Un-hardening the Heart? A drash for Parashat Va-eira, 27 December 2013

The Hatfields of West Virginia in the 19th century

Allow me to start off tonight’s drash with a little Americana.  Have you ever heard of the Hatfields and the McCoys?  They were two families who had settled on the banks of the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River which separates the states of West Virginia and Kentucky:  the Hatfields on the West Virginia side and the McCoys on the Kentucky side.  Both families immigrated to America, the Hatfields from England and the McCoys from Ulster, in the 18^th century.  But the feud began in 1863, lasting until 1891.  The Hatfield-McCoy Feud was not just an annoying, ongoing argument; no fewer than a dozen members of the two families were killed in the violence of one family against the other.  The feud prevented the inhabitants of the isolated valley from enjoying the peace that the end of the Civil War, in 1865, should have brought to their lives. 

This epic feud between two clans has an important place in the folklore of the people of Appalachian America.  More importantly, it has become a trope for the phenomenon of protracted bitter conflict.  It has become a trope for a conflict that continues stubbornly, long after anyone can truly remember what started it.  It has become a trope for conflict that takes on its own life and proves difficult to end.

Have you ever been in an intractable argument with someone else?  One where, in the course of the conflict, the original point of contention fades into insignificance?  That’s the kind of conflict which we think of as being in the model of the Hatfield-McCoy Feud.  Nobody really remembers what started it, but the tit-for-tat takes on its own life.  The principals don’t seem to be able to step back from it.  I’m guessing that every one of us has either been a principal to such a conflict, or has watched helplessly while someone we knew allowed such a conflict to rule their life.

Perhaps this is, in part, an explanation for the ‘hardening of the heart’ of Pharaoh when Moses and Aaron act as agents for God, bringing the Ten Plagues upon Egypt.  In this week’s Torah reading, we will read the familiar chapter seven, verse three:  I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, so that I will [have the opportunity to] increase miraculous signs and wonders in Egypt.  Generations of Jews have read these words and had a problem with the idea expressed therein.  How much suffering did the people of Egypt endure because of the ‘hardening’ of Pharaoh’s heart?  The people of Egypt had no significant influence over their all-powerful ruler, whom they saw as a god.  Why would God harden Pharaoh’s heart just to show Pharaoh and the Egyptian people that He was more powerful than all the gods of Egypt?  Is the God we serve so callous that He would smite a people just to put on a show of superiority?

There is a literal reading, which we call a pshat, which answers this question to my satisfaction.  But right now, I’d like to take you to a different reading of this verse, what we would call a drash – a word and a concept we know well.  What can this verse – indeed, this passage – teach us about human nature and the way that we live out our lives?

Pharaoh didn’t really need God to ‘harden’ his heart.  If he was like most of humanity – and I’m guessing he was – then his own personality hardened his heart.  His pride.  His taking exception to being challenged, never mind by whom.  His ‘natural’ reaction to turn that challenge into a contest of two opposing wills.  Even after a number of plagues had wreaked havoc on his people, he still would not back down from his totally-illogical stance of not accepting God’s decree.  I think we all tend to react to challenges in this way, some obviously more so than others.

But the universality of the tendency doesn’t make it a good thing.  In the case of the Pharaoh, it caused plague after plague until the smiting of the firstborn, which tragedy hurt Pharaoh himself just as it did his people.  In the case of the Hatfields and McCoys, it prolonged a deadly feud almost 30 years, long after anybody had remembered why they were feuding.

There are a number of lessons possible from the Ten Plagues of Egypt.  But to me, the most important one is the need to be ready to ‘back off’ from a conflict when it takes on a life of its own.  When its consequences become far more onerous than those of the original cause of the conflict, assuming that we remember what it was.  If we continue a fight to the very end, as Pharaoh did, then we are in danger of winning the battle, but losing the war.  And as any general will tell you, it is better to lose the battle, regroup, and return to win the war.  That’s the smart approach.  Pharaoh was apparently not very smart.  Maybe we can learn to be smarter.  Shabbat shalom.