Plotting Ge'ula - Bo presents a third level of ge’ula wherein the events of Yetziat Mitzrayim are not problems in search of solutions, but are part of a grand plot by HaKadosh Baruch Hu. This, however, raises many questions: If indeed this night was carefully planned from the beginnings of Ma’aseh Bereishis, why must it be so chaotic, with demons on the rampage? If we were beyond the earthy elements of the first level of ge’ula, why does Yetziat Mitzrayim have to be so bloody? Why does Moshe – who initially rejected the role of go’el – suddenly get so personally involved, and why now does B’nei Yisrael – who were initially pushed to the sidelines – have to play such an active part? How do we resolve the contradiction of when the ge’ula even took place – at night or in the day?
Answers begin to emerge as we explore the meanings of shemira and zechira – the former a description of potentiality that lies hidden in the nighttime and the latter of actualization that is brought into the light of day. Yetziat Mitzrayim thus becomes a template for Torah itself. Questioning and speaking, getting our hands dirty with the process of living, and engaging in the complexities of human interactions, achieves an orderliness that dispels our inner demons (which are nothing more than self-generated terrors). Torah is extracted from darkness, exposing the initial Light of Creation. Even within the Grand Plot, there is still a place for us to write our own stories.

NN: In the three pronged approach to גאולה, parashat Bo is not meant as a rejection of the earlier stages, as if saying that what was done until now was really just a play and was really all about רבת העלילה and the התעללתי במצרים; nothing but a ליל שימורים in which everything was created for the nature of freedom that you had to go through; the pretense of a גאולה. it’s much more than that because we find that in the same time, we have the opposite things occurring.
The לילה המשומר ובא is also המשומר מן המזיקים; it requires the involvement of ישראל; the איסור of leaving your own threshold implies that unless you’re involved, or unless the דם is on the דלת, then indeed you are not part of that הבחנה.
The relationship of בדמייך חיי בדמייך חיי, the personal involvement of משה רבינו in his שליחות to Pharaoh, the actual ‘poling’ that’s taking place between the power of הקב"ה on one hand and the power of Pharaoh on the other hand, or between משה as a person and Pharaoh as a person.
All of these point to a very down and dirty relationship to the גאולה, that seems to go all the way back to the beginning, to the universal concepts we were talking about in פרשת שמות. But in actuality, the profound interrelationship of the potential of a thing in terms of שמירה, and the applied actualities in terms of זכירה: the שמירה as a night-time event, which are the actual things that take place here, darkness and night in all of the מכות; and the זכירה which is a day time event. The שמור את חודש האביב – which is לילה, and זכור את היום הזה – which becomes a מחלוקת in terms of understanding the זמן אכילת הפסח, that is all related to the nature of תורה as a mode of achieving an interrelationship with that which we already know in a sense, which is given to us as an עובר, which we are born with, and are meant to forget and rediscover, and the process of the actual dirt of living. And this forces us in a very protoplasmic way which required משה רבינו here with his anger, a response which was not according to the plan, which forces הקב"ה’s hand, and all of the bloody מצוות which are essential for יציאת מצריים.
The reason for this is because we deal with שאלה. We deal with the process of discovering what it is that we know. What the meaning of סדר is the underlying nature of סדר which we recognize as עלילה. And recognizing in a way that we are the ones who write our own books. And therefore, our סדרים are all רבת העלילה of our own minds, versus the actuality of the coming into the moment in which the סדר המשנה needs to conceive of the new reality which is the הוראה of זכירה.
This interrelationship of זכור ושמור is expressed in the עצם חיוב of פסח, in the repetitiveness of the עניינים of the moon, which as the גמרא points out: שמש ידע מבואו, but the moon doesn’t seem to know where it’s going. And that’s because complexity is the order of the day in all human interactions. The search of the ancients for order was a mirage. סדר that doesn’t come from חושך is the biggest lie. It’s the way in which the dark ages took control of our minds, in which Aristotelian thinking and searches for order, and which Newtonian searching for a universe of order, in which Newton would be its prophet, was all בטל ומבוטל. And the reality is that those סדרים were indeed achievable only מתוך החושך. And it is ישראל who learn Torahמתוך החושך , and who are ultimately זוכה to the אור which was there before all of these minor structures like universes, galaxies and small things like that, and is זוכה to a nature of reality לעתיד לבא, which incorporates תוהו ובוהו itself. Whereas the אומות are covered with חושך ואפילה, ולכם יזרח the אור which is זורח להם לישראל specifically through the willingness to continue to engage in the שאלה, in the דיבור, in the מלילה of לילה, and the אם תבעיון בעיון; the recognition of your own danger to society and to yourself, that allowed the development of סדרים that proximate a reality rather than are part of your own עלילה.

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