Pharaoh: He Didn’t Overcome Us!

“We Overcame Pharaoh”? He Didn’t Overcome Us!

3471 years after his death, Pharaoh is the anti-Semite of the week. But is he the classic villain or actually the victim? Pharaoh in a different light, a tyrant it’s time to forgive.

By: Anat Vidor, President of WIZO

Photo credit: Gemini

This week, as every Passover, we will elevate to the pinnacle of our celebration the first and some would say greatest anti-Semite of all times: Pharaoh! The terrible king who imprisoned us in his country as slaves, and our escape from him transformed us from a people who complain about slavery to a people who complain about other things. But haven’t we fallen into stereotypes? Did Pharaoh really hate Jews? Let’s heat up the kreplach and begin.

There rules a king over a peaceful and picturesque kingdom between the Nile and the sea. One day, a Canaanite boy arrives in the kingdom, sold by his brothers as a slave to some guys with a camel, for 20 pieces of silver. “Joseph left the group.”

In a short time, things begin to go wrong in the kingdom, and meanwhile, the new slave stands out with his skills in interpreting dreams and saving kingdoms, and climbs to the position of viceroy. The king, “Pharaoh,” loves him, the slave. So much so that he agrees to his request to take in a few first-degree relatives only, and settle them in the prestigious Goshen province, while personally meeting them and giving them royal honors. And then begins every king’s nightmare.

Those innocent asylum seekers began to multiply at a rate that Goshen had not known before. They were fruitful and multiplied and swarmed and strengthened, and all the biblical words that describe uncontrolled reproduction, and became a great and numerous people. Pharaoh was alarmed: this is not what he intended! He willingly took in a few humanitarian asylum seekers, who specialized in the worlds of slavery, but did not intend to create a demographic and security threat that undermines the stability of the government!

Expulsion or extermination of peoples was then accepted as a solution to disputes. Even “ethnic cleansing” was not a dirty word, as Joseph’s great-grandson Joshua would later do. But Pharaoh dealt with the issue of multiplying slaves in the most humane way you could think of: he asked them to reduce their birth rate. (Spoiler: it didn’t help).

Over 200 years, the Israelites were hosted in Egypt. Pharaoh was replaced by Pharaoh, who was replaced by Pharaoh. Those asylum seekers, despite the limitations, went from a nice family of 70 people to a nation of about 3 million souls, on which the Egyptian economy depended as a workforce. At this rate, by King David’s time we would have surpassed a trillion – what government wouldn’t be alarmed?

“Let my people go,” Moses demanded of him. After all, sometimes separation between peoples is the best solution. And here we must tell the truth: if Pharaoh had been so cruel, Moses would not have left that meeting with his head still attached to his neck. But unlike all the inquisitors, oppressors, and anti-Semites who came after him, Pharaoh believed in diplomacy, and was less connected to the idea of transfer. What country would expel workers who built the land with sweat and toil? (That is, except for the State of Israel today, of course). Pharaoh opposed the radical demand; he’s a man of compromise, not of upheavals, a man of labor and local workforce, a man who honors agreements, even those signed 200 years ago for 20 pieces of silver.

Even when he was scratching himself in darkness with two frogs on his head – Pharaoh held onto his refusal, and when the people of Israel fled in the dead of night – he chased after them to bring them back. And this also led to his tragic end: under the sea waters covering him and choking his throat, Pharaoh understood: he fell victim to a story bigger than him about a sophisticated and connected people, a pre-written script that assigned him the role of villain, no matter how moderate and pragmatic he would be. That same slave people who used his country as an incubator to form in, exploited him and the generosity of his forefathers, to create an ethos of moving from darkness to light, from misery to power.

Since then, we tend to compare every evil to Pharaoh, thereby perpetuating the injustice done to this man, who essentially did not act out of motives of hatred or cruelty. Pharaoh was ultimately a leader with a business vision, who did not surrender to terror. A leader who by mistake encountered the wrong generation, the wrong script, and the King of the Universe who inflicted His plagues upon him. Today, as a free people, we deserve to be liberated also from the bondage to our own narrative, and to understand that not everyone around us is anti-Semitic, even if they don’t always dance to our tune.

And the moral? Well, we overcame Pharaoh. It was he, the poor man, who did not overcome us. But the oppressors of our time are much worse than him. We will defeat them too, and with exactly the same old tools: an endless longing for life and freedom, creativity in finding solutions, courage to make changes, and most importantly – lots of help from the King of the Universe. Happy and kosher Passover to all of us, and next year in Jerusalem!