Playful Negotiations: A Reflection for Parashat Bo, Friday 15 January 2016

Charlton Heston as Moses, faces off with Yul Brenner as
Pharaoh Ramses in the 1956 film, ;The Ten Commendments'

Being married to an Israeli, I’ve gotten used to every shopping expedition taking on the air of a trip to the shuk, to the bazaar.  Clara insists on negotiating price every time we make a purchase.  Unless it’s laundry soap, or something equally pedestrian.  But in most stores, for most purchases, she will never just pay the stated or marked price without trying to negotiate a better one.

          Of course, she learned this behavior in the informal shuk in Israel.  Today, there are modern supermarkets all over the country.  Just like here in Australia, one can even shop online and have the one’s groceries delivered home.  Inside the supermarkets, there are working bakeries, salad bars, and hot food to go.  But alongside the supermarkets, the institution of the shuk endures, beloved by many veteran Israelis.  Many visitors to Israel make a stop at one of the two largest of these markets:  Shuk Carmel in Tel Aviv, or Mahane Yehuda in Jerusalem.  When I lived in Jerusalem for a year to study, I did my weekly shopping at Mahane Yehuda.  It was the place for the freshest fruit and veg and the best prices.  And it made shopping an experience, not just a quick trip to fill the trolley.

          At the shuk, one learns to negotiate price.  Here in the West, we are used to negotiating only for houses and cars.  But in the Middle East, one negotiates for everything.  It is said that, if you wander into a shop there and don’t negotiate, the shopkeeper will be insulted.  I cannot confirm this.  But I do know that, once you start negotiating, the shopkeeper rises up to the Challenge of the Game.  And the Game is fun for all.  I experienced this especially in Turkey.  Once, whilst I negotiated for a carpet, I noted that every other patron in the shop stopped what they were doing and watched the negotiations.  Perhaps it was particularly interesting because I was a foreigner with limited Turkish.  But they stopped their own shopping to see what kind of price I could negotiate.  And once the sale was agreed, the shopkeeper ordered tea and sweets brought in for everybody in the store.  Everybody had enjoyed watching the yabanci bargain like a Turk.

          In this week’s Torah reading, we see the desperate dialogue between Moses and Pharaoh devolve, for a time, into a playful Middle Eastern bargaining session.  In the past, you’ve heard me urge you to learn Hebrew because much of the humour, poetry, and deeper meanings of the Hebrew get lost in translation.  But in this week’s portion, this playfulness actually comes through even in the English.  For a change, everybody gets to enjoy it.

          Moses has been commanding Pharaoh all along, to let the Israelite people go so that they may worship Hashem.  Of course, he means that they must be freed, period, so that they may worship Hashem by travelling to their Promised Land and organising there their society in accordance with Hashem’s laws.  When Pharaoh repeatedly refuses, Moses makes it clear that the resulting plague is imposed by this G-d, Hashem, and not through any powers possessed by Moses himself.  When Moses and Aaron threaten Egypt with the next plague, Locusts, Pharaoh’s advisors for the first time show themselves to be more than sycophantic Yes Men.  They urge him to let the Israelites go and worship their G-d, as Egypt has already been severely damaged and stands to be completely ruined.

          But Pharaoh doesn’t really ‘get’ it.  He interprets the ‘worship’ that Moses tells him the Israelites need to carry out, as being a discreet event for which they must sojourn to some place in the wilderness, then return.  Of course he is thinking in terms of the cults of the gods of Egypt, who demand sacrifices and then, once they’re thus placated, the people just go on with their lives as before.  The gods of Egypt do not make continuing moral demands upon the people.

          So Pharaoh begins negotiating with Moses on the basis that this ‘letting my people go’ is a temporary event.  Maybe he does understand what Moses is really demanding.  But as he warms to the negotiation, he treats it as if it were just a limited evolution.  As if letting my people go to worship Hashem meant that the Israelites would accomplish said worship, then return to resume their labours.

          The playfulness with which Moses parries the Pharaoh’s positions, makes it clear that he is willing to play the Game.  Pharaoh tells Moses to take his people and go worship.  And who, he asks, needs to go?  Moses tells him that everybody must go:  men, women, and children.  Pharaoh tells him ‘nothing doing’; he should take the men, do what they need to do, and get back immediately.  Pharaoh’s frame of reference is clearly Egypt’s cults, where only men participate in the offering of sacrifices.  But Moses insists that their G-d, Hashem, is different.  He demands that all worship together:  men, women, and children.  But Pharaoh won’t agree to this.

          So the locusts come.  And then the darkness.  And Pharaoh calls Moses back.  He agrees that all the Israelites may go.  Pharaoh then tells Moses to take all the people to offer their sacrifice; just leave their livestock behind.  It’s clear that, even if he ‘gets’ it that Moses means freeing the Israelites for once and forever, he’s still conceding only a temporary freedom for a specific event.  But Moses responds playfully:  If we go to sacrifice without our livestock, what can we sacrifice?  He explains that the protocols of the sacrifice involve pulling out the choicest animals from the herd and flock, so therefore it is necessary for them to travel to where they’ll erect their altar with their complete herds and flocks.  But Pharaoh doesn’t want to allow this; he wants some surety that the Israelites will return.  And sending them out without their flocks, would suffice.  But of course, from Moses’ perspective it would not.  So he refuses Pharaoh’s ‘last, best offer’ and that sets the stage for the final plague, the Slaying of the Firstborn.

          The lesson?  There are so many lessons to draw from this Torah.  But perhaps one important lesson is that we need not take ourselves so seriously that we cannot enjoy a little humour even in the most desperate situation.  Even in the darkest of life-and-death situations, we can draw a little humour to make the situation just a little more bearable.  I can give you an example of this.

          In 1968 the USS Pueblo, an America Navy spy ship was taken forcibly by North Korea and its crew detained.  In one of the photos taken by the North Koreans of crew members, they are seen extending their middle fingers, ‘flipping the bird’ to their captors.  When the Koreans saw the photo, they demanded to know the nature of this gesture.  The crewmen answered: “It’s the Hawaiian Good Luck sign.”  And afterward they frequently flipped their captors the bird in the course of their daily interactions, telling them “Good luck!” each time.  Their captors of the ‘Hermit Kingdom’ were so ignorant of other cultures that they were fooled for a time.  Eventually they found out that the extended finger was a gesture of contempt, and they beat the prisoners.  But for a time, their displaying the middle finger to their captors with impunity, raised their morale and made their captivity more bearable.

          Even when things seem hopeless, we can approach our situations with a little humour.  Most of us never face the kind of conditions faced by the crew of the Pueblo.  Or of Moses, when he faced down Pharaoh.  So if they could respond with a little playfulness even in extremis, then we can lighten up from time to time.  And this is not a lesson lost on the Jewish people.  Our brand of humour is celebrated, and is enjoyed by Jew and gentile alike.   But sometimes, Members of the Tribe inconveniently forget this.  And when we do, we add unnecessarily to the grimness of our lives.  So I say:  Lighten up!  Even when logic might preclude it.  Shabbat shalom.