MagThe sixteen drops of wine represent the plagues, themselves: this is ‘revealed’ meaning of this practice.²⁰², revealed, as opposed to the nistar, hidden, mystical meaning of this practice. There is a connection of three the plagues: lice (kinim), boils (sh’chin) and darkness (choshekh). The letters that make up the names of these three plagues are interchangeable so that if you write one on top of the other you will see that they spell out each other’s names in different directions.en Avraham¹⁹⁹, born in Gąbin, Poland, was a rabbi, Talmudist and a leading religious authority in the Jewish community of Kalish, Poland during the seventeenth century. quotes Darchei Moshe²⁰⁰ of Cracow. His most famous work is the Mapah, a commentary on the Shulchan Aruch, and he also authored the Darchei Moshe, a commentary on the Beit Yoseif of Rav Yoseif Karo. He is the main halachic authority for Ashkenazic Jewry. He passed away in 1572. regarding the proper method of pouring a bit of wine from the cup when we mention the ten plagues. He claims that it is customary to pour or to sprinkle 16 drops of wine from one’s wine cup at this point: three for “Blood, fire and pillars of smoke;” ten for the plagues; and three for D’ztakh Adash Ba’achav. These 16 drops are for the Holy One’s sword which is called Yohakh (Yud Hei Vav Kaf).²⁰¹, “He will order His angels (to guard you wherever you go.)” – Psalm 91:11 Yo – God- hakh – strikes. The truly pious do not dip their fingers into the cup when they remove wine from their cup; instead they pour a bit directly from the cup.

ח ש כ ש ח נ כ נ ם This suggests that these three plagues are connected to one another; each plague contains a manifestation of the other two plagues. Each plague represents three plagues – instead of three plagues, they would then be nine plagues. Along with the other seven plagues that would make sixteen plagues! This would also explain, why, when it came to the third plague, the magicians of Egypt were unable to perform the plague like Moses, and they declared, “It is the finger of God!” The magicians of Egypt were able to perform one magical act at a time; they were not able to recreate two or three plagues at the same time. It was then that they realized that Moses was not performing miracles. Rather he was acting with the help of God. Why did the Egyptian magicians say, “It is the finger of God,”²⁰³ during the third plague? According to a Midrash²⁰⁴ there were fourteen types of vermin in Egypt during the third plague – the smallest of which was the size of an egg. The Egyptians could not replicate this plague because they could not perform so many acts at the same time. That is how the magicians knew that it was the ‘finger of God,’ and not an act of magic. But there is problem with the claim that darkness, lice and boils are interconnected. We learn elsewhere that blood, frogs and lice were performed by Aaron; wild animals, pestilence and the death of the first born by God; hail, locust and darkness by Moses. Boils was performed by all three of them together.²⁰⁵ If this is so, then lice and darkness should also have been performed by (all three) Moses, Aaron and God, since boils was part of lice and darkness. It therefore stands to reason that the plague of boils must have been performed by God as well. Earlier, we saw that there is an issue with including the death of the first born along with the last grouping of three plagues in d’tzakh, a”dashand ba’achav. In each of these groupings of plagues, the third (lice), sixth (boils) and ninth (darkness) struck without warning; in the case of the tenth plague there was a warning. We have answered this question by pointing out that though Pharaoh was warned of the tenth plague, he was not warned of the attack of the first born against Egypt. The final plague was against the first born as well as all those who were killed by them. Also, just as there were two aspects to the plague of the first born, so there were multiple aspects to the plagues of lice, boils and darkness, as we have seen above. (We do not count the attack of the tenth plague as two separate plagues since both involved the first born.) Hidden in the abbreviations D’tzakh, a”dashand ba’achavis the entire story of Israel’s redemption from Egypt*:*When combined, the final letters of these three abbreviations spell kesev(lamb). The first letters of the abbreviations spell eved(slave). And the middle letters spell tzei chad (in one go out). Hidden in the abbreviation, then, we learn that the people of Israel would have been slaves forever had they waited one more second in Egypt. They would have descended below the forty-ninth level of impurity; ‘they went out because of one more second.’ It was because of the merit of a lamb (that is, the Passover sacrifice) which they offered that they were worthy of being redeemed from Egypt. The letters kesev also spell kavash – because the Israelites sacrificed the lamb in Egypt, they vanquished the angelic prince of Egypt and could be redeemed. This is why the verse in Psalms says, “He struck Egypt through their first born,”²⁰⁶ and not “He struck the first born of Egypt.” By striking down the prince of Egypt who is called the first born of Egypt, God redeemed the people of Israel. In exchange for this God said, “Sanctify for me your first born.”²⁰⁷ This also explains the law of Passover: unlike the regular dietary laws, even a bit of leavening renders food chametz. ²⁰⁸, if the amount of non kosher food or dairy that falls into a meat mixture is one sixtieth, it does not make the whole unkosher. Just as the words, chametz and matzah²⁰⁹and matzah are almost the same – the letters, hay and chet which are very similar to one another and are distinguished by a tiny line. ח ה are only distinguished by a tiny bit, so even another second in Egypt would have rendered Israel unredeemable. All of this is hinted at in Rabbi Yehudah’s abbreviation.²¹⁰, Masechet Pesachim There is another aspect to the final plague that makes it similar to the third, sixth and ninth plague. This plague struck not only the people of Egypt but the first born Egyptians who were born outside of Egypt or who were living in other lands. Like the final plagues in the other groupings, they were struck without warning. In this matter, Rabbi Yehudah disagrees with the previous statement in the Haggadah, which says, “These are the ten plagues which the Holy one brought upon the Egyptians in Egypt…” This statement implies that the plagues only struck those Egyptians in the land of Egypt while Rabbi Yehudah was of the opinion that the plagues struck Egyptians no matter where they lived.

footnotes: ²⁰² Niglah ¹⁹⁹ Abraham Abele Gombiner (c. 1633 – c. 1683), known as the Magen Avraham ²⁰⁰ Rav Moshe Isserles was born in 1530; he served as the Rosh Yeshiva ²⁰¹ The words Yohakh contain the final letters of the four Hebrew words which say, Ki malakhav yitzaveh lakh ²⁰³ Exodus 8:15 ²⁰⁴ Yalkut Shimoni, Parshat Vaera ²⁰⁵ Shemot Rabbah 12:4 ²⁰⁶ Psalms 136:10 ²⁰⁷ Exodus 13:2 ²⁰⁸ There is a concept in the laws of Kashrut of batel b’shishim ²⁰⁹ The words chametz ²¹⁰ Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz, Shnei Luchot Haberit

These are the ten plagues that the Holy One brought upon the Egyptians in Egypt: Two questions are raised regarding the plagues by this statement. First, why was it necessary to say “upon the Egyptians in Egypt?” And second, why does the Haggadah say “Rabbi Yehudah said that (God) placed signs upon them?”²¹¹ In these verses the expressions, “upon the Egyptians,” and, “upon them,” are superfluous. The Torah states: “Go to Pharaoh for I will harden his heart and the heart of his servants in order that I might place My signs within them…that I performed in Egypt and the signs which I placed upon them.”²¹² Here too we find redundant language: first the verse states “I placed within them,” and then, “the signs I placed upon them.” This implies that God literally placed “His signs upon them,” that is, their bodies. Yalkut Shimoni, a midrashic work,²¹³ states that Rabbi Yehudah’s abbreviated version of the ten plagues was incised into the skin on their bodies. This is what the Haggadah means when it states: “On the Egyptians in Egypt,” and what the statement “asher - that (God) placed upon them,” means; literally on them. The word asher, “that,” has the same gematriah (numerical value) as d’tzakh, a”dash ba’achav. **The Plague of the firstborn:**When the plagues are first listed, the final plague is called makat bechorot, “the plague of the first born,” while Rabbi Yehudah simply refers to the tenth plague as bechorot. What is the significance of this difference? The first listing of the plagues refers to the plague and not to the one who was affected by the plagues. Therefore, the essential word is makat,“the plague of,” emphasizing that the firstborn were struck by God but then died at the hands of the angel of death, as stated earlier.²¹⁴ Rabbi Yehudah, on the other hand, says bechorot, because he was of the opinion that the first born were not only the victims of the tenth plague but the source of the tenth plague as well. They were not only struck down by God but they attacked and killed many Egyptians.

footnotes: ²¹¹ This is a literal translation of Rabbi Yehudah’s statement but probably not the actual meaning of the statement. Sometimes the literal is not the actual meaning of an expression. ²¹² Exodus 10:1 ²¹³ Yalkut Shimoni on Psalms 105 ²¹⁴ See earlier discussion “Not by an angel.”