Torah as Mirror — Week 14 (Bo)
There is a point in every story where explanation ends.
Not because the truth has not been spoken,
but because the system hearing it can no longer respond.
This is where Bo lives.
In this portion of Torah, God tells Moses to return to Pharaoh again—after repeated refusals, after widespread harm, after it is already clear that persuasion is no longer working. And the text says something deeply unsettling: God hardens Pharaoh’s heart.
Pharaoh cannot change.
And still, the plagues continue.
And still, people who did not choose cruelty suffer.
Torah does not resolve this.
It places us inside it.
But at a certain point, the Torah stops asking us to understand Pharaoh—and turns our attention back to the people who need to live.
Sacred psychology: when hope gives way to coherence
From a sacred psychological perspective, Bo marks the moment when the inner world stops organizing itself around hope and begins organizing itself around coherence.
Earlier, there was still a fantasy—spoken or unspoken—that if the truth were stated clearly enough, if patience were extended long enough, if endurance were generous enough, something might soften.
In Bo, that fantasy collapses.
Not because the soul has failed,
but because continuing to organize life around hope has become too costly.
This is not despair.
It is sacred realism.
Many of us carry a false rule here:
That leaving requires certainty, permission, or moral victory.
Bo tells a harder truth:
Sometimes leaving is not chosen.
It happens because staying has already become incompatible with life.
Developmental theory: rigidity after repeated choice
Developmentally, Bo describes what happens when a system reaches arrested flexibility.
Early on, Pharaoh makes choices again and again. Later, the text suggests something more disturbing: the pattern has hardened beyond choice.
The Torah alternates its language deliberately:
sometimes Pharaoh hardens his own heart
sometimes God hardens it
Rather than resolving this tension, Torah preserves it.
Developmental theory recognizes this moment well. There comes a point when patterns are no longer actively chosen; they are entrenched. Consequences no longer teach. They only reveal what has already taken shape.
Bo is not about learning.
It is about exposure.
Attachment theory: when negotiation ends
From an attachment perspective, Pharaoh represents a system incapable of mutual responsiveness.
There have been repeated bids:
requests
warnings
boundaries
None are met with responsiveness.
Attachment theory tells us that when responsiveness is absent long enough, the relationship moves out of negotiation and into rupture.
In Bo, God is no longer attempting to preserve relationship with Pharaoh. God is oriented toward ending bondage.
This is a difficult truth, but an important one:
Not all attachments are meant to continue.
Trauma theory: why harm spreads
Trauma theory helps us name what is otherwise unbearable in this portion.
The plagues are not contained.
They are collective.
They spread beyond Pharaoh to people who did not choose harm.
Trauma theory does not justify this.
But it does recognize the pattern: when a rigid system is threatened, harm often escalates before it ends. Control tightens. Damage spreads outward.
Torah does not call this good.
It records it.
That refusal to sanitize is part of its moral seriousness.
Disability wisdom: who bears the cost
Disability wisdom insists we ask a question Torah does not answer for us:
Who bears the cost when systems collapse?
In Bo, the cost is borne by bodies:
bodies living in prolonged disruption
bodies under fear
bodies exposed to loss
Systems rarely protect the most vulnerable when they fail. Harm concentrates downward, toward those with the least protection and the fewest options.
Torah does not deny this.
It does not excuse it.
It insists that we remember it.
Anchoring the parallel
I read Bo from inside a life that did not leave by choice.
I stayed as long as staying was possible.
I explained.
I waited.
I believed that if I endured carefully enough, something might soften.
It did not.
Like the Israelites in this portion, I did not leave because I was ready. I left because the structure I was inside could no longer sustain life.
That is not the same thing as choosing freedom.
It is recognizing when return has already disappeared.
The wish for humbling (named, and released)
There is a moment in Bo when I notice something uncomfortable in myself.
I want Pharaoh to be humbled.
Not harmed.
Not destroyed.
But interrupted—forced into contact with reality in a way persuasion could not accomplish.
Torah does not shame this impulse.
And noticing it did not make me harsher.
It freed me from the belief that it was my job to make someone else change.
The reckoning does not belong to the Israelites.
Their task is not to correct Pharaoh.
Their task is to leave.
The mirror
Many of us recognize this moment.
When we have explained enough.
Waited enough.
Extended enough care.
When persuasion has ended,
but release has not yet arrived.
When the question is no longer
“How do I make this work?”
but
“Why am I still organizing my life around something that cannot respond?”
Bo names a difficult truth:
Some systems do not change because they are convinced.
They change because they break.
And some of us stay far longer than we should,
not because we are weak,
but because we confuse endurance with responsibility.
That does not make the breaking holy.
It makes it necessary.
Where this leaves us
The leaving does not fully happen yet in Bo.
It is only made inevitable.
This is the pressure before the Sea.
The moment when staying is no longer possible,
and leaving has not yet opened into relief.
If you are here because staying stopped being possible,
Torah knows this terrain.
Leaving under pressure is still leaving.
Knowing what is true is still a form of freedom.
Invitation
This week, notice one place where you are still explaining
long after understanding has ended—
and allow yourself to rest from that explanation,
even briefly.
Blessing
May you recognize the moment when persuasion has ended
without turning that recognition against yourself.
May you trust the clarity that arrives
when staying is no longer compatible with life.
May you be released from the belief
that you must carry responsibility
for someone else’s refusal to live in truth.
And may you know this:
You are not wrong for realizing this.
You are not cruel for stopping.
You are not late to your own life.
I SEE YOU.
I BLESS YOU.
Love, Jenny