Parashat Bo is a Parasha about darkness and about light.

Parashat Bo is a Parasha about darkness and about light.

The final three plagues, that of locusts, darkness, and the death of the firstborn, appear very different from one another.

However, they are all expressions of darkness.

The locusts darken the sky, blotting out the sun and consuming everything that grows. Egypt is left stripped of possibility and future.

Then comes a darkness so thick it can be felt. A darkness that immobilizes. People cannot see one another. They cannot move. This is not just physical darkness; it is the darkness of disconnection, isolation, and spiritual paralysis.

And finally, at midnight, at the darkest moment of the night, comes the plague of the firstborn. Life itself is struck. Egypt is forced to confront the cost of a world severed from moral clarity and Divine presence.

And yet, the Torah tells us something remarkable: 

“U’lechol Bnei Yisrael haya or b’moshvotam” for the Children of Israel, there was light in their dwellings.

Not only physical light, but an inner light; an awareness, a relationship and a connection to God.

The difference between Egypt and Israel was not where they lived, since they lived side by side. The difference was Who they were connected to.

And then, in the middle of these plagues, God gives the Jewish people their very first mitzvah:Kiddush HaChodesh, the sanctification of the new moon.

The new moon appears as the thinnest sliver of light, precisely at the darkest point of the lunar cycle.

When the night feels completely dark, when the sky feels empty, that is when renewal begins.

God is teaching us that redemption begins with the ability to recognize a sliver of light in the darkness.

Egypt represents a world trapped in darkness, in fearl, confusion, disconnectedness.

Leaving Egypt means learning to live oriented toward light: toward meaning, toward transcendence, toward partnership with God.

And that is our calling as a people.

Not to deny the darkness, but to carry light within it.

To bring clarity where there is confusion.

To bring connection where there is isolation.

To bring Divine presence into a fractured world.

Parashat Bo teaches us that freedom is not only about leaving Egypt.

It is about becoming a people who knows how to find light and then carry that light outward into the world.

We are not only redeemed by the light.

We are commanded to become it.

Much love

Elissa