Bo
R. Bachya ibn Pakuda on Parashat Bo, read on Shabbat Bo — with one of this week's three questions for the two of you.
Bo brings the last of the plagues and the night of the Exodus itself. The Israelites eat the Pesach lamb dressed and ready, with sandals on their feet and staff in hand, in the night. They do not yet see the morning. They only know that morning is coming. Bachya in Shaar HaBitachon teaches that bitachon is the work of the night. Anyone can have faith once the sun is up. The harder, deeper trust is what we hold during the long hours when the sun is not yet visible — when we eat the matzah of haste in our cloak, with our family gathered close, on the strength of a promise we cannot yet see fulfilled. The dawn always comes. Bitachon is what we carry through the night until it does.
Tell me about a night in our marriage — a season before a redemption — that turned out to be the dark just before a dawn we couldn't yet see.
The full week — the passage itself with its source, the other two questions, and the closing verse of hope — lives in the app. Together Tomorrow on the App Store.