Bo 5764
In Parashat Bo, we read how G-d tells Moshe, in Perek 11 Pasuk 2, to please speak in the ears of the people, and let each man request of his fellow, and each woman of her fellow, silver vessels and gold vessels. Here, G-d tells Moshe to please plead with the people, that on their way out of Egypt they should take the money from the Egyptians. So all the Rabbis ask, since when do you have to plead with people to take money? Everybody wants to take money. You might have to plead with them to put on Tefilin, or to go to the Mikveh, or to keep Kosher. But to take money, even at the slightest hint or innuendo that the money is coming to them, they take it. You might have to plead with people to give back money, but never to take money. So what does it mean when the Pasuk says to plead with the people?
So I once heard an explanation correlating this pleading that Moshe had to do with the people, to an event in history that took place after the Holocaust. After the crimes of the Germans in Nazi Germany, the world court held the Germans guilty of war crimes, and made them pay reparations of war. They had to pay money, and that money went to some of the surviving victims and their families, and a lot of the money went to the state of Israel. At that time, many of the survivors were against accepting reparations of war from the Germans. They felt it exonerated the Germans. By accepting the money it would be as if we were saying that since you paid us so now you are off the hook. It would have relived their conscious. And the survivors and their families said, that just because the Germans compensated by giving a couple of Mercedes Benz taxis to Israel it would not absolve them. It’s blood money. How could the survivors and families of the deceased take such money after the atrocities the Germans did by exterminating 6 million of our people? There is no price that can compensate for such an act. So therefore they were against taking the money.
With this, you can understand the attitude of the Jews in Egypt. They were working as slaves for 210 years. They saw their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents for over 2 centuries working in Egypt, and now on the way out were they going to let the Egyptians pay off their acts? Were the Jews going to let them give money so as if to say, we paid you off, now forgive and forget, and it’s all clean now? There were a probably a sentiment of Jews that said this is blood money, and that the Egyptians should not be given the opportunity to exonerate themselves. They should not be given a chance to clear their conscious by giving money.
And therefore G-d has to tell Moshe to plead with the people because this was not easy money to take. This money is not like lottery money or inheritance money, but rather blood money. G-d promised Avraham Aveenu years before that the Jews will come out with great wealth, like the Pasuk says; ‘and afterwards the Jews will come out with great wealth’. This was referring not only to the spiritual wealth of the Torah which was given 50 days after leaving Egypt, but it was also referring to physical monetary wealth. And to make good on that literal interpretation of G-d’s prophecy to Avraham, G-d needed the people to take that money form the Egyptians, even though they might have had the same reservation that the Jews had in the post Nazi era with regard to taking such money.
