2026

Parshat Bo – Strength, Limits, and the Courage to Ask

Parshat Bo is often remembered as the parashah of power—plagues, defiance, a dramatic showdown between God and Pharaoh. But if you listen carefully, Bo is also a story about limits. About what happens when limits are denied… and what becomes possible when they are finally acknowledged.

I want to come at this parashah from a very personal place.
I recently moved. And I discovered—somewhat to my surprise—that moving at this stage of my life is not the same as moving at earlier stages. I am, by nature, fiercely independent. I have never been comfortable asking for help, and even less comfortable accepting it. But I am about to turn 69. I have a bad back. I have less energy than I once did. And I work a lot.

And suddenly I was faced with a question that felt both practical and deeply spiritual:

Is it wiser to accept my limitations and ask for help—or to push through them, as I always have?

In my years as a rabbi, I’ve noticed something. People tend to fall into two broad categories.

There are those who accept their limitations. They pace themselves. They ask for help. They adapt. And then there are those who refuse. They insist on doing what they’ve always done, the way they’ve always done it—even when the cost is falling, injury, or worse.

We often admire the second group. We call them strong. Determined. Independent. But I’ve begun to wonder whether what we’re really seeing is not strength—but fear. Fear of becoming someone else. Fear of needing others. Fear that accepting help somehow means giving up.

That brings me back to Parshat Bo.

Pharaoh, in this parashah, is not a weak man. He is powerful beyond imagination. And yet, plague after plague, reality keeps changing—and Pharaoh cannot. Each moment calls for adaptation, for acknowledgment that what worked before no longer works now. And each time, Pharaoh refuses.
The Torah describes his heart as “hardened.” But perhaps what that really means is rigidity. Pharaoh cannot imagine a version of himself that must yield, adjust, or rely on forces beyond his own control. His downfall is not lack of strength—it is the inability to accept limits.
Contrast that with the Israelites.

They leave Egypt in haste, their dough not yet risen. They walk into uncertainty. They do not leave as self-sufficient individuals but as a people—dependent on one another, guided step by step, learning as they go. Their freedom begins not with mastery, but with trust. Not with independence, but with interdependence.

That is a hard lesson for us. Because we are taught—especially in this culture—that needing help is a failure. That accepting limits is surrender. That if we stop pushing, we are somehow giving up.

But Judaism suggests something else entirely.

Acceptance is not resignation. Acceptance is truth-telling.

Giving up says, “Nothing more is possible.”

Acceptance says, “Something different is now required.”

And those are not the same thing.

There are limits we are meant to fight—moral limits, spiritual limits, limits that tell us injustice is inevitable or that change is impossible. But there are also limits we are meant to respect. Bodies age. Energy shifts. Strength changes. Ignoring those limits is not courage; it is often self-harm disguised as virtue.

I am learning—slowly—that asking for help does not mean I am less capable. It means I am more honest about who I am now. It means I am choosing wisdom over pride, safety over stubbornness, connection over isolation.

Parshat Bo teaches us that redemption does not begin when we become invincible. It begins when we stop pretending that we are.

Pharaoh’s tragedy is that he never learns this. Israel’s freedom begins the moment they do.

May we have the courage to know which limits to resist—and which to honor.

May we learn that strength is not measured by how much we carry alone, but by our willingness to walk forward together.

Shabbat Shalom.