it also describes the great scream [Music] of the egyptians during the death of the firstborn double interesting is that at the beginning of covid when covert was really hitting china so someone took a video uh it was the evening in china i don't know if you've ever seen this video but they took a video of uh they were taking a video from a high-rise apartment and there were so many people in china who were dying at the beginning of kovit that they were screaming throughout throughout the city where they were videoing it and the person took a video and you could hear screaming coming from many many many houses people sick many people wrote in the comments wow that is so reminiscent of what you would picture the death of the firstborn where it speaks about you know edward munches the scream you know that famous painting but he's going like this it's like this scream um and at that point uh the jews were not just given permission to leave but they were literally chased out of these like leave you are creating death the jewish people then of course went uh traveled the desert they went for for a few days after three days egyptians said what did we just do we just let the jews out they were our workforce you know we're gonna we're gonna be we're not gonna be able to get anything done let's run after the jews they ran after the jews they ended up meeting up in front of the sea of reeds and of course we know what happened the jews prayed they cried out to moshe uh god tells moshe tell them to start crying out tell them to just walk into the sea and the jews walked the seas split the egyptians followed and the sea collapsed on them and the egyptian army was destroyed and actually even today you can go to the bottom of the sea of reeds and you know what you're going to find you're going to find chariots and wheels of the chariots of the egyptians they are still there they even had a robot go down you can see it online you can find it online uh we're going to go down with a camera to show one of the wheels very clearly uh one of these cherry wheels right there totally intact at the bottom of the sea of reeds so it's very very interesting so there there was there's so much to say i i i literally gave you the the smallest bullet points this is the beginning of the birth of the jewish people the days of uh pesach are the are the days when hashem chose us as his nation he took us he extracted us as one nation from another nation with the jewish people who were extracted from uh from within the egyptians from egypt and we were unique we were different even if you look at old archaeology and you see where jews are depicted in egyptian archaeology we're depicted as dressing differently and it's one of the things the rabbis teach us that even what though the jews were very assimilated in egypt you would imagine in in a few centuries you're going to be assimilated there are three things they did not change they did not change their the way they dressed they did not change their language they spoke hebrew not egyptian and did not change their names they stuck with their jewish names and that's why jewish names are a very big deal those are the three things that we held on to even though we were in a really difficult situation i will be available for more questions [Music] i think i planned on giving you more laws but rather than that i wanted to give you a little more of a background in what the story is so all the way from joseph being sold into slavery to the brothers coming down to egypt in order to feed their families to the king forgetting the kindness that joseph did and instead being nervous about the jews and enslaving them and wanting to kill all their children and at least kill their male male children to moshe being born to be brought up in royalty having to run away and yet coming back and approaching pharaoh again and again let my people go in each time [Music] you