Hearts of stone
On Monday evening, we will gather around the table for our annual colourful, oversubscribed, possibly drawn-out family dinner called the Seder. We will read about taskmasters and frogs and might debate if our ancestors built the pyramids. Our children may sing the overworked “No, no, no, I will not let them go”, the song that captures Pharaoh’s intransigence or what the Torah calls a “hardened heart”. Pharaoh was not always unfeeling. One opinion in the Talmud says he flipped overnight from Admirer of Joseph to Hater of Israelites.
