Sensory Input, Plagues, and...it's a lot! Drash for Parshat Vaera, Adas Minyan כ״ה טבת תשפ״ה

Describing the February 1918 arrival of famed civil rights activist Walter White in Harlem, as a young man newly hired by the nascent NAACP:

"For the unaccustomed, New York threw the nervous system into a state of agitation, all the senses alive to the overload of input. As the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote around this time, "In New York you can see the noise!" Everywhere Walter's eyes turned, they focused on something he had never seen before: rows of concrete skyscrapers, elevated subway trains, newspaper balls blowing like tumbleweeds over frozen pavement. Motorcar traffic, New York cops on horseback. So many languages and skin colors. In some sections of the city, every vertical surface screamed out some consumer product that could be had for a low, low price: Stroh's beer, Chesterfield cigarettes, Hohner harmonicas, shirt collars, boot polishes, frankfurters, live shows of all kinds. There was a feeling on these streets like at any moment anything could happen: assignation, fisticuffs, the apocalypse."

A.J. Baime, White Lies: The Double Life of Walter F. White and America's Darkest Secret (Mariner Books, Boston), 2022, p. 25

The plagues aren't just about suffering. As "signs and wonders", they overwhelm all the physical senses -- sight, yes, but much more too. We can only imagine the stench of the countless tons of fish dying in the Nile once it turns to blood. The sounds of the frogs in every corner and crevice of Egypt -- and the stench when they stacked up in heaps and heaps to rot on the land. The sensation of the boils festering on everyone's skin.

The final plague of this week's parsha reaches a pinnacle of sensory overload. Barad (hail) is referred to more fully in the text as Kolot u'Varad -- accompanied by an unceasing roar of thunder. Thunder, but instead of lightning in the sky, the lightning was *inside* the giant hail stones, which were simultaneously fire and ice. And were so immense and heavy, that they shattered the trees they struck, adding the percussion of exploding trees to an overwhelming experience.

What is Pharoah's reaction? I understand Pharoah's hardening of his heart based on what I learned from my teacher, Norman Shore. Unable to think clearly, he avoids any cognitive dissonance at all costs, and sticks to his blind hatred of the Israelites. In the face of sensory overload, Pharoah doubles down on what he knew before -- he was not letting the people go.

We, too, were in an overwhelming situation. At the beginning of the Parshah, we suffered from "kotzer ruach", shortened breath, and avodah kashah, harsh labor. The physical toll of the work imposed on us, the conditions of servitude, and on top of it all, the visceral horror of Pharoah wanting to throw every newborn Israelite boy into the Nile (...another good reason to avoid making gender assignments at birth...).

It was all too much. We were shut down, hyperventilating, unable to hear Moshe's words, unable to take in the possibility of redemption.

Coming into davenning this morning, and sitting down next to me, Keturah said, "That was quite a week, wasn't it?"

We've had a lot of those kinds of weeks lately. We too may be suffering from overload. The question is, how do we respond it?

Do we double-down on exactly what we've always thought, just like Pharoah, unable to take in new information, unable to see the suffering of others?

Do we shut down like our Israelite ancestors, contracting our spirits (kotzer roach), unable to respond to calls for making the world any different that it is today?

Here's one small alternative pathway when confronting sensory overload: expect *less* of ourselves.

Halacha of Kriat ha-torah b'Tzibur, communal torah reading:

Do we have to hear every world? If there's noise, or distraction, or if we really need to pee? Does the kahal go back and repeat the leyning, until we've met our expectations of ourselves?

For Megillat Esther, yes, we do (which also provides a bit of a check on our exuberance on Purim).

For Parshat Zachor, also yes: once a year (maybe twice, if you include Parshat Parah), for three pasukim. That's all the rabbis expect us to be able to manage, when required to actually hear every single world.

The rest of the time, sure, if we're able to, hearing the leyning is good. But what matters is that the Torah gets read, not that everyone hears every word. We fulfill what needs to be done communally, while individually we let ourselves off the hook.

Expecting a little less of ourselves, especially in terms of sensory input, is part of the gift of shabbos too. A day of doing less, and turning off certain parts of the world, while opening ourselves to the experience of being in the now. So I want to offer a bracha for everyone, that when the world gets too overwhelming, we're able to back off enough, so we *don't* need to shut down, double down, or black out. We can forgive ourselves, turn down the cacophony, fulfill a day of rest when we can, and then head back out into the world.