Parashat Vaeira - What's with the frogs...? - Rabbi Alon Anava

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Rabbi Alon Anava’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

We're in Parashat Va'eira. And uh we see that Hashem is starting all the plagues now in Mitzrayim. And the plagues are called in Hebrew makot. Makot is like to when you beat somebody when you beat somebody up. It's to hit somebody, to smack somebody. This is a makah. Doesn't called in in English, it's called a plague. But we see that this week's parashah and the next week's parashah starting all the plagues. Uh which brings a big wonder if this is the way that the Torah is educating us to deal with problems. I mean, one might say, "This is the attitude of the Torah? That the somebody is not listening to me, so I have to now smack them and and be violent here?" So, obviously that's not the case. The Torah is not promoting violence in any type of a way. And if this is the case then why is the Torah using in such a such an approach? So, last week we read that Hashem told Moshe Rabbenu "Go and take the sons of Israel out of Mitzrayim." And we saw the whole negotiation. Moshe Rabbenu saying, "I they're not going to listen to me. Paro is not going to listen to me. This is going to happen. That's going to happen." And God keeps telling him, "No, I'll don't worry. I'll make it work." So, you would think that the whole thing should have taken 1 hour. Moshe coming in, talking to Paro. Paro says, "Here's

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1. 0:18We're in Parashat Va'eira. And uh we see that Hashem is starting all the plagues now…
2. 6:45the most, and he needed this uh reminder constantly. Constantly he needed to be reminded. But…
3. 13:04So, there's a parable that there was once a little village and the village had two…
4. 19:26in other words, everything that Hashem created has a purpose. Everything has a meaning. Nothing is…
5. 25:45rectification. And we say we tend to say Kaddish for a person who dies for 11…
6. 32:01The first opinion is that the first frog came out and it just had a lot…
7. 38:22that that it was interpreted as slavery. Also, in our generation we're stuck in slavery. I…
8. 44:49So if he doesn't know me so why should I bother? If he doesn't know me…
9. 51:10important in the eyes of my friends. I'm not important in the eyes of my community…
10. 57:26work in instead of her because either she we she just had a baby or whatever.…

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