Bo: Moral Relativism vs Moral Discernment
Perspective is everything, especially in origin stories. In Parashat Bo, as the Exodus finally breaks open, the Torah slips in one line that could easily be missed: an erev rav, a mixed multitude, leaves Egypt with Israel. And if Passover is our “birthday” as a people, then that detail matters. Every origin story forces the same question: who’s included, who comes along, and what that does to the identity that’s being born.
The Torah itself offers almost no judgment. It simply records the fact. But the rabbis of the Talmud can’t leave it alone, and the fact that they split so sharply should make us pause. Some voices read the erev rav generously: seekers who saw oppression collapse and chose to align themselves with freedom, willing to walk into uncertainty because staying felt morally impossible. In that reading, the erev rav is aspirational, proof that Judaism is covenantal, not merely ethnic. People can choose responsibility and destiny and step into something real.
Other rabbinic voices read the same group with deep suspicion. And here the category matters: not villains because they are outsiders, but uninformed insiders. Close enough to holiness to touch it, but not yet ready to be shaped by it. This isn’t the rabbis rejecting converts. Ruth is in our canon, and converts are fully Israel. This is about formation, depth, and timing. What happens when people join a sacred project before the values, obligations, and discipline have had time to take root?
Here’s where a beautiful insight helps frame the emotional landscape. Bex Stern, a Torah scholar, shares that twice in Tanakh we hear the same desperate cry: “Bless me also.” Esau cries it when he realizes his brother has taken the blessing. Pharaoh cries it in the middle of the night, after his firstborn dies, as he finally releases Israel. Same grammar. Same gam, “also, me too.” But not the same posture. Esau’s cry comes from being wronged. Pharaoh’s cry comes from devastation his choices caused. And yet the Torah lets them echo each other, because both are standing outside chosenness, watching blessing pass to someone else, asking if there’s anything left for them.
That echo helps us understand why the rabbis refuse to give one definitive read of erev rav. Are they Esau-like, displaced by history and sincerely reaching toward covenant? Or Pharaoh-like, seeking blessing only once power collapses, wanting blessing without transformation? The rabbis refuse to answer because history doesn’t allow a single answer.
And this is where the distinction matters. Moral relativism is easy. It says: whatever feels right, whatever is convenient, whatever keeps us comfortable in this moment becomes the standard. Moral discernment is exhausting. It demands context, memory, consequences, and humility. It asks us to take history seriously without being trapped by it. The rabbis preserve both readings of erev rav not because they were confused, but because discernment requires multiple lenses. Sometimes skepticism is wisdom. Sometimes it’s fear dressed up as protection. Sometimes a community must assume the worst because the cost of being wrong is existential. And sometimes a community must assume the best because the cost of not doing so is spiritual suffocation.
What’s most telling is not that the rabbis disagreed, but that they preserved both instincts. They refused to freeze Judaism into a single posture toward outsiders. Instead, they gave us a tradition flexible enough to survive changing realities without losing its soul. A tradition that knows when to open its arms, and when to circle the wagons. When openness is courage, and when caution is wisdom. That fluidity isn’t weakness. It’s how Judaism has remained alive, responsive, and deeply human in a complicated world.
