Vaera – “Va’era,” means “and I appeared”. This is God revealing Godself to Moses, making a promise of redemption using four verbs that are the source for the four cups on Pesach. The parsha continues with 7 of the 10 plagues, Moshe and Aharon coming to Pharaoh many times saying Let my people go. Blood, frogs, lice, wild animals, animal plague, boils, and hail follow.
==
In this week’s parsha, we witness something strange. God commands Moshe to bring the first plague upon Egypt, but then says: “Say to Aharon: ‘Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt.'” Why Aharon? Why not Moshe himself?
Rashi, quoting the midrash Shemot Rabbah, explains: “It is not proper that the waters which protected you when you were cast into the river should now be smitten by you.” The same with the third plague, lice – Aharon strikes the dust, not Moshe. This is because that dust once hid the body of the Egyptian Moshe had killed.
But here’s the question: The Nile is water. Dust is dirt. They have no consciousness, no memory, no feelings. They didn’t choose to save Moshe. So why does it matter? Why should Moshe be constrained by gratitude to inanimate objects?
The answer is that the Jewish value of Hakarat hatov – recognizing the good – isn’t about the recipient. It’s about the recognizer. It’s about who we become when we cultivate gratitude, and who we become when we don’t.
The Meiri on Bava Kamma teaches us that while we should be careful never to disgrace anyone, we must be especially careful regarding that which has honored us and from which we’ve benefited. To disgrace what helped us reveals, in his words, ‘פחיתות מדה’ – a lowliness of character, an inferior nature. As our sages said: ‘A well from which you drank water, do not throw a clod of dirt into it. It doesn’t matter if the Nile intended to save Moshe. What matters is that Moshe experienced being saved by the Nile. To strike it now would damage something essential in Moshe himself: his capacity to remember, to acknowledge, to honor what helped him.
Rav Eliyahu Dessler takes this further: A person with gratitude is someone capable of recognizing that they received something. Someone who denies gratitude, someone who says “I did this myself” or “it was just luck” or “it doesn’t matter”, that person is training themselves in a dangerous art: the art of forgetting. And the Jewish people are a people of memory, of remembering. The Midrash warns us: “Anyone who denies the good of his fellow will eventually deny the good of God.”
Think about what this means. Becoming ungrateful happensin, indeed, a process that we call slippery slope: if Moshe could strike the river that saved him, what’s next?
If this water that bore my basket means nothing, then maybe Yocheved’s and Miriam’s courage means nothing. Maybe Batya’s, the daughter of Pharaoh – maybe her compassion means nothing. Maybe even God’s intervention means nothing: maybe it was “just a coincidence”. Ingratitude is a slippery slope. It begins with “just water” and ends with “just my own efforts. My own bootstraps. I owe nothing to the world.”
So God doesn’t let Moshe strike the water. Not because the water would be hurt. But because Moshe would be hurt in his soul: his hakarat hatov – his character trait of gratitude – would be compromised. Diminished. And a leader without gratitude is a leader who will eventually believe their own power comes from themselves alone.
And there is another question: the Nile didn’t intend to save Moshe – but it did. And this opens us up a profound idea: We live in a web of unintended kindnesses. We marinate in love. Our very existence depends on a million things that didn’t try to help us, but helped us anyway.
The air you’re breathing right now didn’t decide to give you oxygen. The ground beneath your feet didn’t choose to hold you up. The sun didn’t vote on whether to shine this morning. Yet without these – without this complex choreography of elements and forces – you wouldn’t be here.
Jewish mysticism teaches us that everything in creation contains divine sparks. The water, the dust, the stones – all of it pulses with divine energy. When the Nile protected Moshe, it wasn’t random physics. It was the Nile fulfilling its purpose in the cosmic order, participating in the unfolding of redemption.
This is why Moshe cannot strike it. Because to strike the water is to deny that everything matters. It’s to say: “This was just matter in motion. This meant nothing.” But in a universe where everything is infused with divine purpose, nothing means nothing. The basket floating downstream wasn’t coincidence – it was God’s love disguised in a river. The reeds that held, the current that carried, the exact moment Batya came to bathe – all of it was part of a larger web of love.
When we practice hakarat hatov to the river, we’re not actually thanking the river itself – we’re recognizing God’s hand in unexpected places. And when we don’t recognize the good in what seems small, unconscious, inanimate – we train ourselves to miss the miracles hiding in plain sight. It is easy to forget that in every moment of our lives, God is working through the natural world to sustain us, protect us, guide us.
So what does this mean for us, here, now?
It means we need to expand our circle of gratitude. We’re pretty good at thanking people who intentionally help us. We send thank-you notes, we buy gifts, we acknowledge acts of kindness. But what about the unintentional kindnesses? The infrastructure we inherit? The systems we didn’t build but benefit from? The people whose names we don’t know but whose work sustains us?
The teacher who taught your teacher. The person who translated the siddur you pray from. The ancestors who preserved Judaism through persecution so you could inherit it in peace. The earth that grows your food. The people who maintain the roads you drive on, the water you drink, the electricity that powers your life.
Or think about this: How many of us have left communities, institutions, teachers—left them with bitterness or dismissal, because we outgrew them or they disappointed us? We forget that they once sheltered us. They once were our Nile.
I think about my own journey sometimes. The communities that held me when I was just beginning. The teachers whose names I barely remember but whose words shaped me. The books I read once and never returned to, but that opened doors I still walk through. Do I honor them? Do I remember them with gratitude? Or do I just move on, striking the water that once saved me because now I’m swimming just fine on my own?
Hakarat hatov asks us to remember. Even when we’ve moved beyond. Even when we’ve been hurt. Even when the help was imperfect, unconscious, unintentional—we remember the good.
This week, I want to challenge you: Look at something ordinary in your life – your home, your car, the ground you walk on – and thank God for working through it. Not “thank you, house” but “Thank You, God, for sheltering me through this home.” “Thank You for getting me here safely through this car.” “Thank You for the food You provide through farmers and soil and rain.”
Look at your life – and do not take anything for granted. If you can recognize the good in the simple things, then you’re training yourself in a practice that will transform you – you are becoming someone who can see blessing everywhere. Someone who remembers the good. Someone whose power is tempered by gratitude.
Because that’s what God was teaching Moshe at the Nile: True strength isn’t about what you can destroy. It’s about what you remember, how you thank, what you don’t take for granted. It’s about recognizing that you didn’t get here alone – not even close. And that recognition, that hakarat hatov, makes you realize: we are all marinating in love. It is, indeed, the little things that matter.
Shabbat shalom.
Morning discussion:
~ From our reading, the four cups of wine for Passover are derived, through four different verbs. Can you find them? They are called “the four expressions of redemption”.
~ There is yet another expression for Eiahu’s cup, or Elija’s cup. Can you find it?
~ Who needs to know God, in our triennial reading? Why?