The Torah portion of Bo teaches about the origins and customs of Passover and the Exodus. The very name Passover or Pesach means that God "passed over" the homes of the Children of Israel when he was inflicting the deadly last plague of the death of the Egyptians' First Born. The last plague is an act of both Divine Vengeance and Divine Justice by God on behalf of the afflicted and persecuted Children of Israel. As small in number as they are, the Hebrews/Children of Israel/Jews are the apple of God's Eye so to speak, and He will not tolerate the merciless and cruel injustices inflicted on his people, as history teaches.
Wherever and whenever despotic rulers have persecuted and expelled Jews, in the course of time the dynasties of those rulers have been overthrown and crushed time and time again. Hitler's Third Reich was ground into the dust and reduced to rubble while Hitler and his henchmen either committed suicide or were hanged. Stalin's Soviet Union collapsed and went bankrupt breaking into a dozen conflicting pieces. Many Arab regimes have been reduced to unstable beggar states after they expelled their Jews.
Down the line of history the heirs of Pharaoh have suffered his fate in various forms. If you look at the list of Expulsions and Exoduses of Jews, over and over again the Kings and Queens that persecuted the Jews, at the end of the day, often had their heads handed to them, literally. Some of the better known examples are England, France and Russia.
In 1290 King Edward I of England issued the Edict of Expulsion of all Jews from England that was preceded by many anti-Jewish decrees and massacres such as the notorious Massacre of the Jews of York in 1190. The English monarchs were staunch Catholics at that time and it was 365 years later that the decree was rescinded by Oliver Cromwell the Protestant who let Jews back into England. In the process of governing England, In 1649 Cromwell had King Charles I tried and beheaded, one of the first cases of regicide in the Early Modern period! The same line of kings that discriminated against the Jews was ignominiously beheaded.
The French Kings had a horrible record of expelling Jews. From Wikipedia: "The practice of expelling the Jews accompanied by confiscation of their property, followed by temporary readmissions for ransom, was used to enrich the crown: expulsions from Paris by Philip Augustus in 1182, from France by Louis IX in 1254, by Philip IV in 1306, by Charles IV in 1322, by Charles V in 1359, by Charles VI in 1394." So no need to weep when eventually Louis XVI and his wife and most of the nobles of France have their heads chopped off by the guillotine in 1793. The Guardian of Israel neither sleeps nor slumbers!
The Romanov royal house of Russia was one of the worst antisemitic dynasties the world has ever known. By the 1790s Catherine the Great of Russia instituted the Pale of Settlement, restricting Jews to the western parts of the Russian empire by means of deportation where by the late 19th century, over four million Jews would live. From the 1880s onwards because of Pogroms in the Russian Empire around 2.5 million Jews emigrated from eastern Europe, mostly to the United States. One Czar after another instituted antisemitic decrees and raw hatred against the Jews, until finally Czarism was overthrown and the last Czar and his family were executed ignominiously in 1918. The wheel of history turned until justice was finally done, in God's Hands the persecutors became the persecuted.
These are a few major examples from the course of history that followed the pattern of punishment for the royal houses of England, France and Russia, and those gentile monarchs and lords that had persecuted their Jewish subjects. HaShem does not forget, and just as He heard the outcry of the enslaved Children of Israel and redeemed them at Passover, eventually so has He done continuously throughout the millennia.
The Children of Israel are referred to in the Torah as "B'ni Bechori Yisrael" -- My First Born Son Israel, and by punishing the Egyptians with the Tenth and Final Plague of Death to the Egyptian First Born it was an act of justice of "Middah Keneged Middah" -- Measure for Measure: Just as Pharaoh and the Egyptians persecuted the Israelite First Born, so too as a direct consequence God punished the Egyptian first born with the ultimate capital punishment. This is the historical framework that has been repeated time again throughout all the 3,300 plus years of Jewish history.
There is a fascinating poem that's recited at the end of Passover Seder printed in all Passover Haggadahs, the Chad Gadya חַד גַדְיָא -- "One Kid" (kid/baby of a goat). According to our Parsha (Torah Portion) the Passover Offering could be either the lamb of a sheep or the kid of a goat. Chad Gadya is about: 1. A kid, the Gadya or G'di that exists first, and Father "purchases" the kid for himself with two Zuzim, 2. first a cat eats the kid, 3. then a dog bites the cat, 4. then a stick hits the dog, 5. then a fire burns the stick, 6. then water extinguishes the fire, 7. then an ox drinks the water, 8. then a Shochet (ritual slaughterer) slaughters the ox, 9. then the Angel of Death slaughters the Shochet, 10. then comes the Holy One Blessed Be He and slaughters the Angel of Death. This is interpreted as a symbolic and metaphysical outline of Jewish History, thus:
The Chad Gadya starts off by saying that there is only one kid, meaning that the whole story revolves around a single kid, symbolic of the Jewish Nation, as all of Creation and all of history revolves around the Jewish People! And then, that "Abba" -- Father, bought the kid for "Trei Zuzi" -- Two Zuzim (coins). Like all religious poetry this could be interpreted as an allegory For God (the Father) purchasing the "kid" (Israel) with Two Tablets, meaning the Ten Commandments of the Torah that were engraved on two Sapphire Tablets of Stone. Thus Israel, the Torah, and God are really united as One!
There are various interpretations of the Chad Gadya's symbolism. The following is based on the Breslov Haggadah, with commentary based on the teachings of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov (1772 - 1810) (published by Breslov Research Institute, Jerusalem/New York in English) that has a fascinating exposition of the historical flow implied in the imagery of the Chad Gadya:
- 1. We say about Shabbat that it is "Sof Ma'aseh Bemachshava Techila" -- Created Last But Intended First, and Shabbat was created for none other than Yisrael, the Jewish People, symbolized by Adam and Eve, who were created right before Shabbat to enjoy it. Thus Yisrael too is also the main purpose of creation. That is the symbolism of the kid being mentioned first and that is why God takes the kid/Yisrael for Himself with the Torah's Two Tablets/Zuzim.
- 2. The first exile and destruction was by Assyria that destroyed the northern Kingdom of Israel and sent the Ten Tribes into oblivion. About 80% of the Children of Israel disappeared, the carnivorous predatory "cat" (Assyria) ate the "kid" (Israel)!
- 3. The "dog" (the powers that destroyed Assyria) bit the "cat" and Assyria was wiped off the map.
- 4. The "stick" survives by hitting the dog, a diversion, the stick represents the surviving southern Jewish Kingdom of Judah.
- 5. The "fire" then burns the "stick" when Babylonia burns the Temple and exiles Judah, the first of Four Great Exiles followed by the Second of the Great Exiles by the Persians who overtake Babylon and holding the Jews captive in Exile.
- 6. Then comes "water" which is symbolic of Torah that put out the "fire" of destruction by helping the Jews survive, such as the writing down of the Oral Torah for example in the Babylonian Talmud.
- 7. Then comes the "ox" that is the symbol of Alexander the Great and the Third Great Exile that is Greece that drinks up the "water" of Torah by forbidding Torah study and practice of Judaism.
- 8. The Shochet -- ritual "slaughterer" are the Hasmoneans, the Maccabees, who defeat the Greeks militarily hence "slaughtering" the "ox"!
- 9. Finally the Fourth of the Great Exiles, the "Angel of Death" that is Rome that destroyed the Second Temple, killed many Judeans and sent them into the 2,000 year-long exile.
"Still, Chad Gadya teaches us that hope is eternal. The time will come when God will slaughter the Angel of Esav, Edom [Rome], the Angel of Death, as well as all those nations which rose up against us. Amen. Selah! (Nachat HaShulchan)." (Breslov Haggadah).
The fascinating thing is that the Chad Gadya goes even further than our weekly Torah portion of Bo that ends with the Angel of Death helping God to kill the Egyptian First Born. In the case of the Chad Gadya poem, God goes even further and slaughters the Angel of Death itself, meaning that Death is abolished forever.
So the cycles of history culminate logically. Just as all cruel tyrants and their dynasties and descendants get their due and are meted out the same punishments, or worse, that they inflicted upon their Jewish subjects who were exiled and slaughtered in their lands, the final coup de grace will be consistent with that, that the administrator of Death itself will be killed off forever. In its place will arise the Olam Habba -- the Future World and Gan (Garden of) Eden.
* Bo means "Come" or "Go" from Exodus 10:1 "God said to Moses come/go to Pharaoh..."