Elitists have long expressed contempt for both the masses and religion. They believe it self-evident that G-d doesn’t exist and never of course revealed His will to mankind. Elitists also believe, however, that the masses are stupid and immature and therefore may “need” religion to act morally.
According to Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch, Pharaoh exhibits elitist disdain in this week’s parshah when he asks Moshe and Aharon, “Why do you loosen the people from their work?” (Shemos 5:4). This question only makes sense if Pharaoh assumed that Moshe and Aharon were lying about their conversation with G-d. Otherwise, the answer to Pharaoh’s question is obvious: They’re not trying to “loosen” the people; they’re simply following G-d’s orders.
But Pharaoh doesn’t believe them. Two verses earlier, he formally declares (“vayomer Pharaoh”) that he never heard of G-d, but now he addresses Moshe and Aharon on a more personal level, leader to leader (“vayomer aleihem melech Mitzrayim”): “You know quite well that I know, and I know quite well that you know, that all such nonsense [about celebrating sacred festivals] is only for the masses. Between mature educated men like you and me, all religion and worship of gods is simply a matter of policy.”
So please drop your tale about G-d requesting a festival gathering in the desert, says Pharaoh. “I quite understand that all this is only demanded…for the purpose of loosening and easing the pressure of the labor.”
Moreover, you are giving the Israelite masses dangerous ideas, Pharaoh says to Moshe and Aharon. “Up till now, the people know nothing other than…that hard labor is the natural lot to which they are born. Why do you put other ideas into their heads, why suggest to them that there is also a time when they need not work? This is not worthy of you, such old, mature, intelligent men.”
Society of course needs religion – desperately so. The proof is all around us. Forget euthanasia or same-sex “marriage.” We can’t even agree anymore that a man is a man and a woman is a woman. Yet, we don’t keep the Torah because it provides society with a firm moral bedrock. We keep it because it’s true. We keep it because, as Rav Hirsch writes elsewhere, we assume that the sentence, “And G-d said to Moses, saying” – which appears scores of times in the Bible – is not a bald lie.
To Pharaoh, however, it was all a game. Religion was just a tool to be used by the state to suit its own purposes. Hence his question to Moshe and Aharon, “Why do you loosen the people from their work?”
Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888) – head of the Jewish community in Frankfurt, Germany for over 35 years – was a prolific writer whose ideas, passion, and brilliance helped save German Jewry from the onslaught of modernity.
Elliot Resnick, PhD, is the host of “The Elliot Resnick Show” and the editor of an upcoming work on etymological explanations in Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch’s commentary on Chumash.