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Tzfardeah (Frogs) ‐ Chaim Gerlitz (12th Grade) and Jonny Abitbol (11th Grade)

Pesach brings up one of the most prominent episodes in the Torah; the plagues with which God punished the
Egyptians. There were 10 plagues in total but we all know that the best is the plague of frogs. You might be won-
dering: Were there not frogs all over Egypt? So what’s this with “the frog”? Why does the Torah describe that
plague in the singular?
The Midrash writes that as a matter of fact the plague did start with one frog. The one frog jumped out of the
Nile River and started it all.
A few people went after the frog with a stick in order to kill it. That is when the miracle starts: Instead of dying
from the hits, the frog reproduced. They kept hitting the frogs and the frogs kept multiplying. The obvious ques-
tion arises: Why did the Egyptians continue beating the frogs once they saw that with every hit there were more
frogs? Did they not realize that they were only making matters worse?

The Steipler Gaon says that the answer can be found in a single word: Anger. When people become enraged,
they act without thinking. It obviously made no sense to keep hitting the frogs when they were multiplying but
they did it anyways because they were angry and were not thinking. Anger often times leads to irrational behav-
ior and would should avoid becoming angry at all costs.

Kinim (Lice) – Sapir Tessler (10 grade)
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When people think of the ten commandments, they do not frequently think about who initiated them. Several
simply assert that Moshe hit his staff on the ground and G-d obliged by bringing the next plague. However, this
was not the case for all ten plagues. In fact, the commentaries tell us that Moshe did not initiate the plague of
lice, because of hakarat hatov, a sense of appreciation, since the ground helped Moshe to hide the Egyptian he
had killed years ago. In order to show gratitude, Aharon performed the plague of lice. But, the pasuk says
“Vayaasu chen” (Shemot 8:7) - “and they did so”, “they” meaning both Moshe and Aharon performed the
plague.

Interestingly, there were two stages to the plague of lice. The first part of the plague involved hitting the ground
and turning all of the dust into lice. However, if the plague solely involved this, there would just be millions of
lice crawling on the ground, which would not have a big influence on the Egyptians. There was in fact a second
and more important stage to this plague which involved moving the lice from the ground to the Egyptians and
their animals.

We can explain that the first part of the plague, hitting the ground, was done by Aharon, and the second part
was done by Moshe. This is revealed in the Pasuk, as it says, “Vatehi hakinam ba’adam u’babehemah kol afar
haaretz haya kinim” (Shemot 8:7) – “Aharon stretched out his hand with his staff and struck the dust of the land,
and the lice-infestation was on man and beast; all the dust of the land became lice, throughout the land of
Egypt.” There are two different terms used for lice, “Kinnim” and “Kinam”. The lice on the ground was called
Kinim and the lice on the Egyptians and their animals was called Kinam. Since there were two different phases
to this plague, there was no problem with Moshe performing this second stage.

Moshe did not perform the first part of this plague since he had respect for the land and was grateful since it had
helped him in the past. Respect and appreciation are both very important attributes that Moshe had and that are
frequently seen. This is an important theme of Pesach, as the Jewish Nation appreciates that we were saved
from slavery.