From the desk of Liesl St. James - Moses, the Early Years

We are now moving on to the book of Exodus. We’re on book 2! Only 64 more to go! And as I warned, this is the part where it gets really Jewy, so I’ll change my spelling of “God” appropriately.

Picture it: Egypt. A long time ago.

The Pharaoh was looking around and though to himself “Man, there are waayyyyy too many Hebrews hanging around these days. Time to do a little ethnic cleansing.” So he ordered that all newborn Hebrew boys be tossed in the Nile for croc chow. Moses’ mom isn’t thrilled with the idea of serving her baby as a croc’s lunch, so she sets him in the water in a basket where he floats into a thicket of reeds.

Just as the baby is floating his way around the reeds, the Pharaoh’s daughter decides to go for a swim. Really? This is croc water after all, not exactly the place to take a refreshing dip. But no matter. She hears Moses talking to himself in baby chatter about being croc food and goes to investigate. She finds the baby floating in the reeds. She takes him home to the Pharaoh and does the traditional “daddy, daddy he followed me home, can I keep him?” bit. The Pharaoh says sure, but you have to feed him and walk him yourself. So Moses grows up in the household of the Pharaoh, like twins with the Pharaoh’s own son, Aaron.

Fast forward a few years. Moses knows he’s Hebrew (I don’t know how – just roll with it). One day he sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew man. Being angry, he does the only logical thing – no, not call the police or make a citizen’s arrest. He kills the Egyptian. Realizing capital murder has repercussions, he flees to Midian.

While in Midian, he takes to herding sheep, as that’s what you do when you’re in exile. Suddenly, Moses sees a burning bush. Going to investigate, he discovers it to be G-d. G-d tells him that his name is G-d (Yahweh) and that Moses has work to do. He’s supposed to go back to Egypt and lead all the Israelites to Canaan, or the promised land. Moses, never one to argue with burning foliage, decided to go ahead and do what this mysterious G-o tells him to do.

So he goes back to Egypt. He and Aaron tell the Pharaoh to let G-d’s people go (insert Charleton Heston’s booming voice saying “LET MY PEOPLE GO!!” here) Pharaoh says no. Moses says “I SAID LET US GO!!” Pharaoh says “Bite me.”

“FINE!” Moses says. “I’ll bet G-d will smite you somehow. That’s what he does, you know! This is still the old testament, G-d is a bitch!”

And G-d does not disappoint. She sends a series of plagues to Egypt. There are 10 of them, and boy are they fantastic! Come on, Jessica. You know them. Say them with me.

First the rivers turn to blood, killing all the water life.
Then a plague of frogs infests the earth, raining frogs from the sky.
Then the lice and gnats invade.
Then the beasts
Then the livestock all come down with disease and die.
Then everybody gets covered with unhealable boils.
Then hail mixed with fire. Oh, hell yeah! Now we’re talking! HAIL AND FIRE!!! How completely awesome is that?!?!
Then locusts come and eat all the crops
Then darkness…no more sun

Then, the piece d’resistance. Death of all the first born sons of Egyptian families. That’s right. G-d pulled the whole “turn around is fair play” card and killed all the Egyptian babies – or, really just the boy babies, because those are the only ones that matter.

Finally, the Pharaoh decided the only way he can end all of this is to let the Israelites go. He figures if G-d thinks up any more plagues, they’ll involve penises falling off or something. And locusts were bad enough. So out the Hebrews go, off on their journey. And while they’re walking, Moses explains Passover to them. “Every year,” he says, “you’ll drip really gross wine on special plates to remember this. It’ll be epic. And you’ll rejoice in the fact that you didn’t have to kill your sons, you redeemed them.”

Next: Jews walking, and not just around the Boca Raton shopping center. (was that too far? That might have been too far. I think I’ll get fired now.)