I’m sharing an essay I wrote in 1995 for the weekly newsletter of B’Nai Jeshurun, a synagogue congregation where I was then active, titled “What Price Freedom?” In it I sought to understand and explain why in the Passover narrative God continually hardens Pharaoh’s heart, and why the plagues then descend on the Egyptians, right up to the tenth plague when their firstborn children die. To summarize my argument, I’ll cite these lines from the second paragraph:

“I believe that God was determined to utterly break the back of the dictatorship and enact a greater liberation than could have been achieved if Pharaoh had simply let the captive Israelites go free when Moses first demanded their release. Indeed, had this occurred the Israelites would have left Mitzrayim [the narrow place], but the tyrannical state would have impressed some other poor souls into slavery, and the oppressive regime would have continued to hum along without a hitch in the gears of its evil machinery. Instead, by repeatedly hardening Pharaoh’s heart, and by upping the ante each time with increasingly devastating consequences, until God finally strikes deep into the heart of every Egyptian home… God creates an exodus that frees not only the Israelites, but also the mixed multitude (the “erev rav”) that benefits from God’s liberating deeds.”

Even with that distillation of my essay, I invite you to read it, attached herewith.