At the beginning of Disney’s Lion King, Mustafa takes his young cub Simba out to see the expanse of the kingdom he will one day inherit. As they are looking out at the Sahara, Simba notices buzzards feasting a on decaying carcass. “Dad, why don’t you chase them away?” he asks his father. Mustafa tells him he can’t just do that because “everything is connected in the great circle of life.”
I was thinking of this scene when reading about the first seven of the ten plagues. Each one is not just about Pharaoh or the Israelites, it’s also about the proper relationship between people and the natural world. One verse in the third aliyah really stands out where God pledges not only to use his own power but send “his armies” as well (Exodus 7:4). The rabbis debate about what God’s armies consist of, mostly settling on angels as the primary attackers. The more natural reading Is nature itself.
As snow rained down on us last December, or even as we had relatively no snow for most of this winter, we felt these “armies” swirling around us. Perhaps this is what Mustafa is really telling Simba when he teaches him about “circle of life” in The Lion King, that lions are just vulnerable as buzzards. We are part of the circle of life as well. The plagues in Exodus are a stark reminder of what happens when we forget that fact.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex
Last Updated on 01/11/2024 by wpadm