Parsha for Kids: Bo 2023
Below is the transcript for this week’s episode of Parsha for Kids, Bo 2023.
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Season 2 Episode 3:
Hello! My name is Chana, and this is Parsha for kids. The Parsha of the week is Bo. Bo means “Come.”
But who needs to come? And where do they need to come?
The answer is Moshe. God told him to “Come to Pharoah, because I God have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants so I could place these signs- meaning the plagues- in Egypt. And also lmaan tesaper b’aznei vincha u’ben bincha , so that you shall tell in the ears of your son and your son’s son. Tell how I God made a mockery out of the Egyptians. Also tell about my plagues so that you shall know I am the Lord.”
This is an important concept. God explains that He is not only having Moshe perform these plagues so that the Egyptians will recognize God’s power, but also so that we, the Hebrews, and ultimately members of the Jewish people, will recognize God’s power. The verse that tells us that we should tell this story to our children is one we fulfill today. Those of you who pray out of a siddur, or prayer book, will recognize that we talk about God redeeming us from Egypt throughout the daily prayers. And hopefully you have all attended a Pesach seder, or Passover seder, where we spend a lot of time talking about the miracles that God performed and even imagine that we ourselves were slaves in Egypt - recognizing that if God had not redeemed us, we would still be there!
Why do you think it is important to God that we remember to tell over the story of what He did for the Hebrews in Egypt?
I think there are several factors. First, there is the idea of gratitude. Recognizing that if not for God, we would not have left Egypt puts our lives in perspective. If we are happy with the lives we lead, the fact that we live in the country where we live, and have the opportunity to practice our religion openly, it’s important to remember that we owe that to somebody, and the Being we owe it to is God.
Second, there is the idea of recognizing God’s power. If we remember that God was powerful enough to separate out the Hebrew people, ultimately the Jewish nation, from amongst the Egyptians, and to create plagues that differentiated between them, we are able to properly appreciate Him.
Third, the memory of this event gives us hope. Sometimes Hebrews or Jews might be in situations where they are oppressed or people might seem to be against them. Even in those situations and those dark times, God is with us. Remembering that God has saved us before may give us strength to realize that God can and will save us as a nation again. There will never be a world without the Jewish people in it, because God loves us and we are His treasured people.
TRANSITION
So Moshe and Aharon went to Pharoah and said, “God told us to tell you: How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Send out my nation and they will worship me. If you refuse to let them go, tomorrow I God will bring locusts, which is a form of hungry grasshopper, into your land. There will be so many of them that they will cover the earth and you will not be able to see the land, and they will eat any crop or tree that survived the Makkah, plague, of hail. And your houses will be filled with locusts.”
Moshe left. Pharoah’s servants pleaded with him, saying, “How long will this be a trap for us? Let the people go and they will worship their God. Don’t you know that Egypt is lost?”
Moshe and Aharon were brought back into Pharoah’s presence. Pharoah told them, “Go, worship your God. Who will be going?”
Moshe said, “All of us. Our youth, our elders, our sons and daughters, our flocks and cattle- we will all go worship for it is a festival of God for us.”
Pharoah said he was willing to let the men go worship God, but he was not willing to let the other people or the flocks of cattle and sheep go. And Moshe and Aharon were chased out of the room.
TRANSITION
God told Moshe to stretch out his hand over the land of Egypt. Moshe held his staff in his hand and did so. An east wind blew all that day and night. By the time it was morning, the east wind blew the Arbeh, or locusts, into Egypt. It was an extremely severe plague and there were so many of them that the earth looked dark. The sky was so full of them you could no longer see the sun. The locusts ate everything that had survived Makkat Barad, the plague of hail.
Why did God bring a plague of locusts? It shows God’s dominion over insects, which demonstrates His power over the natural world. Additionally, according to the Midrash, the Egyptians had ordered the Jews to plant grains, beans and peas. Middah kneged middah, measure for measure, the locusts ate all of these crops.
Pharoah summoned Moshe and Aharon to his palace. “I have sinned against the Lord your God and against you,” he said. “But now forgive my sin this one time and pray to God and let him remove this death from me.”
Moshe left and prayed to God. God sent a west wind that picked up the locusts and blew them into the Yam Suf, Red Sea. No locusts were left in Egypt.
But God strengthened Pharoah’s heart and he did not let Bnei Yisrael leave Egypt.
TRANSITION
God did not tell Moshe or Aharon to warn Pharoah about the next makkah, plague. Instead, God told Moshe to stretch out his hand towards the sky, and there would be darkness. The darkness would become even darker over time.
So Moshe stretched out his hand towards the heavens and there was thick darkness over Egypt for three days. Rashi explains that the thick darkness prevented the Egyptians from seeing each other for three days. Then there were another three days of darkness twice as dark as this. It pressed upon people and was so thick and dark that no Egyptian was able to move. If the person was sitting, they had to stay sitting. If they were standing, they were stuck standing.
Have you ever been to a museum that has an exhibit on what it is like to be blind? I have. There is a tunnel that is completely dark. The only thing you can do is feel around with your hands and feet and try to figure out where to turn and how to get out of the tunnel. I remember that when I went through that exhibit, I thought about the plague of darkness that the Egyptians suffered. The darkness was so thick that the Egyptians were either unable to light candle flames or the light would be extinguished if they tried.
Imagine sitting in complete darkness for six days, thick and heavy against your eyes, your throat, your body. You would realize that the source of light is God, and specifically the God of the Israelites. You would never take light for granted again.
Why did God bring the plague of darkness? First, it shows God’s dominion over supposedly natural things like the sun and the moon, or light and dark. People take for granted that the sun rises every day and that there is light. But when God wants there to be complete darkness, and for the sun not to help, He controls the world and can make that happen.
Additionally, the Midrash says that the Egyptians would order Hebrews to carry candles and torches for them in dark streets, and sometimes they would put the Hebrews into dark prisons. Therefore, middah kneged middah, measure for measure, they were punished with darkness.
Rashi gives another reason. There were some wicked Hebrews of that generation who did not want to leave Egypt. They died during the plague of darkness. The reason they died then as opposed to during any other plague was so that the Egyptians would not say, “See, they are also suffering from the plagues, just like us.”
Even while the Egyptians were suffering from the oppressive dark, Bnei Yisrael had light in all their homes and everywhere they were. Once again God demonstrated His ability to separate between His nation and the Egyptian nation.
TRANSITION
Pharoah called Moshe and said, “Go! Worship God, all of you, including your young children. Just leave your flocks of sheep and cattle behind.”
But Moshe did not agree. He said that Pharoah would ultimately end up allowing the Hebrews to take their flocks with them so they could offer sacrifices to God.
God strengthened Pharoah’s heart and Pharoah did not want to let the people leave.
So Pharoah told Moshe, “Go away from me! Beware! You shall no longer see my face, for on the day that you see my face, you shall die!”
Moshe agreed. “You have spoken correctly,” he told Pharoah. “I shall no longer see your face.”
Before Moshe left, he told Pharoah about the last plague. ‘So said the Lord,” Moshe explained, “in the middle of the night I God will go out in Egypt and every male firstborn in the land of Egypt will die, from the firstborn of Pharoah who sits on the throne to the firstborn of the slave woman, and every firstborn animal. And there will be a great cry throughout the entire land of Egypt, one that is like nothing anyone has ever heard.”
“But nothing will happen to Bnei Yisrael or their children. Even a dog won’t bark when they pass by. And so you will see how God separates between the Israelites and the Egyptians. Your servants will come bow down to me, saying “Go out, you and all the people who are at your feet, and I will go out.”
Moshe left the throne room, while Pharoah burned with anger.
TRANSITION
God told Moshe that Bnei Yisrael should borrow gold and silver vessels from their neighbors. This meant the Egyptians. The reason God wanted Bnei Yisrael to do this is because God had promised Avraham during the Brit Bein HaBetarim that Bnei Yisrael would leave Egypt with lots of wealth and possessions. This was God’s way of making sure the promise was fulfilled.
Why would the Egyptians be willing to allow Bnei Yisrael to borrow their silver and gold?
The simple answer is that the average Egyptian had come to realize by now that God was on the side of the Israelites. Even though Pharaoh refused to let Bnei Yisrael go, the average Egyptian feared and respected Moshe and the Israelites since they saw how powerful their God was. Therefore, they would not want to get on the bad side of that God, and would be willing to hand over their fancy items.
Were Bnei Yisrael planning to return these items? It’s possible. After all, originally God and Moshe had said that Bnei Yisrael wanted to go for a three day journey into the desert to worship God. It’s not clear whether the plan was to go and then come back, or to go and never return. If the original intention had been to go and then come back, perhaps Bnei Yisrael would have returned the silver and gold vessels to their neighbors when they returned. In that case, the silver and gold possessions had been borrowed simply to use as part of the worship ceremony in the Midbar, or wilderness. At the same time, remember that Bnei Yisrael had been slaves for the Egyptians for many years and they had not been paid for their backbreaking labor. It could be that Bnei Yisrael did not plan to return to Egypt and thus would not return the silver and gold. Instead, they would claim it as payment for all the years they had worked and had not been paid.
TRANSITION
At this point, God gave Moshe and Aharon the first mitzvot that would be given to Bnei Yisrael as an entire nation.
The very first mitzvah we were given as a nation was that of Rosh Chodesh. Rosh Chodesh refers to the first day of the Jewish month. That means the first mitzvah was to set up a calendar. This calendar would revolve around time according to Judaism. It was based on the moon, and specifically the new moon.
You may have noticed when you go outside at night that the moon does not always look the same. Sometimes it seems to be a thin crescent, while other times it looks like half a circle and other times it looks completely full. At the beginning of the month, the moon is tiny. It grows and grows, such that it is full by the middle of the month. Then it begins to shrink and get smaller until it seems to disappear at the end of the month. This is called the moon’s cycle of waxing and waning.
In the future, when Jews saw the tiny new moon at the beginning of the month, they would have to go to the Beit Din, or Jewish court, and report “I saw the new moon in the sky.” Once two witnesses came forward to declare this, the judges would assert that today is Rosh Chodesh, the beginning of a new Jewish month. Nowadays, we have a set calendar and have already figured out the beginning of each Jewish month.
Going back to our parsha, God explained to Moshe that this month would be the first month for the Jewish people. We call this month Nissan.
But why was our first national mitzvah about time?
Avraham had been given the mitzvah of Brit Milah, circumcision. He passed this mitzvah down to his descendants- but it wasn’t a mitzvah given to an entire nation together. And this brings us to a discussion of Kedusha, or holiness. Something becomes holy because it has been set aside for a special, holy purpose, and sometimes because God tells us that it is holy.
Today we will focus on three types of holiness: Kedushas HaGuf, Kedushas HaZeman, and Kedushas HaMakom. (Please note- there are more than three types of kedusha, but this is our focus for right now.) Kedushas HaGuf refers to the holiness of the body. Getting a Brit Milah is a way of bringing that holiness into our physical body. There are many other laws that we will learn more about later that involve using our body in a way that is proper and appropriate in order to maintain kedusha within it.
Kedushas HaZeman refers to holiness in time. If you are Jewish, you are probably already aware that there is such a thing as holy time. For example, the seventh day of every week, Shabbat, is a holy time. The same applies to holidays like Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashana or Sukkot. These are times in the calendar that are holy.
And then there is Kedushas HaMakom, the holiness of place. For example, the place where the Beit Hamikdash stood is and was holy. Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel, is a special land there are special mitzvot that can only be performed there. That is because of Kedushas HaMakom.
God had already introduced the nation of Israel to Kedushas HaGuf through the mitzvah of Brit Milah. Now He was introducing them to the concept that time itself has the ability to be made holy. By setting up a Jewish calendar, we would be able to know when holy times would occur, and we would be able to celebrate them together. Therefore, it makes a lot of sense that the first national mitzvah was about the calendar.
But there is an even deeper meaning behind this mitzvah. You see, the Israelites had been slaves to the Egyptians. And when someone is a slave, their time is not their own. Instead, they have to work based on whatever their master tells them to do. If their master says to wake up at the crack of dawn and fetch water, they have to do that. If their master says to go find a certain kind of plant in the afternoon, they have to do that. Their time does not belong to them.
When God told Bnei Yisrael to set up their own calendar, and to learn about how the moon shows them when the first of each month began, he was telling them to take back their sense of time. No longer would they be slaves, beholden to their masters. God was about to set them free, which meant they would be masters of their own time- and able to use that time to serve God properly.
TRANSITION
God then gave Moshe the mitzvah of Korban Pesach, a Pesach sacrifice. Any Jew who did not have a brit milah yet (remember we mentioned Kedushas HaGuf above) would first need to receive a Brit Milah before they would be able to eat from the Korban Pesach.
What was the Korban Pesach?
God said that on the tenth of the month of Nissan, each household would need to take a lamb. The lamb needed to be male, within its first year of life, and should not have any blemishes on its body. The lamb needed to be kept and checked over until the fourteenth of Nissan, and then all of the Israelites would go slaughter their lambs in the afternoon. Since it was important not to waste the lamb, God explained that if the household was too small to eat it all, then people could join with their neighbors to take a lamb for their group.
Bnei Yisrael would then need to take some of the lamb’s blood and paint it on their doorposts and on the lintel above the door of the houses where they would sit to eat the lamb. Each family would then need to roast their lamb and eat it during the night of Pesach together with matzot - unleavened bread- and maror- bitter herbs. If there is any lamb left over, it cannot be eaten the next day; instead, it needs to be burned.
God explained that He would pass through Egypt during that night. He would kill all of the Egyptian male firstborns, whether of people or of their animals. But he would pass over the houses of the Israelites because the blood of the Pesach offering would be painted there.
God then explained that the laws of the Pesach offering would apply for all generations. He also explained that Pesach included other rules as well, such as not eating chametz, leavened bread like challah and cookies, every year for seven days. The first day would be a Yom Tov and the seventh day is Yom Tov. The five middle days are Chol Hamoed. (Nowadays, most people who live outside of the land of Israel add an extra day to each Yom Tov. We keep two days of Yom Tov and four days of Chol Hamoed.)
Bnei Yisrael obeyed everything God told Moshe, and they purchased their lambs and got their bundles of hyssop ready to dip into the blood and paint their doorways.
This is the parsha where we learn all about the laws of Pesach. If you have ever attended or made your own Pesach seder, it is based on this parsha and the laws and mitzvot in it. We spend time each Seder night remembering how God took us out of Egypt, telling the story of the miracles, and eating our own special sandwich of Matza and Maror. We don’t eat the Korban Pesach anymore because we don’t have our holy Temple, the Beit HaMikdash, but we hope that one day soon the Beit HaMikdash will be rebuilt and we will be able to celebrate Pesach as a community the way we once did.
TRANSITION
And it came to pass at midnight of the 15th of Nissan that God killed every firstborn in Egypt. This was called Makkat Bechorot, the death of the firstborn.
Why did God bring this plague? First, it showed God’s dominion over life and death. God alone has the power to decide who will live and who will die. But also, God punished the Egyptians for killing the baby boys of the Israelites. Also, the Egyptians had been cruel to Bnei Yisrael, who are called “God’s firstborn son.” Middah kneged middah, measure for measure, God killed the Egyptians’ firstborn sons.
Pharoah woke up in the middle of the night, as did his servants and all of the Egyptians. There was screaming in every single house, because every house had at least one person in it who had died.
Pharoah called for Moshe and Aharon that night and said, “Get up and get out from among my people, you and Bnei Yisrael and your flocks and your cattle, but before you go, bless me.” Rashi explains that Pharoah meant that they should pray that he, Pharoah, not die because Pharoah was also a firstborn son.
The Egyptians grabbed the Israelites in order to send them away, because they said, “We are all dead!”
Bnei Yisrael borrowed silver and gold and fancy garments from the Egyptians and they emptied out Egypt. They were rushed out of Egypt so quickly that their dough didn’t have time to rise, so they baked it as matzos instead of regular bread.
TRANSITION
God told Moshe about another mitzvah. He explained that every Jewish firstborn boy is holy and belongs to God. This was because God had saved all the Jewish firstborn boys in Egypt. Originally, these boys were going to serve as kohanim, priests to God. Ultimately, this did not happen, and instead men from the tribe of Levi served as kohanim.
Nowadays, when a firstborn boy is born in the natural way- which means the mother did not have a C-section or any other pregnancies before him- he has to be redeemed from a kohen. This process indicates that we remember the fact that the firstborn boys belong to God but we are now making sure a kohen will serve in God’s holy temple instead of this boy. This process is called pidyon haben, the redemption of the firstborn. The parents of the firstborn boy pay the kohen with money or with special silver coins thirty days after their baby boy is born. This is a big celebration and the parents often invite others to join their party.
God also explained that firstborn male animals of cattle and donkeys belong to Him. Here too the owners must redeem their animals from the kohen.
God then told Moshe that the redemption from Egypt would “be a sign upon your hand and a remembrance between your eyes.” This refers to the mitzvah of Tefillin. You may have seen Tefillin- black boxes attached to black straps that are worn on the hand and the forehead. Inside of the Tefillin there are parchments that have Hebrew writing on them. That Hebrew writing is actually sections of the Torah, including a section about Yetziat Mitzrayim, or leaving Egypt. When men put on their Tefillin, they are therefore remembering how God took all of us out of Egypt.
Many of the mitzvot in this week’s parsha are ones we still keep today- like the mitzvah of Pesach, the redemption of the firstborn son called Pidyon HaBen, and the wearing of Tefillin as a sign upon our hands and between our eyes.
TRANSITION
So here’s what we learned this week!
It is really important to remember that God redeemed us from Egypt, and that He did it by creating a variety of makkot, or plagues. These plagues show God’s dominion over the world, and demonstrate that He is the one who created the world and everything in it. By remembering what God did when He took us out of Egypt, we remember to be grateful to God, we remember God’s power, and we can also feel hope if we are ever in a bad situation and need God to take us out of it.
God remembers His promises and keeps them. He told Avraham long ago that when Bnei Yisrael left Egypt, they would do so with great wealth. God made sure that happened before they left.
When it comes to a showdown between man and God, God is more powerful than man. Pharoah stayed defiant until the very end, but in the end he not only chased out Bnei Yisrael from Egypt- he even begged Moshe to bless him!
We learn about a variety of mitzvot in this week’s parsha that we keep until today including Rosh Chodesh, the beginning of the new month, Pesach, specifically the holiday of Pesach and its laws, Pidyon HaBen, the redemption of the firstborn son, and Tefillin, the special boxes men wear that contain parchments that remind us of God within them.
If you have any questions or comments on this week’s episode, please email me at parsha4kids@gmail.com. That’s parsha the number 4 kids at gmail.com. Good Shabbos!