Parshat Bo
Overview
G-d tells Moshe that He is hardening Pharaoh's heart so that through miraculous plagues the world will know for all time that He is the one true G-d. Pharaoh is warned about the plague of locusts and is told how severe it will be. Pharaoh agrees to release only the men, but Moshe insists that everyone must go. During the plague, Pharaoh calls for Moshe and Aharon to remove the locusts, and he admits he has sinned. G-d ends the plague but hardens Pharaoh's heart, and again Pharaoh fails to free the Jews. The country, except for the Jewish People, is then engulfed in a palpable darkness. Pharaoh calls for Moshe and tells him to take all the Jews out of Egypt, but to leave their flocks behind. Moshe tells him that not only will they take their own flocks, but Pharaoh must add his own too. Moshe tells Pharaoh that G-d is going to bring one more plague, the death of the firstborn, and then the Jews will leave Egypt. G-d again hardens Pharaoh's heart, and Pharaoh warns Moshe that if he sees him again, Moshe will be put to death. G-d tells Moshe that the month of Nissan will be the chief month. The Jewish people are commanded to take a sheep on the 10th of the month and guard it until the 14th. The sheep is then to be slaughtered as a Pesach offering, its blood put on their door-posts, and its roasted meat eaten. The blood on the door-post will be a sign that their homes will be passed-over when G-d strikes the firstborn of Egypt. The Jewish People are told to memorialize this day as the Exodus from Egypt by never eating chametz on Pesach. Moshe relays G-d's commands, and the Jewish People fulfill them flawlessly. G-d sends the final plague, killing the first born, and Pharaoh sends the Jews out of Egypt. G-d tells Moshe and Aharon the laws concerning the Pesach sacrifice, pidyon haben (redemption of the first born son) and tefillin.
Insights
The Law of Accelerating Returns
“And you will eat it (the Pesach offering) in haste.” (13:17)
In 1982, an Osborne Executive portable computer weighed 100 times as much, was 500 times as big, cost approximately 10 times as much, and had about 1/100th the clock frequency of a 2007 Apple iPhone.
"Moore's law" is the observation that, over the history of computing hardware, the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. In like fashion, microprocessor prices, memory capacity, sensors and even the number and size of pixels in digital cameras all are improving at roughly exponential rates as well.
Moore's law has been applied not just to technology but also to accelerating change in social and cultural progress throughout history. It suggests faster and more profound changes in the future, leading to a point of "singularity" where the pace of change becomes so accelerated that it leads to an apocalyptic event where the world as we know it metamorphoses into something beyond our imagination. The futurists see technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history.
“And you will eat it (the Pesach offering) in haste.”
The Exodus from Egypt was experienced as a moment of "singularity" — a moment faster than time itself, racing to meet the redemption from slavery.
Just as the first, so is the last.
The Rambam says that one should not speculate too much about what things will be like in the Messianic Era because "No one knows what it will be, until it will be."
The world is accelerating faster and faster to its moment of climax. What secular futurists detect is indeed a world of accelerating returns. A world impossible to visualize. The coming of Mashiach, when all mankind will return to G-d.
"The voice of my Beloved! Behold, it came suddenly to redeem me, as if leaping over mountains, skipping over hills." (Shir HaShirim 2:8)
May it come speedily in our days!
- Source: based on Rabbi Shimshon Pincus
