Parshas Bo 5762 My Captor, My Friend
By Rabbi Joshua (captively known as The Hoffer) Hoffman

With gratitude to Almighty God for sustaining me, this week's installment marks the completion of four years of Netvort. Thanks to my readers for their comments, questions and encouragement, and a 'special thank you' and tip of the Hoffer hat to my editor and distributor for his continued efforts. 

    This week's parsha records the onslaught of the final three plagues upon the Egyptians, and the consequent release of the Israelites from the country. After the ninth plague, that of darkness, has been completed, God tells Moshe that He will bring one more plague, after which the nation will be allowed to leave. He then says, "Please speak in the ears of the people : let each man request of his friend and each woman of her friend silver vessels and gold vessels" (Shemos 11 : 2). In our message three years ago, we focused on the next verse, which says that God granted the people favor in the eyes of the Egyptians. This verse seems to imply that the very request for silver and gold vessels generated the favor that the Egyptians had for the Israelites. One of the explanations we offered was from Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch, who said that the Egyptians fully expected that the Jews would take advantage of them during the period of darkness and ransack their homes. However, they did not touch anything, and now only took the vessels with the permission of their owners. The level of ethical behavior they thereby displayed was what filled the Egyptians with admiration for them. 

    Another question, however, needs to be addressed. When God told Moshe that the people should request vessels from the Egyptians, He refers to the Egyptians as their friends. The word for friend, "reia," that is used, is the same word that is used in the verse 'And you shall love your friend as yourself" (Vayikra 19 : 18). Rabbi David Hoffmann, in his commentary on that verse, writes that non - Jews are included in the commandment, because we find the word 'reia' used in reference to non - Jews - the Egyptians - in our verse in Shemos. Rabbeinu Bachya, however, in his commentary to the Decalogue in parshas Yisro, writes that non - Jews were included in that expression only in verses that refer to pre - Sinaitic events. Be that as it may, the word 'reia' did, even according to Rabbeinu Bachya, refer to the Egyptians at the time it was spoken. Thus the Egyptians were friends of the Jews even before they asked for their vessels. The Egyptians, however, had enslaved the Jews for hundreds of years. How is it, then, that they were now the friends of the Jews? What generated this friendship?

   Rabbi Eliyohu Meir Bloch, in his Peninei Da'as, asks a different question. Rashi says that when the Jews asked the Egyptians for their vessels, they denied having them. The Jews then said that they knew that they had these vessels, and that they knew exactly where they were. During the plague of darkness, they said , they went into their houses and saw these vessels. Rabbi Bloch asks, weren't the Jews ashamed to say this to the Egyptians. Is it a display of proper manners to take advantage of someone who can't see by entering his home and snooping around to see where his valuables are? Is this the way the descendants of Avrohom, Yitzchok and Yaakov are supposed to act? He answers that during the period of darkness, in which, as the Torah describes it, the Egyptians could not see enough to sit down or stand up for three days, they needed the services of the Jews in order to survive. Therefore the Jews came into their homes, prepared their meals and fed them.  In this way they became acquainted with everything that was in the house. Instead of taking revenge on their oppressors when they themselves were under house arrest, they fed them and thereby kept them alive. This humanitarian aid, then, is apparently what generated the friendship that existed between the Jews and their former captives.