Bo (Badlands)

This week’s Torah portion, Bo, takes us into the heart of darkness. It opens with the eighth plague—swarms of locusts that darkened the land. Then Egypt is engulfed in a “thick darkness” so palpable that it renders the Egyptians incapable of movement for three days. All of this opaque imagery builds to the final plague when, at the stroke of midnight, God strikes down the firstborn in every Egyptian household. At last, as all of Egypt wails in the darkness, Pharaoh “summoned Moses and Aaron in the night and said, ‘Up, depart from among my people, you and the Israelites with you!’”

The darkness of Bo is inseparable from devastation and death. It is, therefore, a source of intense trepidation, not only for the Egyptians, but also for our Israelite ancestors—and for us. When, on the journeys of our lives, we find ourselves cast into dim places, we tend to reach desperately for light. The descent of darkness shatters our illusions of control and reminds us of our own mortality.

Yet Parashat Bo reminds us that darkness is also the incubator of hope, the place where redemption is born. In Egypt, the Jewish people become a nation. We are conceived in the darkness of bondage and delivered in the middle of God’s eternal night of vigil. This ancient poem from the Passover Haggadah recounts our story of miracles fashioned amidst the darkness: Unto God let praise be brought / For the wonders God has wrought / At the solemn hour of midnight.

It is natural to fear the dark. Nightfall is frightening. Still, if we, like our forebears, wish to grow from our experiences, we must learn to embrace the liberating power of darkness. In her book, When the Heart Waits, Sue Monk Kidd asks: “Could it be that seeking real light comes only by dwelling for a time in the dark? Whenever new life grows, darkness is crucial to the process. . . . So why have we made God into a rescuer rather than a midwife?”

Parashat Bo challenges us to imagine God as a midwife, to embrace our night vision. The poet Theodore Roethke writes: “In a dark time, the eye begins to see.” In their Egyptian midnight, our terrified ancestors caught their first glimpse of freedom. In our own midnights, we, too, begin to see—but only if we find the faith to hold our ground despite our fear, to wait patiently in the shadows rather than running prematurely for the light.

**********

Bruce Springsteen’s superb fourth album, “Darkness on the Edge of Town” is an extended meditation on this theme.  Over the course of its ten tracks, including “Something in the Night,” “Prove it All Night,” and the title tune, which closes the work, The Boss shares his struggle with depression with great poignancy and power.  Yet it is in the opener, “Badlands”, that he most fully connects the challenges of darkness with the possibilities for growth and reemerging light.

In a 2005 interview with Terry Gross, Springsteen reminds his listeners that to properly understand his songs, one must pay close attention to both the verses and the chorus: In my songs, the spiritual part, the hope part, is in the choruses.  And your daily realities. . . the details of what the song is moving to transcend—are almost always contained in the verses.

This is certainly true in “Badlands.”  The song begins in darkness: Lights out tonight/Trouble in the heartland. 

The parallels with portion Bo are striking; the narrator is living in a kind of dim, terrifying time, filled with anxious anticipation: Talk about a dream/Try to make it real/You wake up in the night/With a fear so real/Spend your life waiting/For a moment that just don’t come.

We hear echoes of the brutal struggle of the Israelite slaves and the insatiable lust for power that governs every would-be Pharaoh.  Sadly, over three thousand years later, not enough has changed.  Life is still hard.  Unjust.  Dark.

Working in the fields

‘Til you get your back burned

Working ‘neath the wheel

‘Til you get your facts learned

Baby I got my facts

Learned real good right now.

Poor man want to be rich

Rich man want to be king

And the king ain’t satisfied

‘Til he rules everything

And  yet. . .If we can avoid the temptation to numb ourselves, to lie and distract ourselves—if we can muster the courage to confront the darkness head on and push through—then hope and light beckon in the chorus.  When it comes, with the E-Street Band cranking into overdrive, joining Bruce on the vocals with deep-felt urgency, the light is irresistible.  You hear it with your ears and feel it with every bone of your body:

I believe in the love that you gave me

I believe in the hope that can save me

I believe in the faith and I pray

That some day it may raise me

Badlands, you gotta live it every day

Let the broken hearts stand

As the price you’ve gotta pay

We’ll keep pushing ‘til it’s understood

And these badlands start treating us good

**********

Three months after the Exodus described in Parashat Bo, the Israelites arrive at Mount Sinai. There, too, they encounter thick darkness, in the form of  the “dense cloud” that falls upon the mountain. Torah tells us that this is precisely where God is to be found. Moses bravely enters that divine darkness, twice. He returns bearing the tablets inscribed with God’s black fire.

Out of the darkness—through the darkness—comes both liberation and law. Without the night and all of its terrors, there can be no Torah. Wisdom comes out of the Badlands.  This is the legacy of Parashat Bo.

For a great live version from shortly after the song’s release in 1978: