Having a frog in your throat may not necessarily be a bad thing. It all depends on what you hear the frog saying while he’s croaking.
The second of the ten plagues Hashem visited on Egypt, seven of which are recorded in this parsha, is the plague of frogs. The frog rose up and eventually entered all of Egypt, their fields, their homes, and even the people themselves.
Pharaoh calls for Moshe and asks him to pray to Hashem, something he had not done during the plague of blood, to remove the frogs from him and from his nation by tomorrow.
What did Hashem want to accomplish through the plagues, and specifically through this plague, that would not have been accomplished had He redeemed Israel in one moment, without visiting the plagues on Egypt?
The Tallelei Chaim, Rav Chaim Hacohen, explains that the purpose of the plagues was to reveal God’s immanence on earth and demonstrate His continuous involvement and interaction with the world. By transforming nature itself, the world would come to recognize God and seek a relationship with Him. The twofold mechanism, as explained by the Zohar on a verse in Isaiah, was through affliction of the Egyptians and healing for the Israelites.
The Tallelei Chaim continues by explaining the mystical relationship between the various “tens” in our tradition. First, God created the world through ten utterances. God was alone in the world. He “uttered” as if talking to Himself, and the world came into being. These ten utterances would later correspond to the Ten Commandments (Sayings) through which God teaches the Jews and through them all mankind how to connect this temporal world to the world of His eternity. The ten plagues, he then clarifies, correspond to the ten Sefirot, the ten Emanations, reflections of His essence, through which God reveals Himself on earth and through which we can recognize Him. The ten plagues, in reverse order, were the transition between the world of the hidden (Olam = hidden world), the revelation of the Creator within the world, and the process to a means of connection, teaches Mimaamakim. The ten plagues, then, were not primarily a means of exacting revenge on Egypt for their oppression of Bnei Yisroel, says the Ramban, but most importantly a means of embedding the reality of Hashem’s presence within our consciousness for all time.
So the plague of Blood established God’s Sovereignty, Malchut, the first of the Sefirot. The second plague, Frogs, revealed the Foundation, Yesod. The very foundation of life on earth is to know Hashem, simply to be aware of His presence. Vayovenu Bamikrah says that this is what the frogs were croaking day and night; they said (tzafar = sapar = told), “Da, Know Hashem.” In response to Pharaoh who refused to acknowledge Hashem, who asked, “Who is Hashem,” the frogs tell the Egyptians, “We know Him; you must know Him too.” It is Yesod, writes Rabbi Haber, that creates the conduit through which God and the world can create a relationship, which we incorporate within ourselves when we speak with holiness and act with holiness in our daily conduct and in our sexual activity.
Yesod corresponds cosmically to the sixth day of creation, for that is the day on which Man was created and a relationship with God could be formed. The Torah states that although vegetation had already been created on the third day, nothing had yet grown “because God had not brought rain upon the earth, and there was no man to work the soil.” Rashi explains that God waited for Adam to pray for rain, to seek a connection to his Creator and thereby create a conduit for Hashem’s blessings to descend to earth. Only after Adam prayed did rain fall and plants and trees grow. So, continues Rav Haber, just as Yesod is the conduit through which the other middos flow, so are Adam and Chava the conduits through which creation was completed.
It was through the plague of frogs that Pharaoh began to recognize Hashem, and it was now that he asked Moshe to intervene and pray for him and his people, to act as a conduit between him and Hashem. But Pharaoh was not yet ready to accept Hashem as the sole Controller.
Shenayim Mikrah explains that Pharaoh’s background in astrology led him to believe that different gods controlled different days.
As Rav Yerucham Levovitz, the mashgiach of the Mir Yeshiva in Yerushalayim explains, it was possible, thought Pharaoh, that Moshe knew when the plague would end, much as his own sorcerers often knew future events. He would confound Moshe, and ask him to pray that the plague be removed not today, but tomorrow, when Moshe’s God may not be in control and which would be contrary to Moshe’s knowledge. Moshe accepted Pharaoh’s request, and although he empathized with the suffering of the Egyptians, he asked for a delayed reprieve.
On a different level, the croaking of the frogs echoed the tactics of the yetzer horo, writes Rabbi Schorr in Halekach Vehalebuv. The constant bombardment of croaking rattled the equilibrium of the Egyptians so that they could no longer think straight. Had they been serene, they would have realized that every time they hit the frog(s) to try to get rid of them, the frogs just multiplied. Had they not gotten angry and lost control, they would then have stopped hitting the frogs and the frogs would have subsided on their own, writes Rabbi Pincus.
We have already noted that Yesod corresponds to the sixth day of creation, the day the earth brought forth its bounty. Corresponding to this is the sixth hakafah, of dancing with the Torah on Hashanah Rabbah/Simchat Torah and we pray that the land be fruitful and productive. This is the hakafah corresponding to Yosef Hatzadik, who was the provider of food and plenty to Egypt, to the world, and most importantly to Bnei Yisroel. Yosef was the one who kept his equanimity, who remained in control in spite of the distractions and enticements around him. He was called Hatzadik, the righteous one, only after he resisted the constant seductive “croaking” of the wife of Potiphar and continued to maintain his inner tranquility.
Getting angry represents a loss of control, and implies that one feels he himself is in control of his world. As such, it is tantamount to idolatry, for in anger man is denying that it is God Who controls the world and controls what happens to him. When one is angry, continues Rabbi Frand, one forces Hashem out of the picture. Either our egos are too big, or our egos are too small and fragile, and we see every negative action as a slight upon ourselves, as our own unworthiness. When we keep Hashem as the center of our lives, as our Yesod, we recognize that Hashem is in control, that a perceived slight is probably not about us but about the other person’s need. (If someone cut us off on the road, for example, he’s in a hurry; he doesn’t even know us to want to slight us.) With Hashem as our Yesod, we can maintain our inner equanimity and tranquility. We can continue to speak softly and retain our peaceful demeanor whatever confronts us.
Today we are bombarded with all sorts of sounds and technology that keep us stressed out. The frogs croaked an important message toward the end of our enslavement in Egypt, a message that is equally valid today - Hashem is the Source and the Foundation. Let us keep our inner tranquility, pray to Hashem for all He gives us, for He gives us what we need and keeps from us what will distract us from our goals and mission.
Turn off the cell phones and the iPods, at least some of the time, but always keep the lines of communication open to the Source and Foundation of everything.
Summary by Channie Koplowitz Stein
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